1115.org

When trying to come to terms with the heightened unrest and growing body count in Iraq, many of the war’s supporters revert back to a familiar strategy: blame the liberal media for unfairly skewing people’s perceptions. Iraq isn’t that bad, they claim…usually while quoting one of the following two talking points:

#1 “The media never reports on the good things that are happening in Iraq. They only focus on the violence and death.” This seems to always lead to a discussion of schools being opened and hospitals being built, as if Iraq never had schools or hospitals before we decided to “shock and awe” our way into Baghdad.

#2 “The violence in Iraq is being blown out of proportion. Any number of American cities have hundreds of murders per year, but you never hear the national media making a big deal of it.” It’s not just conservative bloggers and talk show hosts who make this argument, either; in fact, Donald Rumsfeld used it just last week:

“We had something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in many of the major cities of America last year.� Is it perfectly peaceful?� No. What’s the difference?� We just didn’t see each homicide in every major city in the United States on television every night.� It happens here in this city, in every major city in the world.� Across Europe, across the Middle East, people are being killed.� People do bad things to each other.”�

Yes, Donald, people do bad things to each other. But until Americans decide to settle disputes with rocket-propelled grenades, car bombs or beheadings, this is an absurd comparison. Los Angeles might have had 653 homicides in 2002, but it’s guaranteed that none of them were the result of insurgents blowing up police stations or lobbing mortars into military bases. And while violence is a problem in many American cities, it pales in comparison to a country where truckers are afraid to drive on the highways, attacks are being counted as up to 70 per day, and entire areas are labeled as “no go” zones. Even Colin Powell, hardly a tool of the lefty media, has stated that Iraq is “getting worse”.

As I write this, the death toll of US servicemen and women has reached at least 1,053. Since they started keeping track on April 5, the Iraqi Health Ministry has recorded at least 3,487 Iraqi deaths. Independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqi deaths have occurred since the President Flightsuit declared “mission accomplished”. Faced with such numbers of tragedy and bloodshed, the war supporters would rather us just shut up and talk about impending elections and Iraqi troops being trained. But even those arguments are falling apart:

Many of President Bush’s assertions about progress in Iraq — from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections — are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday.

(snip)

He [Bush] said nearly 100,000 “fully trained and equipped” Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year…They [Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committe] estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them “minimally effective at their tasks,” in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.

(snip)

The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the $232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House Appropriations Committee staff.

Earlier this evening, the local tv station showed a repeat of The Simpsons where Homer is 26 hours late for work. Rushing into his office, he places his hands over his eyes because he thinks that if he can’t see Mr. Burns, the problem doesn’t exist and he can’t get punished for his mistake. The adminstration can sympathize, if their current Iraq strategy is any indication. They seem to think that a few isolated successes can distract people away from the rising price tag and body count. Instead of owning up to the problems in Iraq and making the tough decisions needed to overcome them, they choose to downplay the death and say how great things are going. But even the nicest school pales in comparison to the rows of flag-drapped coffins arriving home, or the cries of an Iraqi mother for her dead child.

But, yeah, Iraq is doing great. Next question, please…