Baghdad in the Midwest cornfields

What an outing to a market in Indiana would look like if a congressman's observations were correct.

By John Kenney

JOHN KENNEY is a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.

April 7, 2007

The delegation arrived at the market [in Baghdad], which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees … and attack helicopters…. Sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests…. At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain … and his three congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime," offered Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican. — New York Times

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MY WIFE came into the living room wearing a Kevlar vest, helmet and night-vision goggles.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Have you completely forgotten, silly head? We're going to the market."

I placed my hand at my head. I'd been so caught up in stitching a minor wound I'd received earlier in the day after going to an outdoor fruit stand that I had completely forgotten.

"I'm a dope, aren't I?" I said, chuckling, slowly shaking my head back and forth. She chuckled too, also shaking her head. We both chuckled. Then I winced from where a stitch popped.

Carol helped the boys get ready, putting on their sneakers and body armor. I phoned the Indiana National Guard so that they could radio the 434th Special Air Wing at Grissom Air Force Base, which in turn scrambled two F-14 Tomcats. Then we hopped in the wagon.

Carol and I moved to Muncie from Detroit. Frankly, we were tired of the noise, the dirt and the crime. Here, you feel so safe, as long as you move very quickly through the market, keep your head down and have appropriate air cover.

Carol handed each of the boys — 8 and 5, and a handful, let me tell you — a juice box, a Xanax and personalized Navy SEAL-issue GPS systems.

"Dad?" said Kevin, our 8-year-old, from the back seat.

"Yes, Kev," I said.

"Can we go to that cotton candy stand again?"

The F-14s flew by low. Each of us activated our earpieces and hand-held mini walkie-talkies, agreed on a frequency, and I slowed the car to 15 mph as Carol and the boys opened the doors and rolled out, taking cover under shrubbery near the Bibb lettuce stand (the boys love salad!).

So far, so good.

I hit the gas and spun the car and parked in a ditch that had once been a Tasty Donut before a tactical nuclear weapon had decimated it. Great parking space, though.

I saw my neighbor, Larry, under his car, from the looks of it a spanking-new Bradley fighting vehicle. "Snipers today," Larry said with a smile.

"Nice ride, Larry," I said as I dove under the car, a sniper's bullet exploding inches away from my foot. "Looks solid."

"The hull is constructed of welded aluminum and spaced laminate armor," he said, burying his head in the dirt as another round came in. "The Israelis use them. I had an Explorer, but it was blown to bits last time I went out for garbage bags."

"Roomy?"

"Ton of room. Carries three crew, commander, gunner and driver, plus six fully equipped infantrymen. Mileage is awful, but with all the space in the back, it's great for the market."

I borrowed his high-power binoculars to check on the family's progress.

Kevin and his little brother had successfully bought lettuce, fruit and homemade jams before a particularly well-placed rocket-propelled grenade destroyed the stand (the owner managed to avoid the hit and began rebuilding immediately, as weekends are, obviously, his busiest time).

Carol, I noticed, had found cover behind the wall of a largely destroyed warehouse. A sniper had a bead on the glint from her eyeglasses, which the afternoon sunshine had caught (Indiana is known for its beautiful summers).

Larry asked me to cover him, and he rolled out from under the BFV and hopped in. I activated heavy smoke bombs, and his car tore out of the field. I made it back to my car as Larry's choppers came in low over the market, taking heavy fire and destroying the sniper's den (about time, thank you very much) as well as a Toys R Us that was closed for renovation.

I could see the smoke in the rear-view mirror when Carol dove onto the hood, managing to hold onto the bundles (that woman never ceases to amaze me). I hit the brakes and she got in quickly.

"You put on face paint," I said, giving her a quick kiss.

"You wouldn't believe how crowded it was," she said, panting. "I saw Margie Hynes. Boy, has she put on weight."

A CBU-52B cluster bomb exploded to our left, and I hit the gas. We could see the boys ahead, waving flares in the dense smoke. I didn't stop the car completely. Kevin threw Chip in first, then jumped in himself.

Both immediately vomited from the smoke.

"You kids have fun?" Carol asked.

"Yeah!" said Chip.

"He was holding a loaf of bread and it got blown out of his hand!"

"It was so awesome, Mum."

We all laughed. Really hard. That's how shopping is in Indiana in the summer. It's just fun. It's fun and safe and hopeful and full of warm and welcoming Indianans and insurgents and snipers and bombs.

