How is the security crackdown going? “After three weeks,” the NYT wrote in a front-page piece on Sunday, “there are a few signs of progress.” I’m glad to see the Times say even that much, though the fact is that the Times story wasn’t about the crackdown; it was about the estrangement and distrust that have developed between Baghdad’s Shiite and Sunni communities, a major problem that the security sweep is trying to address. The more progress made in the sweep, however, the less valid the story’s hook of ongoing community distrust. Thus, among the NYT’s “few signs of progress” is this carefully worded sentence: “In some areas closely patrolled by American troops, a few of the families that fled the violence are said to be returning.”
Am I hypersensitive, or is that a minimizing, almost self-nullifying way to put it? Of course, in the NYT’s world, even seemingly welcome news from Iraq isn’t really good news at all. When the revolting Moktada Al Sadr went into hiding, for example, the Times saw it as an opportunity for somebody even worse to come along. When Iraqi and U.S. troops recently wiped out an army of fringe Shiite cultists, the Times saw the battle as a case of miscalculation by the Iraqi forces, because they called in U.S. backup. The whole of the cultist army was captured or killed, but what mattered to the NYT was that the Iraqi forces had supposedly miscalculated!
Now we have “a few families” who “are said to be returning” to “some areas closely patrolled by American troops.” Yeah, well, one of those families is mine….
There’s a lot more.
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