Say what?

The New York Times must be on an acid trip:

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

The rest is, shall we say, surprising on the one level, but reporting of things that some of us have been aware of for a while.

Incredible piece, just incredible.

Comments

[tim]

You know things are going well when the NY Times has to admit it. The editors must have had serious reservations about printing this.

Yup, time to pull the troops out.

[Erasmussimo]

There's a good reason why the New York Times is the most influential newspaper in the country: they are fair and objective. They report the news as best they see it, without government propaganda. The situation in Iraq truly was getting worse until some months ago; the NYT reported that. The situation appears to be improving now; the NYT reports that.

The propagandists who favored the war in Iraq kept reporting lots of good news from Iraq for years, insisting that the situation was getting better and better when in fact it was getting worse and worse.

I suspect that your surprise at the NYT reflects biases on your part, not objective analysis.

And we must remember that this is an initial appraisal. There's still plenty of bad news coming out of Iraq, too. We need to see what the September report discloses. If it gives reason for optimism, then we should prolong the occupation for a while. If not, then we should pull out. Isn't that a perfectly reasonable course of action?

[tim]

“Prolong the occupation”??? Yes, that’s what we’re doing; we’re occupying Iraq. Why not just go ahead and throw in the rest of the anti’s talking points, such as - taking their oil, raping their women, terrorizing their children, torturing their men…

Hell, history is filled with “occupiers” bringing democracy, training/ building a native army, rebuilding the infrastructure/schools/hospitals/power plants/sewage treatment facilities…It’s so obvious counties like Japan, Germany & S. Korea just despise us for “occupying” their land.

Nothing like taking a positive and manage to throw in a negative so inconspicuously as to try and hide your true feelings. Phony.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Now, for the last several months I've been hearing news of things going the exact opposite direction: Republican members of Congress, conservative pundits, people you would expect to be more supporting of the war, softening said support or announcing the entire enterprise to be a failure altogether.

I have yet to hear any of these eyebrow-raising opinions to be trumpeted as evidence of objectivity and fairness on the part of...George Will, or William F. Buckley. Or Pete Domenici. Or Dick Lugar. Or George Voinovich. Or...or...or...

I can see your point. A truly slanted source of commentary upholding uncompromising fidelity to a chosen bias, will be unable to acknowledge an oppositional side in an ongoing argument under any circumstances. The New York Times, while it has yet to exonerate itself for past sins in my eyes, has demonstrated a trivial sampling of behavior inconsistent with complete and uncompromising servitude to a chosen bias. Given that they are a mouthpiece of the left, it will now have to be said that they have the ability to unshackle themselves from the party plank from time to time. They've now demonstrated they are at least capable.

YOU on the other hand...

Tim, I use the term "occupation" because that's the standard term for what the US military is doing in Iraq. The term has no insinuation of good or evil, at least not in my mind. If you have a more accurate term, please suggest it.

Mr. Freeberg, you are welcome to judge the NYT by whatever standard you choose. All utterly subjective opinions are beyond rational discussion. However, I'll point out that the NYT is widely regarded as the most important newspaper in this country, and there are lots of reasons why: the number of Pulitzer Prizes it has garnered, the frequency with which its material is republished by other newspapers, the frequency with which its commentary is cited in public discourse. You are welcome to dismiss this all as part of the grand liberal conspiracy to take over the world, if you wish.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

...I'll point out that the NYT is widely regarded as the most important newspaper in this country, and there are lots of reasons why: the number of Pulitzer Prizes it has garnered, the frequency with which its material is republished by other newspapers, the frequency with which its commentary is cited in public discourse. You are welcome to dismiss this all as part of the grand liberal conspiracy to take over the world, if you wish.

False dilemma if ever there was one. I may repudiate the conclusions I'm drawn to by my own intellect and common sense, in favor of esteemed but essentially-anonymous people I've never met and cannot meet. Or, I may indulge in wildly extravagant conspiracy theories.

Where's it written that there's no third choice, that it's gotta be one of those two extremes?

More often than not, when you post on Rick's blog, I'm motivated to admire the foresight of Hans Christian Andersen. He foresaw 21st-century liberalism, with all it's slavish devotion to groupthink and it's relentlessly insane obsessive-compulsive attack on reasoned individual thinking, by nearly two hundred years! And here you are to fulfill his prophecies, trying to bludgeon and browbeat us into paying tribute at the altar of New York Times, with the opinions of outside parties.

This is a funny thing about you: You demand all this respect for your opinions and you get peevish if you don't get it, questioning the intellectual acumen of people for their failures to mold their own viewpoints to comport with yours. But these opinions of yours, when you explain how they came to be, more than half the time they aren't even yours! They come from somewhere else. My advice to you: Logos over ethos. Pretend you don't have these star chambers of strangers to fall back on, and put more energy into -- logically sustaining your conclusion, as if you were the only thinking being in the universe to come to it. Give it a try. Even if you don't win any converts, from what I can see it is bound to expand your horizons.

[Erasmussimo]

Mr. Freeberg, I am truly at a loss to respond to your post, other than to note that it simply makes no sense whatsoever, being composed of wild suppositions and irrelevant fustian.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Mr. Freeberg, I am truly at a loss to respond to your post, other than to note that it simply makes no sense whatsoever, being composed of wild suppositions and irrelevant fustian stuff I don't understand.

FIFY

[tim]

“If it gives reason for optimism, then we should prolong the occupation for a while. If not, then we should pull out.”

“… I use the term "occupation" because that's the standard term for what the US military is doing in Iraq. The term has no insinuation of good or evil, at least not in my mind. If you have a more accurate term, please suggest it.”

oc•cu•py :
To seize possession of and maintain control over by or as if by conquest.

The standard term? The only people who use that in reference to Iraq are people who want us to leave. Interesting choice of words from someone who just last week or so was on board with that sentiment.

You could have easily said, “…then we should stay”, “remain”, “continue fighting”, etc.

[Erasmussimo]

Mr. Freeberg, the fact that the best response you can offer is distortion of my statements suggests that you don't have any decent arguments to offer.

[Erasmussimo]

Tim, your own definition clearly demonstrates that my use of the term "occupation" is correct. Read it:

"To seize possession of and maintain control over by or as if by conquest."

Did we not conquer Iraq? Did we not seize possession of it? Did we not maintain control over it? Yes, we have relinquished some of that control -- but not all. There is no question that we did at one time occupy Iraq. Perhaps you are suggesting that the occupation ended on the day we handed control over to the new Iraqi government. That's a debatable point. Did the occupation of Japan or Germany end on the day that we gave control over to a new government there? As I recall, the transition was not an overnight jump, but a slow transition. It's tricky to make this comparison because our own occupation lasted much longer in these cases: four years in the case of Germany and longer in the case of Japan. And in each case, the occupation did not end until long after complete stability had been achieved.

The semantics here are pretty clear: "occupation" is the most commonly used term to apply to this situation.