A military reader chastises me:
I saw your statement about how one reader can longer read your blog because it is too depressing. I agree that you are not in denial and believe that you’re a fantastic writer. But as I could tolerate your views on Iraq when I was in the U.S., now that I am here, I too find your blog difficult to read. You are co-dependent with the vast majority of journalists who hang around the Green Zone and eventually try to figure this country out by riding in a convoy or going from camp to camp. Just like any experience, you must work to achieve full understanding and the stories you parse together as indicative of what is going on in Iraq is just flat out wrong.
That you have missed the true story here in Iraq and don’t realize it is perfectly understandable to me. I was blissfully ignorant while back in the US a few months back, gorging on the Green Zone press menu of car bombs and massacres. Of course these are news-worthy stories, but do little to show how the overall war effort is going here. Al Anbar has changed dramatically just since I have been here and not for the worse, but just different. I wish I could recount to you how things have changed, but for operations security reasons, I can’t. But, I shouldn’t have to. There is enough information about what is going on here that I think you should be able to look at all of the sensational stories that play so well in New York, but also do a little bit of digging and find the true story.
I have tried hard to inform you about Afghanistan, but you don’t seem to get that struggle either. I even told you prior to this spring that the Taliban regularly stir things up this time each year by sending groups of 100 down from the mountains to fight near Kandahar. I also told you that these fighters die by the score and are finished by July if the past yearly pattern is any indication. Each year, the press jumps on the story and uses "resurgent Taliban" to describe the rag-tag forces that cross the border from Pakistan not knowing most will be dead in a few months. Again, go back and read stories from 2004 when everyone predicted the Taliban were back until they were all dead by July. Of course they will be back next spring in limited numbers to attack poor farmers around Tarin Kowt and you will all get depressed again because you think everything is lost.
All I can say is that I do my best to figure out what’s actually going on. Maybe there’s a reality out there that no journalist has understood or uncovered – but the fact that they cannot find out without a real risk of being murdered is surely testimony to something awry. Readers know I have sought out slivers of hope wherever I can find them; and still desperately want success in Iraq. History will eventually sort it all out. All I can say is that I’m doing my best with a modem a few thousand miles away. And more journalists have been killed in the line of duty in this war, including an old friend, than were killed in Vietnam or World War II. If the good news is out there, many have died trying to discover it.
The Dish 