John Burns, Back from Baghdad: U.S. Effort In Iraq Will Likely Fail

By: E&P Staff A day after returning to the U.S., after another long term as bureau chief in Baghdad, John F. Burns of The New York Times said on Bill Maher's live Friday night HBO program that he now feels that the failure of the American effort in Iraq "now seems likely." The chances that it will reach "a satisfactory conclusion" appears "improbable."

Asked if a civil war was developing there, Burns said, "It has been for some time," adding that it's just a matter of "scale." He said the current U.S. leaders there--military and diplomatic--were doing their best but sectarian differences may doom the enterprise.

Burns said that he and others underestimated this problem, feeling for a long time that toppling Saddam Hussein would almost inevitably lead to something much better. He called the Abu Ghraib abuse the worst of many mistakes the U.S. made but said that even without so many mistakes the sectarian conflict would have gotten out of hand.

He also pointed to a key period coming up, "crunch time," as the top American generals decide over the next two weeks whether to go ahead with the planned "draw down" of U.S. troops starting this spring which, as it turns out, coincides with deteriorating conditions on the ground. The problem is, he said, U.S. withdrawals could lead to chaos there, with the Iraqi military not ready to take over; but not bringing troops home would prove to be a political disaster for the White House here.

Speaking from Cambridge, Mass., where he was speaking at a conference on the Vietnam war, Burns observed that he had been on the ground for 24 hours and, of all the people he had interacted with so far, "no one supports this war."

His most recent article from Baghdad appeared in The Times on March 5. He said he was heading to the West Coast next.

Burns, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was one of the few Americans journalists who stayed in Baghdad during the U.S. attack on Iraq in March 2003, and has spent most of his time there since. Maher introduced him on the show as "the voice of God" on Iraq, since he had spent so much time there on the ground.

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E&P Editor Greg Mitchell's latest column, "Good Mourning, Vietnam, which covers the conference that Burns attended and the Iraq/Vietnam links discussed there, can be found under Columns at:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com