Iraq Violence Down-This Is Bad News?
Scrapbook Iraq Violence Down—This Is Bad News? In a dispatch from Baghdad last week, Associated Press writer Robert Reid reported on the recent changes there. “Rocket and mortar attacks have...
...Who knows...
...Many Arabs have visited the United States or have a relatives or friends living in America...
...But the trend toward better security is indisputable...
...The residents of the Arab world do not live on another planet, and they are not isolated from the revolution of rapid communication, technology, and the Internet, where anyone can push a button and get the information he wants...
...His supporting evidence consists of a couple of quotes from concerned Iraqis...
...It occurs to us that the stage may be set for a diminution in circulation at Time...
...Until recently, the trends had been deadly and consistent, violence steadily increasing to an all-time high in June...
...Has Become a Political Objective for Arab Governments in Their Struggle for Survival...
...aafaq.org...
...Page was trotted out for a public act of contrition: “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve done in 30 years in journalism,” he said...
...Barry said Page’s email to his flack showed that “around the nation, it’s almost open season on black people...
...Baghdad’s marketplaces are slowly coming back to life, as violent attacks in Iraq have fallen to less than half of what they were a year ago...
...Those conducting this smear campaign are primarily autocratic Arab regimes, as represented by Ministries of Information...
...I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose...
...Which is perhaps technically true...
...But the stage in Iraq may also be set for political reconciliation on the local level...
...And ever since, as the paper has covered Barry’s degradation and numerous scrapes with the law, it has always done so with the utmost delicacy and tact—even deference...
...Earlier this month, ABC News national security correspondent Jonathan Karl filed a similar report from Iraq...
...The witness for the defense is Omran Salam, editor of an Arabic reformist website www...
...Civilian deaths have dropped sharply since summer...
...The paper’s owners and editors effectively thrust leadership of the nation’s capital upon Barry in the 1970s...
...That seems like unambiguous good news, no...
...Defending Karen Hughes The good folks at the Middle East Media Research Institute, who provide invaluable translations of newspaper articles and TV broadcasts from the Arabic-speaking world, send along an eloquent defense of President Bush’s longtime aide Karen Hughes, whose public diplomacy work didn’t always get a lot of respect, including in these pages...
...I hope people won’t judge me on this one explosion...
...But wait until you hear what Paul Harvey would call the rest of the story...
...Some excerpts: “It was not destined for that Hughes would succeed in ‘winning the hearts and minds of the Arabs’ in all circumstances, and this has nothing to do with her skills or her competence...
...The distorted image of the United States in the Arab world . . . is not due to lack of information about the motives and nature of American foreign policy, and not because Arab citizens have insufficient information about American life, or the laws or institutions of the United States...
...Charles Crain of Time magazine, for instance, allowed that “the security situation has improved dramatically in recent months,” and then told his readers that this is a bad sign...
...It can be found at www.memri.org...
...Editor Len Downie called Page’s email “a terrible mistake...
...Shoppers are venturing out, even in Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods...
...Marion Barry and the Washington Post When a proper history of Washington, D.C., municipal politics is written, the rise and fall and rise of Marion Shepilov Barry Jr.—from street protester, to school board member, to city council chairman, to mayor, to crack addict, to federal prisoner, to city council member again—will be impossible to account for without a description of the tutelary role played in his career by the Washington Post...
...THE SCRAPBOOK confesses to having had similar though unprintable thoughts just this morning about the District of Columbia police, when we were almost T-boned in an intersection by a squad car running a red light...
...If Crain hasn’t quite substantiated his sense that civil war is just about inevitable, that’s okay: The headline does all the heavy lifting for him: “Waiting for a Shi’ite Civil War...
...That’s not how we would describe Page’s note, but we defer to Barry as the greater expert on “lowlife activity...
...The Post didn’t can Page, but in all other respects seems to have truckled to Barry, as it is well practiced in doing...
...With sectarian violence waning for the time being, the stage may be set for an escalation of the simmering battle among Shi’ites for control of southern Iraq...
...I’d be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list...
...He called on the paper to send “a signal to the whole world” that the paper “won’t tolerate this kind of lowlife activity...
...Not Crain...
...Read the whole thing, as they say...
...Or, the stage may be set for a further reduction in violence...
...The real reason is that the distortion of the image of the United States has become a political objective for Arab governments in their struggle for survival...
...Reid went on to cite several examples of continuing difficulties, but concluded that the conditions in Baghdad were a “vast improvement” over what they had been last year...
...Nobody over here is anywhere near ready to declare victory, but the military statistics tell an unmistakable story...
...In Washington, too, public displays of respect and cooperation mask an often bitter hatred between rival factions (witness the custom of senators referring to each other as “distinguished gentlemen...
...Iraq’s capital is by no means yet safe...
...Page’s email only saw the light of day because Barry publicized it and called for his firing...
...Says one man: “If the people in charge of security are serious — not just for Najaf but for all of Iraq— they have to educate their followers [about] how to respect the law...
...They poisoned the views and ideas in the Arab world, and filled the minds of the people with such extraordinary superstitions, fantasies and conspiracy theories, beginning with the accusation that the CIA and the Jews masterminded the attacks of September 11 and not ending with the ‘Crusader war’ that President George Bush has declared on the Islamic world...
...So you can imagine our surprise when we learned last week that one of the Post’s esteemed contributors had finally unloaded on Barry: Music critic Tim Page wrote to Barry aide Andre Johnson the following delicious email “after receiving an unsolicited press release about the former mayor’s views on Greater Southeast Community Hospital”: Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new—and typically half-witted—political grandstanding...
...Not if you’re determined to look on the dark side...
...His November 2 editorial was headlined “The Distortion of the Image of the U.S...
...Since then, however, attacks have fallen four straight months in every category...
...Rocket and mortar attacks have fallen to their lowest level in nearly two years...
...Violence in Iraq is down, and down considerably...
...Feel free to add your private cheers to those of thousands of Post subscribers who have been waiting in vain for a quarter century or more to hear the paper comment openly on the emperor’s new crackpipe...
...In Najaf, the spiritual center of Shi’ite Iraq, public displays of respect and cooperation mask an often violent competition between rival factions...
Vol. 13 • November 2007 • No. 11
