Invisible Cities
1. The Washington Post has before and after maps of the successful ethnic-cleansing campaigns carried out by sectarian militias in Baghdad over the last year and a half. Their “Before” map dates from April 2006, which was already post-the Samarra shrine bombing, which accelerated sectarian violence but didn’t start it. Via Yglantic.
2. Meanwhile, there’s the second battle of Fallujah, between Ali al-Fadhily and Michael J. Totten. For the most part, the differences between Fadhily’s account of life in Fallujah and Totten’s original reporting from the city strike me as matters of emphasis. Totten emphasizes the lack of violence, Fadhily the dysfunction. Each, in their reporting from the city, actually acknowledges most of the fact set of the other: Fadhily admits that violence is down; Totten allows that Fallujah is prostrate with poverty and wreckage. Fadhily indicts the Iraqi police; Totten agrees that their detention center ought to be investigated by international agencies. Totten worked as an embed with the US military; Fadhily seems to have avoided talking to American officials. (There’s a factual dispute about how much of the city was “destroyed” in the battle, with Totten averting to the Google maps picture of the city.)
I admire Totten even though I’ve shared few of his GWOT-era views. Totten has had the guts and gumption to uproot himself and go see the handiwork of the wars and interventions he’s supported. Yes, it’s safer to travel as an embed than to live rough in Baghdad as Nir Rosen has done, but it’s more dangerous than sitting in your house and pasting in links, which is how most of us from the Warblogger Generation have spent the last few years. (Totten has also spent unembedded time in Kurdistan and Lebanon, to name two places I know of.) And Totten has been willing to stand up to the biases of his audience on multiple occasions and get clobbered for it, as when he suggested that Israel really ought to think twice about promiscuously bombing Lebanon.
Guts and gumption don’t guarantee an infallible perspective, though. John Reed had a lot of both, but it’s probably fair to call him naive about the Russian Revolution. And what I notice in reading Totten’s response to Fidhaly is his stress on inputs:
Marines distribute food aid to impoverished local civilians. The electrical grid is being repaired now that insurgents no longer sabotage it. Solar-powered street lights have been installed on some of the main thoroughfares and will cover the entire city in two years if the war doesn’t come back. Locals are hired to pick up trash that went uncollected for months. A new sewage and water treatment plant is under construction in the poorest part of the city. Low-interest microloans are being distributed to small business owners to kick start the economy. American civilians donate school supplies to Iraqi children that are distributed by the Marines. Mr. al-Fadhily would know all this if he embedded with the U.S. military. Whether or not he would take the trouble to report these facts if he knew of them is another question.
I’m sure all of this is true. A good deal of it, assuming you accept the premise that American troops ought to be controlling Fallujah, is even smart. But it isn’t necessarily working – that is, it isn’t necessarily leading to a functioning economy, independent governance and sustainable community.
Comment by mds —
December 18, 2007 @ 9:12 am
And there’s the rub. The implicit best-case scenario for Iraq Adventure advocates seems to have been reduced to “simmering occupied territory.” Bit of a let-down from the rose-petal parades and the thriving secular democracy that would freely give the US all its oil, even as the rest of the Middle East, awed by the Iraqi Beacon of Freedom, swept its despots from power. Now it’s “ethnically-cleansed neighborhoods are graciously given supplies and jobs by the US military.”
Oh, and, yes, personal grit and bravery, yada yada yada, but:
No, Michael, fuck you, you sanctimonious shit. A million dead Iraqis thank you for your cheerleading.
Meanwhile: Calvino, Juluka, RPGs… Is there anything you don’t know about, Mr. Henley?
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
December 18, 2007 @ 9:26 am
Based on Totten’s intervention in this thread at Roy’s place, I’m closer to mds’s take on the guy than to Jim’s.
He cares about the Iraqis, you know. He cares deeply. Oh, how he cares. If he could fix all the problems with a wave of his hand, he would, because he cares. Deeply. And isn’t that what really matters? Must we quibble about who invaded who?
Yeah, “sanctimonious shit” works for me.
Comment by Derek Copold —
December 18, 2007 @ 9:46 am
Great set-up, Jim.
Comment by abb1 —
December 18, 2007 @ 9:50 am
I don’t understand, isn’t the place pretty much a concentration camp surrounded by a wall where one needs a biometric id card to get in or out? Is that correct, is it still the case?
If so, isn’t it, in fact, rather obscene to be boasting about donated school supplies and street lights? Jeez.
Comment by josephdietrich —
December 18, 2007 @ 9:58 am
Yeah, I have to agree with the sentiment in the above comments. I read Totten regularly for a while but there was so much of a “white man’s burden” vibe running through every piece that he wrote that I didn’t have the heart to continue reading. His aggressive dismissal of the other reporter’s account only succeeds in putting these biases on display.
Comment by matthew hogan —
December 18, 2007 @ 10:12 am
Not a Totten fan here either for most of the same reasons, but he’s been on a slow upward trend. He’s got Beirut bourgoisie biases but they are better than LGF/Red State.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
December 18, 2007 @ 10:30 am
I haven’t read Totten much, so I won’t comment on how to describe him. But it’s virtually self-evident to me that if you want to know how the US intervention in Iraq is going, you report it from the (varying) Iraqi viewpoints. It’s not that important that Americans perceive themselves (as always) as having good intentions. One of the interesting things a certain MIT linguist has claimed is that the Russians always portrayed themselves as having good intentions in Afghanistan–supporting modernization, opposing backwards religious fanatics, etc… I haven’t checked on this, but it has a ring of truth to it.
