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NYT Cover

NYT news desk embarrassed by NYT ed board?  Could be, except that in lieu of meaningful reporting, this dire frontpage warning about impending doom in Iraq satisfies itself with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s relatively lame, defensive remarks, in which he comes across as almost apologetic, doing NYT’s work for them as he casts the discussion in terms of political posturing: 

BAGHDAD, July 9 — As the Senate prepares to begin a new debate this week on proposals for a withdrawal from Iraq, the United States ambassador and the Iraqi foreign minister are warning that the departure of American troops could lead to sharply increased violence, the deaths of thousands and a regional conflict that could draw in Iraq’s neighbors.

…

“You can’t build a whole policy on a fear of a negative, but, boy, you’ve really got to account for it,” Mr. Crocker said Saturday in an interview at his office in Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Palace, now the seat of American power here. Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues that needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq’s current violence to the early scenes of a gruesome movie.

“In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else,” he said. “Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels,” he added, “and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.”

Burns is a good reporter.   NYT is a big newpaper that is supposed to know how to report stories.*  I hate to tell NYT its business. I’m just a tabloid scribbler, but I have an idea how this kind of thing is done.  This isn’t rocket science.

Now that the NYT ed board has stated its preference for genocide, how about a quick man-on-the-street in Baghdad about what happens when the United States pulls out? Maybe discuss this with observers and players in some of the surrounding nations that face the prospect of spillover conflict. Make the rounds of the think-tanks for an analysis piece in DC.  Get some retired generals. Earnest officers and grizzled grunts on the ground in Iraq. What do they think will happen when the U.S. exits with all possible haste? Heck, you could even talk to the UN High Commission for Refugees and some NGOs.  I’m sure they could come up with a well-rounded assortment of views.

I’d also recommend a thoughtful look back at Cambodia and Vietnam.  Plenty of survivors around who may have relevant thoughts about the consequences of U.S. abandonment. 

Meanwhile, I hate to keep beating this drum, but if America’s top newspapers tried, they might be able to help America’s decision makers understand counterinsurgency, and the fact that there is in fact a strategy at work here. Better than genocide. Better than bloody chaos. Better than spillover conflict.  Neoneocon with more on truths the NYT holds to be self-evident.

* No less than four reporters worked on this article. That looks like about one phone call each.  Most of what I’ve described here is a day’s work. Again, I hate to tell NYT its business. Self-important overstaffed broadsheets have their own way of operating, which typically involves a lot of people not doing much.  The result is that they often miss the story. Tabloids, usually the second, understaffed newspapers in town, are forced to do more with less.  I can’t tell you how many times we’ve thrown one or two reporters at a story on which our competition had dispatched three, four, five or more, and still we kicked their asses.  It’s a complacency problem. As a J instructor explained to me many, many years ago, there is nothing like one scared reporter. Three, four, five don’t feel sufficient pressure. Complacency is compounded when newspapers do not feel themselves to be in real competition, and editors feel themselves more accountable to political agendas and factions than they do to their readers or to any kind of professional standards.

Topics: Iraq, media

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:58 am on Tuesday, July 10, 2007

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