Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Iraq

Don’t Confuse Me With The Facts, My Mind Is Made Up

Apr 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

Here’s the post I’ve been wanting to write all my life, but because of the lack of time, skill, ability, and seriousness I haven’t been able to: Partisan Views Interfere with Rational Thinking.

You have to let your thinking be influenced by the best evidence you can find. Unfortunately, most people are unaccustomed to that way of thinking. Because of that, some liberals refuse to let go of the idea that Bush lied about Saddam’s WMDs in the run up to the invasion, and some conservatives refuse to let go of the idea that Saddam really did have WMDs. You need to let go of both ideas. It is a truly liberating experience to let the evidence guide your thinking, and I encourage you to give it a try.

It builds from there, to lay bare the central conundrum of the invasion of Iraq – who lied. The conclusion shouldn’t surprise you, but for some it will.

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Iraq Vs. Darfur

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | 1 Comment

I’m told on the one had we need to get out of Iraq because it’s a civil war and civilians are dying, but on the other we need to get involved in Darfar to save the civilians who are dying in that civil war. So you tell me, what’s the difference?

And if the reality of Iraq truly is a civil war, then our presence isn’t causing the violence (because they are fighting against each other, and not us), but it may well help end it. Just as it would in Darfur.

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Haditha

May 31

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

There are two kinds of news stories I lack confidence in (just two?). There is the anonymously sourced story, and there is the “local people tell us” stories. The first is a staple of political reporting – and the shortcoming is that an anonymous source always has an agenda, and the anonymity hides the agenda. I’m not talking about the “some people say” or “experts say” without providing an actual person which is the way reporters simply inject their own opinions into a story, I’m talking were the reporter is relying on a source for information but just not telling us who that is all the while pretending that we are getting the whole story. We’re not.

The “local people tell us” is a staple of international reporting, but it doesn’t have to be international. The whole Katrina reporting debacle – yes, Virginia, pretty much everything the press reported about New Orleans following Katrina was wrong, and wrong because it was “local people tell us”. The press didn’t make up these stories out of whole cloth, they simply reported rumor as fact (and they thought that if multiple people told them the same rumor, why it must be fact). Think about how bad the press got it during Katrina, when the sources by and large had no agenda but were simply repeating what they had heard in good faith. Then think about all those stories where an intrepid reporter discounts the “official” version of events in a foriegn land because he’s talked to the locals and found out what they know (or in reality, what they think they know). Now the reporter isn’t just running with rumor dressed up in it’s Sunday best, but is often relaying whatever agenda the locals have as well.

This brings me to the story of a possible deliberate killing of civilians by Marines in Iraq. I have no idea what happened, and to my mind both the worst and the best may have occured. But the story is being driven by leaks to the New York Times. Maybe the leaker just wants to get the story out a month or two sooner – or far more likely the leaker has an agenda and wants to shape the story by getting his or her version out there first. And the story of a massecre is also supported by local witnesses — who may be right, but who may be wrong or even lying. And what do we know about eyewitnesses testimony? It’s unreliable, and it can be influenced into error after the fact.

Maybe the lurid storiy of a Marine unit shooting innocents is completely accurate. I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time American soldiers have done terrible things. I don’t want to confuse my hopes with reality, but I prefer to wait to more facts are in – what’s really in the report, what is the physical evidence, and even what local eyewitness have to say in detail.

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Unity Takes Time

Apr 5

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism, The War on Terror | No Comments

Cori doesn’t seem to think that it’s right for a columnist at the paper to break news while the reporters sit on their hands. Don’t read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch then, where columnists routinely break news that their reporters show little interest or ability to cover.

But what’s more important is what’s actually reported — the progress in the talks between the political parties in Iraq to forge a government:

The political agreements are fragile, and they will be blown away if the factions can’t form a government soon to put them in practice. Meanwhile, beyond the Green Zone, Iraqis are still being slaughtered every day in the streets. But given where Iraq was six months ago — when Sunni and Shiite leaders were barely talking — their agreement on the framework for a unity government is important. These negotiations may not succeed, but they are not a fairy-tale fantasy, as some critics argue.

We Americans are an impatient lot. From my meagre experiences abroad, time takes on a different meaning once you leave the country.

I’m wondering if that chick at the AP will take Mr. Ignatius to task for the “as some critics argue” line. OK, that was a rhetorical device because I’m not wondering at all, since she didn’t note that President Bush was following the lead of the reporting about him which is routinely larded up with “some critics claim” constructions without ever naming the critics.

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Some Things Will Never Change

Dec 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism, The War on Terror | No Comments

Why is the media doing such a bad job in Iraq? Don’t take my word for it, don’t take our soldier’s word for it, take a journalist’s word for it:

Think about everything you’ve heard about the conditions in Iraq, the role of U.S. forces, the multi-layered complexities of the war.Then think again.

I’m a journalist. I read the news everyday, from several sources. I have the luxury of reading stuff newspapers don’t always have room to print. I read every tidbit I could on Iraq and the war before coming.

Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head.

The spirit of Baghdad Bob lives on.

Via Small Dead Animals.

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And Don’t It Feel Good

Dec 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

Yesterday was another great day for Iraq — an estimated 70% of registered voters braved long lines and possible violence to vote. One vote (or even increasing participation over three votes as has been seen) isn’t the final step of the march to democracy. But it is a significant milestone of that march. The hardest test of all isn’t coming out to vote, but the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another as a result of an election. The United States didn’t face this test until 1800 and the election of Thomas Jefferson – 24 years after he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

It is often said that you can’t impose democracy by force which seems to me a total misread of the typical situtation. Normally, you have to use force to stop those who seek to suppress democracy – the British in 1776, Hitler & Tojo in 1941, Saddam in 2003. And force can be required to keep a country democratic, from opponents both internal and external. But truly representative government is popular enough that you don’t have to impose it by force, even in cases like the United States where people nearly universally are willing to abide by results of elections they don’t even bother to vote in. Is anybody forcing the Iraqi’s to vote? Or are they voting because they see representative government as a solution to some of their most pressing problems?