Comment by ajay —
December 18, 2007 @ 10:47 am
7: I’d say it’s pretty unquestionable that if the Soviet invasion had succeeded (brought Afghanistan under a puppet Soviet government with no real resistance) Afghanistan and the world would both be much better off right now.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
December 18, 2007 @ 11:15 am
#8– Well, you could say that about many imperial conquests, though not all (I’m leaving out the ones where genocide or ethnic cleansing or theft is the whole point of the thing). If only the natives would take things in the right spirit we could really do something with this place. The Iraq War might have gone great if everyone in Iraq had felt like the Kurds did. Though maybe not, since I think I’d classify the Iraq War as one where good intentions did not play a major motivating role.
Comment by Michael J. Totten —
December 18, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
Thanks for the link, Jim.
I have to sort of quibble with this, though:
“But it isn’t necessarily working – that is, it isn’t necessarily leading to a functioning economy, independent governance and sustainable community.”
Very tecently Fallujah had no economy or government whatsoever. Now it has both. The war only ended at the end of the summer. It isn’t possible for the city to become instantly normal again after three years of explosive trauma.
I’m not saying the situation there is good. It isn’t. What it is is less bad.
abbt: isn’t the place pretty much a concentration camp surrounded by a wall where one needs a biometric id card to get in or out?
To get in with your car, yes. To get out, no. To get in on foot or in a resident’s car or a taxi, no.
Comment by Michael J. Totten —
December 18, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
mds: Michael, fuck you, you sanctimonious shit.
Thanks for the constructive feedback.
Comment by mds —
December 18, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
On behalf of the ethnically cleansed of Iraq, thank you for the constructive invasion under false pretenses, you pom-pom girl for mass slaughter. Now go back to patting the good little Iraqis on the head while reciting “White Man’s Burden,” you smug fuck. Oh, and clutch those pearls a little harder, Mike. You want constructive feedback? Try being something other then a mendacious shill for US government propaganda. It can be a new experience for you!
Comment by LarryM —
December 18, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
Eh, I’m as tough on the war lovers as anyone (I’ve been chastised here for advocating mass war crimes trials followed by executions), but give Totten a break. Despite his many biases, and wrongheadedness on the big questions, he at least goes into harms way and honestly tries to get the facts right. Heck, I’d take him over the garden variety liberal who claims to be appalled by the Iraq fiasco, but still maintains an unquestioning loyalty to the consensus view of our position in the world – you know, the kinder, gentler hegemony crowd.
Comment by LarryM —
December 18, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
Oh, but since Totten IS reading this thread, I can’t resist this question: less bad then when? I mean, sure, less bad than when we went in and leveled the place, and immediately thereafter, but I’m guessing that if you asked your average resident of Fallujah whether he preferred the current conditions to the pre war conditions (or even the post war conditions when the place was basically controlled by the rebels), he wouldn’t choose the current situation. I mean, that “explosive trauma” was imposed from outside, by the United States military. And if we left, completely, normality would return more quickly (I concede that there are areas of Iraq where that MIGHT not be true, but Fallujah pretty clearly isn’t one of them).
Comment by mds —
December 18, 2007 @ 1:20 pm
Why? Because he thinks the Iraq invasion has worked out so well, and thereby supports the dream of American hegemony?
Hmm, no, I guess I see where you’re coming from. If one believes that spending blood and treasure inflicting massive misery on a country by invading it and fucking up the occupation was worth it, it makes sense to believe that we should do it again and again and again. Whereas people who tut-tut over how badly Iraq was bungled, while rattling the saber against Iran, Syria, etc., are being contemptible hypocrites (*cough*Hillary*cough*). Fair enough. So I’d like to apologize to Mr. Totten for my heated use of the word “mendacious.” Presumably, he looks at the maps of Baghdad’s ethnically-cleansed neighborhood and honestly thinks this is progress. So “gullible” might be a better word than “mendacious.”
Comment by LarryM —
December 18, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
It’s nice when the people who disagree with you go on to answer the criticism themselves (and I mean that in a good way). Saves time.
I’d also add that, in addition to mds’ (accurate) channelling of my thought process, there is a consequentialist defense of Totten’s reporting. Totten arguably does opponents of the war a service, since his reporting of unpleasant truths can’t simply be dismissed as being “liberal bias.”
Comment by Nell —
December 18, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
The Post passes us a perfect opportunity to show readers the barriers dividing neighborhoods built since February. I’m going to email the authors and the editor; surely, if one image is newsworthy, so is the other.
Comment by sean —
December 19, 2007 @ 3:07 am
Totten is a joke, and no one here in Lebanon takes him seriously.
Here’s a good reason why.
Comment by ran —
December 19, 2007 @ 8:09 am
what mds and sean said. I’ve got zero patience for cheerleaders for this massive war crime that is Iraq.