Online Feature
Q&A: Michael Massing
In January 2008 frequent New York Review contributor Michael Massing answered questions from readers about press coverage of the Iraq war and the hidden human costs of the conflict, from the psychological scars of front-line American soldiers to the experiences of everyday Iraqis. In two Review articles (As Iraqis See It and Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs), Massing examined the current perspective of Iraqi journalists living and working in Baghdad, as well as eyewitness accounts by US soldiers during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003; in an earlier series of articles, he dissected the failures of the American press in the run-up to, and initial phases of, the conflict.
Q: Several readers asked about current American press coverage of Iraq and reports in recent front-page articles that the surge is now working. These reports seem to have contributed to a broader sense in the American public that in the upcoming presidential election Iraq may no longer be the critical issue it has been. What can we make of these reports? Is there sufficient information available to journalists to draw such conclusions, or are there indications to the contrary thatare not being sufficiently examined?
Michael Massing: The more I've seen of the press coverage of the surge, the more discouraged I've become. Clearly, there's been a considerable decline in violence in much of Iraq in recent months. As the Iraqi bloggers I wrote about observed, Baghdad residents have been able once again to walk through neighborhoods that just a year earlier had been considered no-enter zones. And, as a result of the Sunni "Awakening," Anbar and other provinces are considerably calmer.
Yet, by any normal standard, the level of violence in Iraq remains extraordinarily high. Every day, another two or three bodies show up on Baghdad's streets. Those deemed to have collaborated with the United States are regularly assassinated. American troops continue to be killed and maimed by IEDs. In provinces like Diyala and (increasingly) Nineveh, where Mosul is located, the violence seems to be raging unabated. Anywhere else, such a state of affairs would be considered calamitous. As one journalist in Baghdad told me, the level of violence in Iraq seems to have returned to about what it was before the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. That was a very violent time, and it's only by comparison with the gruesome upsurge in sectarian violence occurring in its wake that the current situation can be deemed an improvement. Even then, the extent of the damage that has been inflicted on Iraqi society, including the mass exodus of the middle class, has been incalculable.
Nevertheless, for the most part, the press coverage has been very buoyant. Ever since General Petraeus testified before Congress in September, there has been a steady flow of stories about how safe Baghdad has become and how happy people are to be able to linger in markets and tea parlors. It's only by reading deep down into those stories that one comes upon the chilling roundups of the previous day's violence. That's not to say that there hasn't been some probing reporting about the surge. Top newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times have periodically raised questions about its long-term effectiveness. Even here, though, one would like to see more investigation and analysis. One problem, I think, is that as the violence has ebbed in Iraq, journalists have, oddly enough, become more dependent on embedding with US troops and hence more prone to see the war through their eyes. This is particularly true of TV news, which sometimes seems like a publicity arm of the US military. Whatever the medium, I'm struck by how little we hear from the Iraqi people themselves about the effects of the surge and how they see the more general situation in their country.
Which leads me to another shortcoming I see in the coverage. For all the reporting on the surge, few news outlets have taken a hard look at the strategy underlying it. As it's generally been described, that strategy consists of stationing US troops in neighborhoods throughout Baghdad, where they join with local residents to repair infrastructure, restore services, and identify and weed out insurgents. In practice, the surge is part of a highly aggressive policy that involves carrying out house raids by the hundreds and detaining Iraqi citizens by the thousands, all based heavily on tips from the street. As Jon Lee Anderson showed in "Inside the Surge," his highly revealing article in the November 19, 2007, issue of The New Yorker, the reliability of those tips is often dubious. As a result, many people are being locked away, to be released months later without any charges having been pressed. (The case of the father of the McClatchy blogger that I described in my article seems representative.)
As Anderson also shows, US troops in many cases are being used by local Sunni and Shiite extremists to settle sectarian—or even personal—scores. Anderson spoke with one Baghdad Shiite who, while "cooperating" with the Americans, was simultaneously killing many members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia, which he blamed for the murder of his own brother. Few reports of this nature appear in the daily press. Nor do you see much about the escalation in US air strikes that has taken place throughout Iraq along with the surge. (The Washington Post did run a fine front-page piece about this.) Finally, reports about the killing of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers remain rare. In the course of researching my article about the Iraqi bloggers, I learned of several cases in which innocent Iraqis had been killed or injured by US troops. In most of these incidents, the troops did not intend such harm, but that's of little solace to the families of the victims, and regardless, such killings have helped erode support for the US military among the general population. This remains a critical dimension of the US presence in Iraq—one that, unfortunately, has been greatly underreported. (The Los Angeles Times, however, has run several pointed stories on this subject.)
