It Looks Like the Spirit of Judy Miller Is Alive and Well at the New York Times

John Burns and Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times write:

Promising Troops Where They Aren't Really Wanted - New York Times: Shiites, the principal victims of Saddam Hussein's repression, had joined with Iraqi Kurds in hailing the American-led invasion in 2003, seeing it as opening their way to power. But once they consolidated their control through two elections in 2005, they began distancing themselves from the Americans, seeing their liberators increasingly as an impediment to the full control they craved.... American officials have warned that with lessening American oversight, Shiite leaders might shift to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias. The execution 11 days ago of Saddam Hussein, carried out in haste by the Maliki government over American urgings that it be delayed until the legal paperwork was completed, only reinforced such fears...

Might shift to a sectarian strategy? American officials have warned that Shiite leaders might shift to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias? Might at some point in the future shift to a sectarian strategy?

Why not say the truth: that Shiite leaders have shifted to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias? Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

We do have pieces of it. The McClatchy News Service--the wire service formerly known as Knight-Ridder. Here is Nancy Youssef:

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/09/2007 | Soldiers doubt an influx of American troops will benefit Iraqi army: MUQDADIYAH, Iraq - It was supposed to be a reconciliation meeting, a get-together to introduce the Sunni Muslim mayor and police chief of this city north of Baghdad to the mostly Shiite Muslim Iraqi soldiers who'd been assigned to protect their town.

But as the mayor and police chief approached the entrance to the Iraqi army base here last month, Iraqi troops seized their bodyguards and tossed them to the ground. Then the soldiers put their boots on the bodyguards' backs, a literal reminder that the Sunni officials were under the boot of the Shiite military....

In the end, no matter what the Americans do, the Iraqis will find their own way, the U.S. commander of the trainers here said. "There is no doubt in my mind that when the coalition does leave that this situation will get resolved within a fairly short period of time. These people will figure it out. It may be ugly. It may be very ugly. But they will figure it out," said Lt. Col. Jody Creekmore, who arrived in Iraq last summer from Huntsville, Ala., leaving behind his three teenage children. U.S. soldiers here say the Iraqis can fire their weapons and run checkpoints well. But the Iraqis don't agree on what it means to be a soldier in the post-Saddam Hussein military, whom to shoot at and from whom they should defend Iraq....

Existing side-by-side in this farming community are al-Qaida fighters who want to transform Iraq into a Sunni Islamic state, Shiite militiamen loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, and foreign fighters battling to stamp their own form of religious extremism on Iraq. They hide in palm groves, infiltrate army units and take over neighborhood homes. Local commanders say that other government officials often undercut efforts to defeat these enemies. Col. Ishmael Ahmed Ali, the acting brigade commander for the Iraqi army division that's in charge of Muqdadiyah, said he knew that Shiite militias had infiltrated the battalion long before they stomped the mayor's and the police chief's guards. But because of the government, he can't fight them....

The American trainers said teaching counterinsurgency doctrine had become secondary to more basic pursuits, such as how to load a weapon, take care of equipment and even find basic supplies: food, water and bullets. In U.S commanders' sparse offices and barracks, piles of books on counterinsurgency tactics sit unused behind desks...

Comments

[Esq.]

Isn't the problem with the American leaders inability to recognize facts, not the Times reporters reporting the leaders' statements?

[Peter K.]

I get your point, but I don't think it's a cause for shrillness.

"Why not say the truth: that Shiite leaders have shifted to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias? Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

If Maliki and Sistani and the Kurds were hardline anti-Sunni, you'd see a full-blown sectarian strategy a la Bosnia and Rwanda in the 90s.

The Shia are only hurting themselves, but the fact remains, the Sunnis exhausted the Shiites' patience. Maybe it's because Paul Bremer dissolved the Iraqi army and the Baath party? Maybe, maybe the Sunni's sectarian campaign would have happened anyway.

Hitchens put it well in a recent piece on Saddam's lynching:

"I think that there is a reason the Kurdish reaction is somewhat different from the Shiite one. Iraqi Kurdistan escaped from Saddam's rule in 1992, and its citizens have since been engaged in patiently building up their autonomy. They did not have to endure the appalling humiliation of sanctions plus Saddam, and they have not since been so much engaged in a foul civil war begun by Sunni extremists desecrating shrines and slaughtering civilians. Their attitude to their former despot and murderer is somewhat more detached and judicious. If they feel a thirst for vengeance, they do not make a tribal fiesta of it. The moral difference here is not negligible."

[anne]

The spirit of Brad DeLong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/l11antiwar.html

The Antiwar Movement

To the Editor:

"Democrats Taking Reins as New Session Opens on Hill":

You report that "the scene vividly illustrated the pressure that Democrats will face from the left wing of their party to challenge President Bush more aggressively on Iraq," referring to antiwar demonstrators who interrupted the Democrats' news conference introducing ethics legislation.

I feel compelled, as the director of Grandmothers Against the War, to say that very few of us grannies would characterize ourselves as leftists.

We consider ourselves patriots as we desperately seek to end the catastrophic and immoral occupation of Iraq. I'm sure that you are well aware that using such language tends to dismiss us in the minds of many Americans — who have been continually badgered by the Bush administration — into thinking that people on the left are subversive, thereby undermining the peace movement.

Inasmuch as the antiwar movement seems to be the only hope for saving lives in the hopeless Iraq quagmire, and salvaging America's reputation around the world, I would advise a more judicious choice of words.

Joan Wile
New York, Jan. 4, 2007

[NYT]

From todays NYT

"Gen. John P. Abizaid, who heads the Central Command, was opposed to any increase in American troop levels until mid-November, when he became convinced that the economic commitments by both Iraq and the United States made it worth adding troops."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/washington/12ticktock.html

General John Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 15: ``I've met with every divisional commander. General (George) Casey, the corps commander, (Lieutenant) General (Martin) Dempsey -- we all talked together. And I said, `In your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?' And they all said, `No.'''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=amLrSZrcOz3w

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/l11antiwar.html

Joan Wile:

"I feel compelled, as the director of Grandmothers Against the War, to say that very few of us grannies would characterize ourselves as leftists.

"We consider ourselves patriots as we desperately seek to end the catastrophic and immoral occupation of Iraq."

[There is the sort of spirit I am used to from my dear grandmother.]