About a month ago, Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had a rather heated discussion on “Meet the Press” about Iraq. In one contentious exchange, Webb told Graham, “You know, you haven’t been to Iraq.” Graham snapped back, “I’ve been there seven times.” Webb, a decorated veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy, replied, “You go see the dog and pony shows. That’s what congressmen do.”
Jonathan Finer explained today that Graham isn’t the only one basing opinions on scripted, uninformative tours.
Policymakers should be commended for refusing to blindly trust accounts from diplomats, soldiers or journalists. But it’s worth remembering what these visits are and what they are not. Prescient insights rarely emerge from a few days in-country behind the blast walls. […]
It goes without saying that everyone can, and in this country should, have an opinion about the war, no matter how much time the person has spent in Iraq, if any. But having left a year ago, I’ve stopped pretending to those who ask that I have a keen sense of what it’s like on the ground today. Similarly, those who pass quickly through the war zone should stop ascribing their epiphanies to what are largely ceremonial visits.
The next time you hear a pol saying, “I’ve just returned from Iraq and I saw…” keep Finer’s piece in mind.
Indeed, Finer includes plenty of examples of overstated, first-hand perspectives:
* “Late last month the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, just back from a quick trip to Baghdad, proclaimed in the New York Times that ‘we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq.'”
* “In June, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, fresh from his latest whirlwind tour of the war zone, described in the Wall Street Journal a ‘dramatic reversal’ in the security situation in restive Anbar province.”
* “The most frustrating such visit during my time in Iraq was that of radio host Laura Ingraham, who rarely, if ever, spent a moment outside the protection of U.S. forces or a night outside a military base. While in Baghdad in February 2006, she wrote on her Web site that the training of the Iraqi army ‘continues apace’ and that ‘you wouldn’t know it by reading the New York Times, but IED attacks are actually down since December.'”
And the most famous of all:
This practice ought to have been (finally) discredited by Sen. John McCain’s trip to Baghdad in the spring, after which he all but declared that Freedom had marched alongside him as he strolled through a marketplace, chatting with shopkeepers. That McCain had been trailed by an armada of armored vehicles and Black Hawk helicopters was only later reported by “60 Minutes.”
I’m not saying these political figures should stop going, but if they’re not seeing much, the context of their trips is worth remembering.