Q: The Foreign Occupier features strongly in the opinions of Iraqis in your piece, "As Iraqis See It." To what extent do Iraqis see other factors, such as sectarian violence or al-Qaeda, as impediments to recovery?
Michael Massing: Based on my research on the McClatchy bloggers, it seems clear that Iraqis see sectarian strife as an immense obstacle to recovery. The hatred and fighting between Sunnis and Shiites fundamentally shapes everyday life in Baghdad and other parts of the country. In the capital, Iraqis continue to live in fear of venturing into the wrong neighborhoods, of falling into the hands of hostile militias, of attracting unwelcome attention at traffic checkpoints. No one doubts that the Shiite–Sunni divide will remain a determining factor in Iraqi affairs for many years to come.
Q: Several readers note that blogging by Iraqis is not a new phenomenon but has been happening since the beginning of the US invasion; many of these blogs give a picture of daily life that is often missing from American press coverage. Given the now ubiquitous presence of the Internet, why has there not been greater attention in the press devoted to blogs like the one you discuss in "As Iraqis See It"?
Michael Massing: As I noted above, I don't think Americans—or American news organizations—have much interest in what Iraqis think. It's the experiences of American soldiers and the perspectives of US military officials that count. Occasionally, a microphone will be stuck in the face of an Iraqi for a man-in-the-bazaar interview, but this rarely amounts to more than soundbite journalism. No doubt the security situation has something to do with this; even with the new calm in Baghdad, journalists who linger too long on the street risk getting killed or kidnapped. But if the interest back home were there, I think, journalists would be able to find plenty of Iraqis willing to talk at length about their lives and views.
Last October, I attended a panel on Iraq sponsored by The New Yorker. Among the participants was Ali Allawi, a longtime Iraqi exile who had served as a cabinet minister in the transitional government of 2005–2006 and who has since resumed living abroad. It was refreshing to hear about events in Iraq from an actual Iraqi. Among other things, Allawi asserted that those currently in power in Iraq owe their positions almost entirely to the US, and that if the US left, they would be replaced by a new group that was far more representative of, and responsive to the needs of, the Iraqi people. It's a shame we don't see more such commentary in the US press.
Q: Do the Iraqi people realize that the vast majority of American people want the US troops to be withdrawn from Iraq? If this happens and Iraq becomes even more unstable (as the Bush administration asserts will happen), have they expressed willingness—and would they be able—to deal with the situation withoutUS interference?
Michael Massing: I wish I knew more about what the Iraqi people know about American attitudes toward their country. It's yet another aspect of local opinion that has received scant attention here. As to how Iraqis feel about a US withdrawal, I would say, based on my very limited sample, that they are full of ambivalence. On the one hand, they are utterly frustrated and fed up with the occupation and would like to see it end at once. On the other, they know that this could set off a new round of internecine warfare. Many Iraqis seem to feel cruelly caught between their deeply held belief that the continued US presence is prolonging their current agony and their deep-seated fears that an abrupt American departure could result in even more agony in the future.
Q: Recently I spoke with a soldier from Fort Bragg; he had served in Afghanistan the year before. He was in his early to mid-twenties, and he was in town (Myrtle Beach) to attend a jujitsu tournament. He spoke about becoming a fully realized warrior. He told me he had tried to get a job after graduating from college, but he couldn't find anything. So he went into the military, where, he opined, he could serve. The question that has been haunting me ever since this meeting is this: Has the constant drumbeat of war insinuated itself into our youth, replacing their normal aspirations for a life of military adventure?
Michael Massing: As it happens, I recently visited Fort Drum, New York, in an effort to explore some of these same questions, which I will be writing about in an upcoming issue of The New York Review. The experience of the Fort Bragg soldier seems similar to that of many of the soldiers I spoke with. Like him, they did not originally intend to join the military. The war in Iraq, and the prospect of being deployed there, has become a major deterrent to enlistment. Most young Americans today want to attend college, find a good job, have a family, and lead a middle-class life. When they encounter obstacles along the way—when they fall behind in their student loans, or fail to find a decent-paying job, or have a child and can't afford health care—the military beckons. To lure recruits in the current inhospitable environment, the Defense Department has been substantially boosting the bonuses and benefits it offers. In short, material incentives are increasingly replacing idealistic considerations like patriotism as reasons for joining. The idea of the "warrior," which gained such a hold on the American psyche after September 11, has been losing it as the war in Iraq has unraveled.
—January 28, 2008