Embedded Editor Opposes a U.S. Pull-Out

By: Dennis Anderson In his Pressing Issues column of May 7, E&P Editor Greg Mitchell observed that even after a month of unexpected carnage in Iraq -- and revelations of the prison abuse scandal -- not a single major U.S. newspaper, and few smaller ones, had yet advocated a phased American pullout from Iraq. He challenged editors to come up with a better plan, or explain why a pullout was not, now, a viable option. He has received many responses. Here is one, from the only chief editor to serve as an embed -- on two different occasions -- in Iraq during the past year.

I don't believe our newspaper, the Antelope Valley Press, in Palmdale, Calif., would join early ranks to call for a "phased pull-out" now or soon in the Iraq war.

To set such a course, we would undertake the proposition as part of our editorial board discussions, and pass it to the publisher for his advice, consent or rejection.

I will share some of my feelings and thoughts as an editor, as a sometimes-embedded journalist who journeyed the length and breadth of Iraq with troops Click here for Dennis Anderson's previous column and as the proud and trembling father of a Marine Corps 18-year-old Lance Corporal infantry grunt who has already seen some of his boot buddies killed and wounded at Fallujah-Ramadi. My son is in another theater, but he is on immediate call for anything, anywhere.

As a father, I dread the day of a call-up for Iraq or Afghanistan for my son. But I know they are all our sons, all our daughters. We share this pride. We share this dread. We share this grief.

To recall Walter Cronkite's historic shift against the Vietnam War is to remember how it came about. (We carry him currently as a columnist in our paper.) Cronkite's shift, of course, occurred after years of lives lost and the shift of national consensus on a war that we descended into like the proverbial toad that boils in a pot when it is lowered an inch at a time, rather than being thrown into the boiling pot. It also occurred after his own reporting journeys to Vietnam, after a good deal of first-hand observation.

Editorial boards of newspapers rarely have that experience or dubious luxury.

History showed any number of things by any number of interpreters of history on the lessons of Vietnam. Hawks and doves reflect their discrete prisms and blinders.

It is entirely probable the South Vietnam government might have fallen, but our actions as a nation and superpower were not honorable. We accelerated the victory of what has come to be known as a cruel and despotic regime, the most backward on the Asian landmass other than the murderous Khmer Rouge rogue state in Cambodia (another nation we abandoned militarily), and North Korea, which the United States and the United Nations fought to a draw.

What about the "draw" of the Korean cease-fire? Can anyone doubt that the lives and fortunes of South Koreans are not immeasurably better for having fought North Korea to that draw? Can anyone doubt that the lives and fortunes of North Koreans are not immeasurably worse for having to suffer the depredations of their old-time Stalinist tyranny run by Kim Jong Il?

So, were the American lives lost in that Korean draw without value? Some would argue that. Many would say otherwise. I know many Korean War vets proud of their service and what they accomplished for freedom's sake. They know generations of Korean citizens thrive today through the sacrifices of GIs and Marines.

So, what should newspapers do? Newspapers often function best in this country as the common crucibles of public opinion. They are forums of argument (where no such forum exists in broadcast except in structured formats). They reflect public opinion through letters columns, and often the unsigned editorials are the ethical and moral sounding board of diverse voices in a diverse nation that now divides itself near the 50/50 mark on our national foreign policy.

Should such a format as that inhabited by newspaper editorialists arrive at the hastiest of conclusions about troop withdrawal from Iraq?

This has been a terrible year of occupation and postwar guerrilla insurgency in Iraq. It has been terrible for the U.S. troops sent there to do the work, and it has been terrible for many of the most innocent of the Iraqi peoples. Both GIs and Iraqis have suffered because the United States sent too few, not too many, troops.

The scandals within the U.S. prisoner-inmate system deepen this tragedy immeasurably. They also have the effect of jeopardizing my son, and all the sons and daughters in service. That those acts were also perpetrated by others -- who are also our sons and daughters -- lends depth to the Greek tragedy in Iraq.

My own fear about an announced withdrawal of U.S. forces would be the hastening of a civil war in Iraq that would dwarf the scale of Lebanon's civil war in the 1980s. If the United States went to Iraq, presumptively, to thwart a WMD threat, we also went with the determination to "improve the neighborhood" and the climate for peace and a passage to some recognizable form of democracy.

It may not seem that we are achieving that transition at the moment. But if we leave abruptly, we will certainly have made the Middle East a much worse civil neighborhood and will never know if we might have made it better. I shudder that a son of mine, tender of years and excellent in character, is in harm's way on this dread enterprise. I shudder that so many of our sons and daughters are caught in this cat's cradle of circumstance.

Some of this, I believe, stems from waging war as a political exercise. The very idea that the theater is understaffed, probably by a hundred thousand soldiers by Gen. Eric Shinseki's estimation, demonstrates that we have not yet made the commitment to win a war. And so, we cannot yet best sort out how to win a peace that does not at this time exist.

In considering announcement of any pull-out, a lot of questions have to be asked.

We must ask ourselves, "Do we want to leave the Shiite people of Iraq under the heel of the likes of Muqtada Al-Sadr?" Did we shed our blood and spend our treasure for that?

"Do we want to leave the Sunni population numerically at the mercy of an emergent Shiite majority?"

"Do we want to leave the many peaceful and decent residents of the Sunni triangle at the mercy of a re-emergent Baathist insurgency that takes shape in the form of a new dictator or junta?" And, "Do we again abandon the Kurds and the Shiites as we have done in prior conflicts?"

Do I believe that U.S. policy makers gave adequate consideration to these questions before moving? It looks now most certainly not. That is why we have an under-strength army on the ground, thinly spread everywhere from prisons to checkpoints to city centers.

It must be added and emphasized that however the custody of detainees was abused, whether on a systemic or individual basis, that the vast number of Americans who have gone to Iraq are serving there honorably. And it is a paradox that they are most reviled, even as they are doing their best to do right by the Iraqi people.

Do I believe that American newspapers now have enough considered wisdom to chart a better course? Sadly, not yet. We will have to know more, and horribly, suffer more as a nation that has both liberated, and visited suffering, on Iraq before we know a better course than the rudderless voyage we have charted so far.

Many things were not well considered before we went. Many things should be given much greater weight of consideration before we pull out troops and make a bad situation even worse.