Shays stays the course on Iraq

1/20/08
Rep. Christopher Shays just can’t understand it. Why can’t he convince everyone about Iraq?
The congressman is either the truest of true believers or a world-class actor. In his most recent visit with this newspaper’s editorial board, he struggled to understand why his listeners wouldn’t grant him the benefit of the doubt when he talked about improving conditions in Iraq.
He’s the expert, having been there 19 times (at last count). But he hurt his credibility when he threw out the old line about the Iraqi military, and how well their training was going. As though no one had heard that one in the past five years.
The fundamental confusion is this: Shays says he supports a time line to get American troops out of Iraq, but he is supporting John McCain for president, and McCain is talking about a multigenerational U.S. commitment there. Shays says these points are not contradictory.
The real question, then, is this: If Chris Shays alone made Iraq policy, what would he do? If he instituted his time lines, how many U.S. troops would be in Iraq after they’d expired? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Because McCain is talking 50 years, minimum. Iraq’s defense minister recently said U.S. help will be required there for another 10 years, at least. And we’re building some serious long-term bases over there.
McCain’s point is that Americans will accept such a commitment as long as American troops aren’t dying. Look at Korea and Germany, he says. And that’s fine, if he believes that, but we’ve been hearing something different about Iraq for a few years now.
Here’s George W. Bush on April 13, 2004: “In terms of how long we’ll be there: as long as necessary, and not one day more.” That’s been the official line from the start.
Does Shays agree with this? Does McCain? Will it be “necessary” to stay 50 years?
I don’t think it’s bizarre that people can’t understand Shays’ position. He says it hasn’t changed. Maybe it hasn’t, but it doesn’t matter because no one knows what it was to begin with.
Later in the meeting, Shays repeated his contention that the media’s treatment of the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison — and not the abuse itself — led directly to the deaths of American troops. It became a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists, he said, who went out and killed Americans.
His first mistake here is, as usual, understating the extent of the abuse. This was not a “night crew run amuck,” as he likes to say. Official military reports have confirmed that.
Even granting him that, though, he says the problem would have been uncovered by some visiting official — maybe Shays himself — and then handled, quietly. No need to tell anyone anything.
What was left unsaid was how long members of the media, once they found out about the abuse, were supposed to wait for Shays or someone else to fix it. He says he doesn’t want censorship, he wants the media to show better judgment. But in whose interest is it to let abuse go unreported?
His position is devoid of logic. Suppose, for argument’s sake, in the midst of battle the American military accidentally blows up a bus filled with schoolchildren. It’s a war; bad things happen. Should the media refrain from saying what happened because it makes the military look bad?
The media is not in business to do PR for the military. Reporters, photographers and support staff put themselves at considerable personal risk to tell what happens. If evidence of American abuse makes more news than bad behavior by our enemies, that’s how it should be. U.S. troops are supposed to be held to a higher standard than insurgents.
Each time I write anything about Iraq, a place I’ve never been and know nothing about other than what I read, I get all sorts of reader feedback, positive and negative. Much of the latter focuses on how I’m undermining our troops or hating America or something because I take issue with whatever Joe Lieberman said that week, but that kind of thing I’m used to.
But I had one exchange with the father of someone serving in Iraq who was unhappy with something I wrote, and we exchanged a number of messages, all of them civil and most of them pleasant.
Buried in one of them, though, I’m guessing in reference to his son, was this: “Stop making it sound like you have a personal interest in it.”
This, honestly, stuns me.
It’s true, I don’t have a directly personal interest in the war; no one in my immediate family and none of my close friends are there. But I refuse to believe that it’s commendable for people to just ignore what happens there.
I’m trying to imagine how it would be better to take at face value everything this country’s leadership has to say about Iraq. When I hear Lieberman or Bush or Shays making the same arguments they’ve been making for five years with nothing to show for it, I think that’s worth a mention.
Maybe I’m wrong.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.