More Rain on Iraq: Life in Baghdad's Green Zone

Continuing my litany of posts with links casting jaundiced eyes on Iraq's immediate post-invasion past and post-election future (why today? well, that's just the kind of Saddam-loving jerk I am), here's a preview of William Langewiesche's incredibly sobering and depressing account from the Jan./Feb. Atlantic about what things have been like recently in and around Baghdad. One small snippet from a grim litany (full text not online to nonsubscribers, alas--the paper mag should still be on the stands, cheapskates):

Sadly, as the insurgency grows, trust is fading away. This is one of the most sensitive and dangerous aspects of life for reporters in Baghdad today: nearly every news organization is facing troubles with its Iraqi staff, and to various but increasing degrees is being held in some way hostage, out of fear of the consequences of disagreement or disciplinary action. You don't just go around laying off people in Iraq these days. Indeed, the very air of Baghdad seems thick with suspicions of betrayal. Even within the Green Zone, which is largely self-sufficient, many Americans now automatically distrust any Iraqi employee who has been there for longer than about two months. Why has this person not been assassinated, people wonder--or at least frightened off with a letter? The question is legitimate. Americans have awakened and found that the enemy is closer even than dreamed of before.

Comments

[jo-el]

So...by this thinking...the people who survived the election...are actually part of the insurgency! Got it, this one is fun. The elections went off with only a moderate level of violence because they were only supposed to lure the Coalition forces into a false sense of security. Now, will they spring the trap soon? Or will they continue with the ploy until the "elected govt" is in place and the majority of coalition troops gone. Then they will spring their trap. Ha Ha Ha, ingenius.

[Jason Ligon]

And yet, they went to the polls.

[SPD]

Well, most of them did, albeit in numbers still better than over here (and I didn't even have to worry about car bombs).

Still, for a people who haven't been able to vote in free elections for a half-century, shouldn't we have expected better than 60%? What kept the rest of them at home?

[Dave]

SPD-
"What kept the rest of them at home?" Are you being serious?

[chthus]

I'm guessing, boycotts, fear, apathy and failing to register on time would all be in the top ten reasons.

[SPD]

Are you?

[Dave]

Yeah I'd keep it a little simpler. Top reasons are probably beheading of anyone involved with elections, shooting of anyone involved with elections, car bombing of anyone involved with elections, and stabbing of anyone involved with elections. Other than that, yeah why didn't 100% of the population turn out? I mean obviously this election is therefore not legitimate (well John Kerry said so anyway).

[SPD]

Beheadings and shootings and bombings, oh my?

Well, if that's the case, then how did 60% manage to turn out?

[Arabophile]

Because Arabs are still bad motherfuckers. Thus, the majority of them did not spend election day cowering at home.

And they didn't even need moter voter or provisional ballots to make it "easy".

[Dave]

60% still managed to turn out because they put their lives on the line. How is this hard to understand?

[thoreau]

60% still managed to turn out because they put their lives on the line.

This fact, more than anything else, is why I have hope for Iraq that I did not have before. Although I reserve definitive judgement (and the commencement of the crow-eating) for a few months (mark your calendars for May 17!), the fact that they not only voted but actually risked their lives gives me hope. Lots of countries have had elections, and many of the new governments have degenerated into tyranny, while others have proven too weak to resist insurgents.

But if millions of ordinary Iraqis are willing to risk their lives to vote, maybe there is hope. Maybe they will find a way to handle the insurgents. Maybe they will take to the streets, as the Ukrainians did, if a new government tries to push them too far.

I'm still not convinced that this will work (and I will not apologize for soberly withholding judgement), but I have more hope than I had before.

[SPD]

I too withhold judgment without apology. Hawks are too busy gloating about the one good day they've been able to report from Iraq.

[Dynamist]

I'm not gloating, I'm celebrating. But then, I'm not a hawk, despite my hawk-sounding posts. Since the hawks are in charge, our best hope is that they're right (and smart enough to play their hand properly), and the turnout makes their version of truth more useful.

[Mo]

Because Arabs are still bad motherfuckers. Thus, the majority of them did not spend election day cowering at home.

Damn straight!

So...by this thinking...the people who survived the election...are actually part of the insurgency!
jo-el,
Apparently, the media is learning the administration's thinking style. Bush and Rummy kept saying the existence of an insurgency and bombs going off meant that Islamists were scared of our success and therefore by being attacked, it proved we were doing the right thing. (BTW, I'm not supporting either train of thought, just illustrating the mutual insanity.)

[Andrew]

I see a lot of the "quagmire" aspects of the current situation as being due to delay, and the over-reach of trying to do everything, and please everyone...including a lot of "world opinion" and "Arab opinion" third parties who properly had nothing to say about any of this.

Lessons learned:

1.) The occupation should have been left entirely in the hands of the military, not State or the CIA. Soldiers may not be particularly good at this kind of thing - in an absolute sense, nobody is, or the dreams of central planners would be realistic - but the diplomacy shop and the spy shop are WORSE.

2.) We should have just written a common sense constitution for Iraq and promptly proceeded to get Iraqis electing the folks who would actually rule them - within months. If Iraqis wanted to hold a constitutional assembly to get another model, nothing stops them. They wouldn't.

3.) We should have stream-lined the existing Iraqi government and not even tried to turn the lights on, or any of that other big-governmeant crap. That is Iraq's business, not ours. Fuck what the UN thinks! If we get out quick, and Iraq is OK, everyone thinks it was fine...in a while.

[thoreau]

Well, Andrew, I'm sure all of those nation-building lessons will be useful for the next war.

Where and when?

[bushie]

Andrew,
Luckily no one who counts will read or take your advise.

[McClain]

I scanned this briefly, and reflexively dismissed it as some corny bullshit.
"Iraq is a quagmire, the bad guys are winning, America is gonna lose, the sky is falling...."
I was gonna surf along without bothering to comment, when it struck me: I've been vaccinated.
The terrorists have been counting on a meta-biological warfare agent, a 'plague meme' of self-doubt or self-loathing, spread through the mass media. Contagious and debilitating. First successfully used against the Americans by the Viet Cong.
A cripplingly potent weapon against democratically controlled military forces, acting like those viruses which attack the central nervous system.
But now: voters jaded enough to jeer at defeatism, mock terrorist propaganda, and sneer at earnestly self-hating protesters; these voters are exhibiting an immune system response.
It's the next iteration in a global, meta-biological arms race of political will and power.
Huh.
Learn somethin new ev'ry day.
🙂

[Russ D]

We should have just written a common sense constitution for Iraq and promptly proceeded to get Iraqis electing the folks who would actually rule them - within months.

The November 2004 issue of The Atlantic had a set of articles about doing exactly that. One lesson I learned was that "common sense" means different things to different cultures, especially when you consider the bureaucratic mind-set that was imported from the US to help write the laws.

[R C Dean]

Maybe we should have just given them a copy of the EU Constitution. That would have made "world opinion" happy, right? And saddled them with enough bureaucrats and rules that no one would have ever heard from Iraq again.

Hell, we would be well into Hillary!'s first term before they even finished reading the damn thing.

[gaius marius]

60% still managed to turn out because they put their lives on the line. How is this hard to understand?

this is hard to understand because it probably is nothing like the truth, mr dave. you think we got the most courageous 60%? i sincerely doubt it. that we got the most hopeful 60% is probably closer to the truth -- and even that is too reductive.