"Oh darn," Carol said.

"What is it, honey?"

"We forgot milk."

McCain’s Potemkin Village

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McCain Photo Op Kills 21 - UPDATED
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By Joe Conason

Date: 4/9/2007

Both Iraqis and Americans alike were stunned by the audacity of Senator John McCain’s heavily publicized (and heavily armed) excursion through Baghdad’s Shorja market last weekend. There was the leading proponent of the war on Capitol Hill, setting out to confirm his recent claim that the escalation of U.S. forces is greatly improving conditions on the ground, accompanied by a handful of Congressional colleagues. He seemed to think nobody would notice that their little shopping trip also included a platoon of soldiers, three Black Hawk choppers and two Apache gunships.

Neither the Iraqi merchants used as props in this strange exercise nor the American voters who were its intended targets could possibly have been deceived by such a charade. So the question that inevitably arises is whether Mr. McCain and company are still attempting to dupe us—or whether they have finally duped themselves.

Consider the happy talk from Representative Mike Pence, an ultraconservative Indiana Republican who has visited Iraq on several occasions. At the press conference that inevitably followed the Shorja photo op, Mr. Pence said he had been inspired by the opportunity to “mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis,” drinking tea and haggling over carpets. To him, the Baghdad shops were “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time.” Senator Lindsey Graham, the McCain sidekick and Republican of South Carolina, boasted of buying “five rugs for five bucks,” marveling that “just a few weeks ago, hundreds of people, dozens of people were killed in the same place.”

Then they climbed back into one of the armored vehicles that served as their tourist buses and returned to the Green Zone with Mr. McCain and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq.

Aside from the theatrics of the Shorja excursion, however, the message delivered by Messrs. McCain, Graham and Pence was scarcely different from what each of them usually says after visiting Iraq. In February 2005, for instance, when Senator McCain made his famous trip with Senator Hillary Clinton, he claimed to believe that “the dynamic [of the war] has changed from Iraqi insurgents versus the U.S. and its—and our troops to Iraqi insurgents versus the Iraqi government.” Back then, he declared himself “far more optimistic” than he had previously felt, adding: “I think we have an opportunity to succeed.” According to Mr. McCain, there is always an opportunity to succeed, provided that we are willing to sacrifice thousands more young Americans and hundreds of billions more dollars. But then again, this is a man who thinks we didn’t expend enough lives and dollars in Vietnam—although he would be hard-pressed to explain why the world would be better today if 100,000 Americans and another million Vietnamese had died in that war.

As for Mr. Pence, the only conceivable purpose of his latest trip was to pick up those rugs. His sunny comments were as predictable this time as when he visited Iraq in September 2005, when he told The Indianapolis Star that spending two days there had convinced him the United States was “winning the war.” Gen. John Abizaid, then the commander of U.S. forces, had assured him there was a viable plan and that the plan was working, all of which Mr. Pence dutifully repeated to the folks back home.

On this trip, as Mr. Pence climbed back into the armored Humvee that had safely carried him and the two Senators to the marketplace, none of these jolly politicians mentioned the rise in killings across Iraq during the past month. None of them even seemed aware that the temporary reduction of violence in Baghdad appears to have driven even greater carnage outside the capital—such as the bombing in Kirkuk that slaughtered a group of schoolgirls the same day that Messrs. Graham and Pence got their bargain carpets.

Even if the “surge” succeeds in suppressing violence in Baghdad for a few weeks or months by pouring in tens of thousands of American troops, what would that mean? Do Mr. McCain and his colleagues actually believe that we can somehow provide enough soldiers and Marines to achieve the pacification of every city and town in Iraq? If so, how long would our troops be expected to police the terrorist incidents and revenge attacks that now occur every day in this civil war?

Congressional hawks like Mr. McCain echo President Bush’s complaint that the Democrats are undermining the war by seeking to set a date for an American withdrawal. They insist that the war’s critics should simply shut up and send more money and more soldiers, while we see whether this “plan” works better than the previously discarded plans.

But the truth is that the President and his echoes are merely playing for time with American lives. They have no plan, because there is no military solution to this war. The war propaganda doesn’t work any better than the war plan—which is why the Democrats have been emboldened, and why Mr. McCain’s Presidential prospects are rapidly declining.