Out of Iraq

Ssh … don’t tell the anti-war media … but one of our two Middle East wars seems to be drawing to a successful conclusion.
While much angst has been expressed at the worsening of the Afghan War, the news from Iraq is better. The last American combat unit has left Iraq seven years after the US invaded the Mideast nation.
“Troops from the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Division, drove through the night and arrived in Kuwait just before 4 a.m. local time,” the New York Post reported on Thursday.
I’m happy that the troops’ mission is completed, happy for the loved ones who I hope will see them home soon, and happy that a war that, pre-surge, seemed as out of control as Afghanistan looks today now appears headed toward a satisfactory resolution. (If only the media shared this good news along with all the bad news from Afghanistan. Even the pro-military Post buried the story with a mere four paragraphs on Page 16, although there is a longer AP story online.)
Fifty thousand US troops remain in Iraq. The military faced an Aug. 31 deadline -- a week from next Tuesday -- to decrease its presence there. It looks like mission accomplished, although “a senior administration official” told the Post that “the combat mission is not over.” Yet it may be reaching what Churchill would have called “the beginning of the end.”
I am, frankly, surprised that the Iraq War is winding up before the Afghan War. We entered Iraq under far murkier reasons and with far less international support than we did Afghanistan … and in the wake of the atrocities committed against Americans in Fallujah and the resentment Americans created with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, it seemed like the war would never end. However, the US then adopted countermoves like the surge and pacifying locals … and they seem to have paid off. Gen. David Petraeus and Presidents Bush and Obama all deserve credit for this … some more than others.
We can’t bring back our military dead or the Iraqi civilian dead. Yet we can leave Iraq in a hopeful shape for the future. May its democracy last and its citizens know domestic tranquility.
Iraq still faces problems, but it’s good to know that the country appears to be in stable enough hands that the US can diminish its presence there so that now, we can focus on the remaining mess in Afghanistan.

Images of Iraq and Israel

On the last day of 2008, my friend and I visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see images of a time and place far removed from ours. We saw works of art from the Assyrian Empire, whose rulers governed much of the Middle East 600 years before the birth of Christ.
As my friend pointed out, much of the art frankly depicted the Assyrians' wars: soldiers beheading enemies, hauling their bodies onto poles, and taking their families into captivity. Even the physical appearance of the enemy was not spared: one hapless monarch was repeatedly portrayed with a receding hairline.
With the US now approaching Year Six of the Iraq War, and Israel launching attacks on Gaza for a little less than two weeks, I'm thinking about the way the Assyrians portrayed war then, and the way that the media portrays it today. The Assyrians boasted about the atrocities they committed, creating intricate wall-size panels out of stone. Over two thousand years later, however, the American and Israeli governments and media organizations are more cautious. The Bush Administration, for instance, has prevented news organizations from photographing the coffins of US soldiers killed in combat, while the Israeli government has restricted media coverage of the Gaza Strip since the conflict began.
Where the Assyrians were frank, the nations of today do not want the general public to see what war brings. Perhaps the Bush Administration remembers the outcry after photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib became public. Then again, it is possible to manipulate war photos to create false images, which happened to the Israeli government during its war against Hezbollah in 2006. Both reasons could explain the reluctance of the US and Israel to allow the media to do what the Assyrian artists once did: Show what happened. And perhaps this reflects a change in the way people and governments across the globe see war -- not as an image to display triumphantly, but as something to conceal. I don't think that's progress. What would be progress is if we saw war as something to confront and discuss honestly.

George Bush's Shoe-manship

Shoe Cartoon
Originally uploaded by rbtenorio

While visiting Iraq, President Bush had two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi. Satan thinks Dubya should have responded creatively, as he explains in the latest episode of "The Devil Made Me Blog It"!