Know Your Enemy

New York Times: "Mr. Bush also accused Iran of arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces." Would it have killed the Times to point out that Iran is also arming, training, and financing the militias fighting alongside the Iraqi forces? After all, the government of Iran has extremely cordial relations with the government of Iraq and our main militia allies in Iraq were literally created in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. This context certainly seems relevant.

Meanwhile, is there any real precedent for the sort of repeated misstating the identity of the enemy that we've seen from the Bush administration? Recall that it took years for the administration to grudgingly acknowledge the existence of a non-AQI Sunni Arab insurgency even though this insurgency had long been the US military's primary adversary. But now we're supposed to believe that everyone we and our Iranian-backed allies fight are Iranian. Sure.

Comments

We have always been at war with Iran.

Oh, and France.

Posted by justinb | March 28, 2008 11:00 AM

After all, the government of Iran has extremely cordial relations with the government of Iraq and our main militia allies in Iraq were literally created in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. This context certainly seems relevant.

It's more than relevant. Last I heard, Iran supported the ISCI agenda of a nine governate Shia federation in Southern Iraq, while the Sadrists are staunchly opposed to this proposal.

The Iraq-Iran debate is constantly bedeviled by the astonishing fact, deeply embarrassing to the governments in both Washington and Tehran, and powerfully resistant to cognitive processing by the US media, that the US and the Iranians are more or less on the same side in Iraq. They differ only on how long they want the US to stay in Iraq. The Iranians want us to stay only until the Iraqi government is able to stand on its own with a little help from its neighbors. The US wants to stay forever.

Posted by Dan Kervick | March 28, 2008 11:01 AM

Here's a better question: Would it have killed the Times to mention that Iran is not the only foreign nation influencing the conflict in Iraq? We often seem to forget that we too are a part of what is going on in Iraq. The public discourse on Iraq depicts Iranian influence as foreign "meddling" which is fine as far as it goes, but it is a rare thing indeed to find commentators who mention that everything we do over there is "meddling" as well. This sort of one-sided critique really only makes sense on the tacit assumption that, as Chomsky has put it, "we own the world." Without assuming that much, the discussion of Iranian influence in Iraq makes absolutely no sense.

Posted by R. Vangala | March 28, 2008 11:01 AM

Well, hell Yglesias, how else are we supposed to gin up support for military actions against Iran?

Obama proved that people are receptive to nuance, although people are more familiar with the details of racism than they are with the details of the problems in Iraq. But Americans will digest it all if you just lay it out there for them in a logical manner. The MSM shouldn't work in concert with the Administration in dumbing-down things into black and white issues. Although I guess that helps their cause.

Posted by socctty | March 28, 2008 11:02 AM

Here's a better question: Would it have killed the Times to mention that Iran is not the only foreign nation influencing the conflict in Iraq? We often seem to forget that we too are a part of what is going on in Iraq. The public discourse on Iraq depicts Iranian influence as foreign "meddling" which is fine as far as it goes, but it is a rare thing indeed to find commentators who mention that everything we do over there is "meddling" as well. This sort of one-sided critique really only makes sense on the tacit assumption that, as Chomsky has put it, "we own the world." Without assuming that much, the discussion of Iranian influence in Iraq makes absolutely no sense.

Posted by R. Vangala | March 28, 2008 11:03 AM

Sorry for the double post, the server crashed while I was submitting it.

Posted by R. Vangala | March 28, 2008 11:06 AM

Even superficial discussions of the issue of Iran in Iraq would disclose that Saddam's Sunni dominated government waged war against Iran, that Iraqi Sunnis view all Shiites as Iranian and that the President of Iran drove into Baghdad and roamed freely in the capital, something none of Bush's administration can do. If we wanted to fight Iran, we should have continued to back Saddam. If we want al-Maliki to remain in his position, we better stop complaining about Iran or we will have to hire the revolutionary guard to keep up the pretense of an ally in Iraq.

Fair reporting would include a discussion of the Kurd/Turk/Iran problems as well. Without these facts, most readers (let alone viewers) will be unable to understand what's going on. If that is what the reporters want anyway.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | March 28, 2008 11:08 AM

Can I also complain about why even after it became blindingly obvious that the offensive was aimed at the Mahdi Army they still put out articles with headlines that said things like "Offensive Against Militias Continues" and then only clarified halfway through those articles that only the Mahdi Army was doing any fighting?

Posted by Xanthippas | March 28, 2008 11:09 AM

Can I also complain about why even after it became blindingly obvious that the offensive was aimed at the Mahdi Army they still put out articles with headlines that said things like "Offensive Against Militias Continues" and then only clarified halfway through those articles that only the Mahdi Army was doing any fighting?