I’ve maintained all along that the war in Iraq will be won or lost (from the American point of view) by the Iraqi’s themselves. Our job was to provide enough security, aid, advice, and yes, encouragement so that the people of Iraq could set up their own democratic government and security forces that they could defeat the insurgents themselves. We could not, nor should we try, to obliterate the insurgancy, set up a fully functioning democratic country in Iraq, and then turn all this over to Iraqi’s who had had not part up until then. There is no such thing as a turnkey country. If we had, it would have collapsed like a house of cards as soon as we left.

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Congratulations Iraq

Oct 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

I have a ballcap I love for two reasons: (1) even though it only cost me five bucks it’s a very nice cap — bought it at Kohls BTW, and (2) the logo is a flag with “established 1776” underneath. The whole “established 1776” works as the simple story, but America (OK, the United States for my international readers) didn’t spring fully formed from Washington’s head in 1776.

1776 is the date of the Declaration of Independence, which after a stirring introduction is a laundry list of grievances and concludes by declaring that each state is independent and a nation in its own right. And 1776 was a couple of years after the First Continental Congress. So was 1776 the birth of nation? The Articles of Confederation were approved by Congress in 1777, ratified by the states in 1781 and are the original constitution of the United States. Dissatisfaction set in almost immediately however, and so the current US Constitution was created in 1787 over period of almost four months. It wasn’t until 1789 that it was ratified by enough states and took effect (with Rhode Island and North Carolina ratifiing after it took effect).

The Bill of Rights, or the first 10 amendments, was the result of the complaints about the Constitution during the ratification process, and were proposed in 1789 almost immediate after it took effect were ratified by 1791. It has been amended 17 more times since, with the 27th amendment originally proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in, yes, 1789, and ratified in 1992. Some people dislike the messy amendment process, where they have to persuade a majority of the American public across the land, so instead now we have the Supreme Court simply amend the constitution on their own say so.

All this is a long preamble to noting that two years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq voted on and may have ratified a new constitution this past weekend. If so, the next rendezvous with history will be the parliamentary elections to be held December 15 this year. The path has not without winding and stones, since a lot of Iraqi’s have not had a chance to read the document for themselves, and some issues were kicked down the road to be settled at a later date. Kind of like slavery in the US constitution, but hopefully more like the Bill of Rights, which was added as a result of pressure and politics following the ratification of the constitution. Even if this Iraq constitution was voted down, they are still way ahead of the US, which took 13 years from the Declaration of Independence to ratify our Constitution.

Part of the dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq is historical amnesia – we who live in a time tested democracy under the rule of law simply have forgotten the time required and difficulty in forging a new nation when there wasn’t even the need to create a political culture of law and democracy as well as since it was already bequeathed to us by Great Britain. We forget that the early trials and tribulations strengthed our political institutions, not weakened them. And so we Americans demand perfection when we have no right ot expect it nor should we want it.

We can only do so much in Iraq; the rest is up to the Iraqi’s. And so far, they are taking ahold of their own future. Congratulations, Iraq, and good luck.

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Keep On Keeping On

Oct 13

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

It’s a big day in Iraq today, with the people voting on a new constitution. Pass or fail, it’s democracy in action, and I’m hoping that the Iraqi people vote and the terorrists don’t disrupt the vote. As has been observed, democracy is a process, not a one time event.

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It’s Clobbering Time

Jun 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

Jason Van Steenwyk makes an excellent point:

You will never have a perfectly surviveable system. And you cannot turn Humvees into tanks. You will bankrupt the country.
…
The insurgency will not be defeated by putting an extra armor on our vehicles. The insurgency will be defeated by dismounts. Dismounts out there engaging with the Iraqi people and collecting real-time intelligence.

And THAT is the effort the Media should focus on. THAT is the effort that Congress should focus on.

I guess some people never heard the expression that the best defense is a good offense.

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My Take

Jun 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

My impressions of the President’s speech:

His speech writers are much better at writing a speech than he is at delivering one.

I vacillate on his giving it before a military audience: On the one hand, it smacks of using them as props, on the other, they’re the people who are actually being killed and wounded. I would rather he gave the speech direct into the camera and then privately schmoozed the soldiers, but team Bush may have decided he does much better in front of a live audience.

As long as it was a live audience, I’m glad they were under orders not to applaud because I hate how much longer that makes a political speech and how that destroys the pacing.

I was disturbed by that proto-smile on his face during a lot of the speech – but I guess that was his thinking to himself “How many times do I have to explain this to you.” 

I found the irony rich: the smirky Bushitler having a clear grasp of a winning strategy, both for the war on terror as well as the battle for Iraq, while his oh so much smarter opponents keep mewling about how Saddam didn’t have anything to do with 9/11 and whose strategy seems to be if we ignore it, it will just go away striking. 

Since I was already persuaded by the arguments advanced, I can’t tell if anyone was persuaded for or against by the speech. I do think the strategy and rationale was clearly layed out and I’m dismayed by how many people don’t seem to get it.

I did find the end of the speech effective. Yes, choked by emotion can all too easily be overdone, but I do think it was genuine, and came across as such. He could barely get out the “May God Bless You All”.

On a side note, who would you rather write about politics, this guy or this guy? I don’t know what Mr. Maguire does for a living, but I much prefer to reading his slyly cogent take on matters than Mr. Millbank’s snarky superficiality.

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