Opinion> Debra Saunders> Reporting For Duty Not

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Reporting for Duty -- Not

Iraq isn't the big story this month. Gas prices are. In May, the Associated Press reported, U.S. military deaths plunged to the lowest monthly level in four years and civilian casualties were down sharply, too. Gasoline also hit $4 a gallon. And you don't see as many "No war for oil" bumper stickers as you used to.

The success of the Bush surge — with Iraqi forces having led offensives in three major cities and taking on Shiite militias — has been greeted in America with a collective shrug. "My perhaps overly cynical view is that it's probably too much to hope for — a lot of good news stories coming out of Iraq," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said during a recent conference call. But also, with the al-Maliki government clearing once dangerous areas and violence dropping, "Iraq no longer occupies the status as the overarching, all-encompassing crisis that requires full national attention."

Reporters based in Iraq have seen improvements. NBC News' Richard Engel told the New York Observer about a recent trip to Najaf, "I was walking around the city doing interviews, without any kind of security or back up at all. That felt great. I hadn't done that in years. A Chinese restaurant, takeout, just opened up down the street from our bureau. There were no businesses opening in '06 and '07. People are getting out more. You see more people on the streets going to markets. When I go to do interviews, I can stay longer."

And yet, there is a "marked drop-off in the appetite for stories from Iraq," ABC news' Terry McCarthy told the Observer. "That's partly due to the election, partly because of the fatigue, and partly because things have started to go right here. The spectacular car bombs, the massive attacks, you just don't see them anymore. A drip, drip story that's getting a little better day by day doesn't make a headline."

CNN's Michael Ware calls it "audience fatigue." Other journalists, who have risked their lives covering the war, complain that Americans aren't paying attention to their stories on Iraq.

If reporters think their work is unappreciated, imagine how U.S. troops in Iraq feel. They're working miracles — to insufficient applause.

Four years ago, before the U.S.

troop death toll hit 1,000 in September 2004, the war was the moral issue. When liberal Democrats were trying to take over Congress in 2006, they used the war to clobber President Bush and told America that if they were in power, the war would end. Well, they took control of Congress, and the war continues. So now there are fewer political points to be won banging the war.

As of Thursday, 4,098 U.S. troops had died in the Iraq war. Yet Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's No. 1 issue is the U.S. economy. When the senator talks about the war, he often does so in terms of the $12 billion spent each month in Iraq. Clearly, Team Obama figures that it's not the toll of American blood but the price tag that enrages voters in this short-attention span nation.

It seems the better the war goes, the less interest some partisans show in Iraq. Their attention wanders if they can't play the blame game and chant, "Bush lied."

Ah, and this time, the critics were wrong when they argued the surge could not work. Obama was wrong, and, face it, opposing the surge was the politically easy thing to do.

Conversely, John McCain supported the surge — and he did so in opposition to well-wishers and pundits who argued that his support for the war would doom his campaign.

So Team Obama is reduced to nitpicking at McCain. When McCain told NBC's "Today" show that it's "not too important" when U.S. troops are brought home — "We will be able to withdraw, but the key to it is that we don't want any more Americans in harm's way" — Obama surrogates pounced.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called McCain "unbelievably out of touch with the needs and concerns of Americans, particularly of the families of the troops that are over there." Sure, McCain spent five years as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton. His 19-year-old son, Jimmy, just returned from his first tour in Iraq and another son, Jack, is in the U.S. Naval Academy. Yet somehow Team Obama paints McCain as out-of-touch with military families.

Four years ago, when Iraq was center stage and Democrats thought opposition to the war would lead to electoral victory, Kerry led off his address to the Democratic National Committee with a salute as he announced, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty."

In 2008, now that prices at the pump are his big issue and Iraq is framed as an economic issue, what will Obama say: You deserve a break today?

E-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

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Ms. Saunders, I often read your columns, and I have to say I appreciate the independence of your points of view. But you do have a breathtaking ability to miss the obvious from time to time. You've done that here, and frankly this is one of the most self-rebutting columns I've ever seen you write. Why don't you just say it like this: "Oh joy! Obama is clearly wrong! We're seeing fewer people get killed or maimed every day, fewer lives dislocated, less and less fallout from all that American money being flushed down the toilet." Whoopee.
Yes, the champ is not getting pounded as hard as before in the ring at the moment, but if you don't think he'd better get out of there before he winds up flat on his face, you ought to consider buying lottery tickets as a better way to bet your money.
Has it ever occurred to you how much of the world is a shipwreck because of our distraction in Iraq? Or perhaps that a different president, like Obama, for example, might well have had the credibility and world support as one who had opposed the war rather than hawked it to negotiate a solution not available to that bunch of thugs squatting in the White House?
You wouldn't expect someone who's been raped to look to the rapist for help, but that's kind of like what we're asking the world to do now when our president says, "Yeah, yeah, I lied, but we're stuck with the mess I created now you just have to trust me to clean it up. And look how good I'm doing. Fewer and fewer people are getting killed and dismembered every day.”
It's a big mess, Ms. Saunders. Bush and Cheney will retire, do the lucrative lecture circuit, whine about how they would have been a raging success if only the wimps in the Democratic Party and the media it controls had given them proper support, and die with smiles on their faces. And we and our kids (you know, the families the Republicans are so hot to protect), not to mention the millions of Iraqis whose lives have been utterly dislocated, will still be cleaning up the mess long after those two war criminals fade away into their comfy oblivion. How willing would you be right now to bet every penny you have on Iraq being a better place ten years from now than it was before we trashed it? If you would, like I say, switch to lottery tickets for a better ROE.
P.S. You should consider taking a little look into how the Iraq war relates to the problem we are seeing with oil right now. You might just find yourself a bingo.
We have lost, you fool. Your president bet the farm and it's gone.

Comment: #1
Posted by: Masako
Sun Jun 15, 2008 10:48 AM