March 23, 2005
Crossing the Divide with No One Watching
I wrote in early February that the U.S. had won a psychological battle of sorts against terrorism by being able to laugh at its increasing desperation.
Today, Iraqis took a major step towards winning their own psychological battle against terrorism with a very real military victory against a terrorist training base, killing 85 terrorists with the loss of seven Iraqi police commandos killed and six wounded.
This event is a concrete step forward for Iraqi self-determination, proving they are becoming ever more capable of their own security, even if they are a long way from a U.S. withdrawal. You would think that the media, highly critical of the U.S.-led war, would welcome the news and be very excited about this development. You would think that, but you'd be wrong.
CNN chose to report the angle that the battle showed terrorist forces were weakening, but chose not to make much of the mention that this was the first offensive fought primarily by Iraqi government forces, with the U.S. forces in a supporting role.
The AP story on Yahoo! said that "U.S. and Iraqi forces" carried out the raid, but again, made no special mention that the Iraqis were the primary forces involved military involvement. MSNBC mirrored that approach, as did Fox News.
ABC News put the story of the successful raid well below the fold, instead focusing on the "news" that Osama bin Laden had evaded capture (thanks for the late-breaking news, ABC).
Perhaps not surprisingly, CBS News buried the story completely, not having a single apparent link to the story on their front page, but chose instead to answer such burning questions as "Do bad teeth make bad babies?" and "Why Marry Scott Peterson?"
Of all the major news organizations it was the BBC that recognized the importance of today's raid, with the headline "Iraqi Troops Blitz Insurgent Camp," and a story focusing on the Iraqi commando involvement.
This a big day for Iraq. Too bad the rest of the world didn't notice.
Update: Apparently some of the world did notice, and one of the better bloggers out there noticed it. Tigerhawk has a good article up about how Stratfor has more or less reversed its position from three months ago on the ability of Iraqi security forces to combat the insurgency. The Stratfor revision cites the successful March 22 raid specifically as a validation of an emerging Iraqi army.
