Congress, Meet Omar
When General Petraeus goes before Congress in September to give his assessment on the situation in Iraq, it might serve him well to bring along Omar from Iraq The Model.
I will post the first and second paragraph of his most recent piece but I paid particular attention to the latter as it says in few words what I have thought so many times.
It’s almost July now, and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will present their report about the situation in Iraq, military and political, at some point in September.
I don’t know what parameters the two men are going to list statistics for in their report but I expect it to show the results of fighting al-Qaeda and other armed groups in numbers, the progress in building the ISF in numbers, also in numbers and of course the report would include the progress, if any, that our political leaders will have made by the time.I think what matters more than the way of presentation would be how the data in the report is going to be read and afterwards interpreted into attitudes and actions.
One thing I hope the decision-makers and the media do when they read the report is to not isolate the war in Iraq from the war on terror and al-Qaeda as a whole, and at the same time put in mind the difference between war and nation-building. The latter takes much more time than winning a military conflict but requires different tools.
This is from a man who calls Iraq his home and sees first hand the struggles but also the accomplishments on a daily basis. Do we have a politician here at home or a daily newspaper who can say the same? One who understands the culture intimately and can speak on it intelligently and not only present one side of the picture. I do not believe we do.
No we see and hear of the roadside bomb or the beheadings, never of the progress, however slow it may seem. I remember not to long ago hearing the words “civil war” being bandied about constantly. Well, here is what Omar has to say about that bit of information:
For over a year the media and many officials were spooking us with the exaggerated ghost of civil war. I wonder what they have to say now! I think their silence is more telling than anything they would’ve said.
How true that statement is. After the deluge of talk shows, radio and media print on the topic, you barely hear those words spoken now. Fear mongering is what they call that and it has been used effectively to drive this Presidents numbers down and turn the American people against this war.
I would never be so foolish as to say all is well and every day is bright in a country ravaged by terror. But we must bear in mind, it is not the average citizen of Iraq that poses the problem. They are rising up and fighting. Our forces are doing their very best to stand up an Army which can defend its homeland and daily removing another person or persons who would not think twice of killing any one of us or our children and grandchildren. How difficult it must be to fight a faceless enemy.
The entire piece is well worth a read if you really want a good sense of what is happening in some areas in Iraq. I would love to see a major publication in this country print it verbatim. It is wishful thinking of course, but perhaps the people of this country would be enlightened on a different level, not just spoon fed chosen sound bites.
Written by Sue
