Saturday, February 24, 2007
There are at least six story-lines that are woven into the English-language coverage of Iraq, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. They are the following:
(1) The "US withdrawal: victory for the left" story (Helena Cobban)
(2) The "Victory for the middle-class Shiites" story (Juan Cole)
(3) The "Sunnis fight back" story (Arabic language only)
(4) The "Augmented catastrophe" story (Arabic language only)
(5) The "Indomitable American perseverance" story (IraqSlogger)
(6) The "No real American defeat, but a civil war" story (James D. Fearon, Foreign Affairs magazine)
As you can see, these come in pairs. Cobban and Cole mirror each other, and compared to the two other story-pairs, their stories are mainly the elaboration of a desired and desirable outcome, with reality subordinated to that. They are the "good-outcome" stories, suitable for polite discourse.
By contrast, the "Sunnis fight back" story is part of the mainstream reporting in the big US-allied Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, while the "augmented catastrophe" story builds on that and warns of a new regional conflagration that could well result from this sectarian approach. Unlike the Cobban-Cole narratives, these Arabic-language stories deal not with what has supposedly been accomplished, or soon will be (US defeat and withdrawal; a stable Shiite-led regime in Baghdad), but rather with what is to come. And since they include accounts of what is actually happening in the region, they get no English-language coverage, or only very out-of-context.
Finally, there are the IraqSlogger and the PoliticalScience narratives. If Cobban and Cole tout some kind of ultimate victory for the edification of the left or whoever, these, by contrast, represent ideology for the rest of America. Fearon's story, which was told in another version in his congressional testimony a few months ago, and is now refurbished in the white-shoe Foreign Affairs magazine, is that the Iraq conflict must be understood not as a resistance to foreign occupation, but rather as a civil war, and this means that the American military will have a positive (although diminished) role to play in trying to mitigate the damage and help bring about the best possible outcome in the circumstances. IraqSlogger is the retail version of that, with its denigration of Iraqi participants in the conflict, and its highlighting of American exploits.
In terms of English-language coverage, there is no meat in the sandwich. Eventual stability under Shiite rule (Cole) and definitive US withdrawal (Cobban), while they are very nice ideas, they mean not paying any attention to the next phase of the US-runs-Iraq story, once Bush "runs out of patience" with Maliki. For Cole, it is unthinkable that the SCIRI establishment would be in any meaningful way dislodged from its current position, and for Cobban, it is politically incorrect to discuss any new government, coup-generated or otherwise, that isn't based on the idea of a definitive US withdrawal. So their story ends with this (probably illusory) US withdrawal/Shiite-led stability.
Instead of continuing the story of American involvement in Iraq and the Mideast along the lines of the Arabic-language coverage, with careful attention to the Arab and American efforts to create a Sunni "moderate alliance" against an alleged Shiite threat, the risks involved in that, and what it means for Iraq, that story is for all intents and purposes abandoned, and in its place we have a return to the comic-book tales of public-spirited Americans fighting evil, under the heading of civil war in Iraq.
I started "missing links" about six months ago, with the idea that a person self-taught in Arabic, could by merely pointing to highlights in the Arabic-language coverage, to some degree improve the quality of the discussion. Not much to show for it so far.
(1) The "US withdrawal: victory for the left" story (Helena Cobban)
(2) The "Victory for the middle-class Shiites" story (Juan Cole)
(3) The "Sunnis fight back" story (Arabic language only)
(4) The "Augmented catastrophe" story (Arabic language only)
(5) The "Indomitable American perseverance" story (IraqSlogger)
(6) The "No real American defeat, but a civil war" story (James D. Fearon, Foreign Affairs magazine)
As you can see, these come in pairs. Cobban and Cole mirror each other, and compared to the two other story-pairs, their stories are mainly the elaboration of a desired and desirable outcome, with reality subordinated to that. They are the "good-outcome" stories, suitable for polite discourse.
By contrast, the "Sunnis fight back" story is part of the mainstream reporting in the big US-allied Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, while the "augmented catastrophe" story builds on that and warns of a new regional conflagration that could well result from this sectarian approach. Unlike the Cobban-Cole narratives, these Arabic-language stories deal not with what has supposedly been accomplished, or soon will be (US defeat and withdrawal; a stable Shiite-led regime in Baghdad), but rather with what is to come. And since they include accounts of what is actually happening in the region, they get no English-language coverage, or only very out-of-context.
Finally, there are the IraqSlogger and the PoliticalScience narratives. If Cobban and Cole tout some kind of ultimate victory for the edification of the left or whoever, these, by contrast, represent ideology for the rest of America. Fearon's story, which was told in another version in his congressional testimony a few months ago, and is now refurbished in the white-shoe Foreign Affairs magazine, is that the Iraq conflict must be understood not as a resistance to foreign occupation, but rather as a civil war, and this means that the American military will have a positive (although diminished) role to play in trying to mitigate the damage and help bring about the best possible outcome in the circumstances. IraqSlogger is the retail version of that, with its denigration of Iraqi participants in the conflict, and its highlighting of American exploits.
In terms of English-language coverage, there is no meat in the sandwich. Eventual stability under Shiite rule (Cole) and definitive US withdrawal (Cobban), while they are very nice ideas, they mean not paying any attention to the next phase of the US-runs-Iraq story, once Bush "runs out of patience" with Maliki. For Cole, it is unthinkable that the SCIRI establishment would be in any meaningful way dislodged from its current position, and for Cobban, it is politically incorrect to discuss any new government, coup-generated or otherwise, that isn't based on the idea of a definitive US withdrawal. So their story ends with this (probably illusory) US withdrawal/Shiite-led stability.
Instead of continuing the story of American involvement in Iraq and the Mideast along the lines of the Arabic-language coverage, with careful attention to the Arab and American efforts to create a Sunni "moderate alliance" against an alleged Shiite threat, the risks involved in that, and what it means for Iraq, that story is for all intents and purposes abandoned, and in its place we have a return to the comic-book tales of public-spirited Americans fighting evil, under the heading of civil war in Iraq.
I started "missing links" about six months ago, with the idea that a person self-taught in Arabic, could by merely pointing to highlights in the Arabic-language coverage, to some degree improve the quality of the discussion. Not much to show for it so far.
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