Is that everyone?
Rantingprofs
Media coverage of the War on Terror -- I rant, you decide
By Cori Dauber
The Post has a lenghty article on the genuine and measureable physical improvements the US is bringing to Sadr City in Baghdad -- but according to the Post's reporter, Anthony Shadid, who doesn't really specialize in finding good news, all this money and effort has bought us nothing in terms of good will on the street. washingtonpost.com
Really? Nothing? With thousands hired by the US? (What are they making, I wonder, compared to the money being made by those on the local economy? Shadid is careful to tell us how little people working in the neighborhood make. How much do people make if they work for the US? Might that difference have something to do with different attitudes? It would be an interesting question to look into.
He offers the answers of one woman who works for the Americans that she gives to the Americans, with the implication that they're prompting the answers they want to hear. But he makes no effort -- that we find out about -- to interview her without them present.)
He couldn't have found one person who's gotten a job from the US on one of these massive projects to interview? Because as he makes clear -- there are thousands of them.
The way he tells it, it's just too late. The delays (even though those delays were sometimes brought on by the militias, because we couldn't rebuild and fight at the same time) did us in. Nothing we do now will get us any good will because it's all interpreted by the community as stemming from American self-interest, and the two American officers are portrayed as characters from a Graham Green novel, all eagerness and desire to help, and unwitting cluelessness about what's going on around them.
And the thing is, he may be right. But it's too late. I just can't believe his portrayal isn't completely monocolored when the situation on the ground must be far more nuanced. Maybe I'm wrong and he's completely accurate. But he interviews a couple of angry men off the street and I'm supposed to take that as proof the entire effort in the area's a bust?
No sale. |