Posted by Xanthippas | March 28, 2008 11:11 AM

Mr. Bush also accused Iran of arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces.

Is that stupid, sociopathic frat boy still here?

I guess he's just not happy unless he can blow something up. Somebody get him some frogs and some firecrackers.

Posted by Jemand von Niemand | March 28, 2008 11:15 AM

How long will it take for bush to declare the Sadr and his followers a "Terrorist" organization and try to bomb Sadr City off the face of the earth?

Posted by jerri | March 28, 2008 11:20 AM

This nonsense will continue until and unless NYT "reporters" are relegated to hamburger flipping jobs.

Posted by Blgetstan | March 28, 2008 11:24 AM

"Mr. Bush also accused Iran of arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces."

In the interest of clarity: the biggest meddler in Iraq is the US, not Iran.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | March 28, 2008 12:15 PM

Whenever things get hot in Iraq, the best news source is the BBC service that translates news from Arabic sources. Those who read it know that today, for instance, the news the Iraqis are mulling over is the rumor that Sadr has called on the militias in Basra to stand down. Sadr's own communique is confusing, and the leader of the Sadr trend party claims that the communique justifies the resistance to armed aggression.

And this:

"Privately-owned Al-Sharqiyah focused on military developments on the ground. It began its 1100 news bulletin with the news that forces loyal to Muqatada al-Sadr had taken control of the southern Iraqi cities of Al-Nasiriyah and Al-Shatra. The channel added that Iraqi policemen had "remained in their stations", suggesting that they had refused to fight. Although the channel, which broadcasts out of Dubai, did report statements made by a government military commander saying that 120 Mahdi Army fighters had been killed, it also quoted "medical sources" in Basra as saying that only 60 people had been killed throughout the four days of fighting, which served to contradict the military commander's death toll. Over pictures of Mahdi Army fighters dancing on top of a burnt-out Humvees, the channel said that food was running low in Basra and that a five-day ceasefire may come into effect to allow supplies to reach the city."

Posted by roger | March 28, 2008 12:42 PM

"Is there any real precedent..."

Well, uh, yeaaah... Nasty little war called Vietnam, where the US pretended the opposition was North Vietnamese "invading" the south. The pretense included the idea that the 'North Vietnamese' were acting as catspaws for their traditional enemy, the Chinese, and that China and Russia, then fighting a small war on China's north border, were acting together to conquer SE Asia.

In reality, many of the so-called 'North Vietnamese' were southerners who went north in 1956, expecting to return when the elections were held. Naturally, when it became evident that Ho Chi Minh would win the elections, the US decided that maybe elections would not be such a good idea.

And a century ago, we pretended to go to war with Spain in Cuba. In reality, the Spaniards had effectively granted Cuba its independence about a week before the Maine blew up, making it necessary for the US to declare war and invade Cuba quickly before the Cubans could organize a government. The real war in the Phillipines and Cuba was not against Spain, but against the peoples of those countries to make sure we got our naval bases.

Today the tradition continues, with the FARC in Colombia described as drug runners, and Uribe described as an elected president. In reality, Uribe is and always has been a creation of the narco-traffickers and paramilitaries.

It's like living in a bad acid trip, where you can look around and see something made by Cadillac that looks like a pick-up truck that has overdosed on steroids. Or, as Kennedy so stirringly proclaimed in Berlin, "We are all jelly donuts!"

Posted by serial catowner | March 28, 2008 12:47 PM

Vangala,

It was worth posting twice. Once upon a time, this President Monroe guy thought that stuff happening in one's own back yard gave one a special right to get involved. Somehow, that excuse is only s'pose to work when we use it.

Iran has lost millions of its people to war with Iraq in the living memory of most Iranian leaders (not all - it's a young country), is in the same basic line of export business, deals with the same set of neighbors and neighborhood associations, but we have insisted that we have the right to intervene in Iraqi affairs, to the exclusion of Iran.

Oh, hey, didn't we arm and train a bunch of guys in Afhganistan a few years back to fight against a superpower that had decided to impose a government there? Yeah, yeah. Those guys that call themselves al Qaeda now. It was them we armed and trained.

Posted by kharris | March 28, 2008 1:55 PM

"Sorry for the double post, the server crashed while I was submitting it."

No, it didn't. When you get the "internal server error" page, the server didn't actually crash. Your post got posted. I've seen it happen many times.

Just ignore it.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 28, 2008 7:24 PM

Iran is also arming, training, and financing the militias fighting alongside the Iraqi forces

OK. I'll bite. Which ones?

Posted by smaug | March 29, 2008 11:24 AM