printable versionTop U.S. war correspondents paint dismal picture of Iraq during symposium
BY MICHAEL PEÑA
The symposium featured (from left) Anne Garrels of National Public Radio; Dexter Filkins of the New York Times; moderator James Fishkin, professor of communication; George Packer of the New Yorker; and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond.
A capacity crowd filled the 600 seats in Kresge Auditorium last week for a panel discussion titled "Covering the War in Iraq," in which three of the nation's top war correspondents shared their experiences from the front lines—as well as their frustrations about how the current conflict began and how it might end.
Sponsored by the Department of Communication, the 40th annual Carlos Kelly McClatchy Memorial Symposium on May 1 featured Anne Garrels, senior foreign correspondent for National Public Radio and author of Naked in Baghdad; George Packer, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq; and Dexter Filkins, Baghdad correspondent for the New York Times and 2005 winner of the George Polk Award for his reports on the eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah.
Hoover Senior Fellow Larry Diamond also joined the panel, which was moderated by James Fishkin, the Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication. Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad during the first three months of 2004 and wrote the book Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.
Held on the third anniversary of the day President Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished," the evening symposium started with the journalists talking about how often they've risked their lives to bring news of the war to the world.
"Just driving around Baghdad, I've been shot at, held at gunpoint, held at knifepoint, attacked by crowds," said Filkins, whom Fishkin cited as one of the "unembedded" journalists who goes off on his own to gather the news. "It doesn't happen every day, but it's always a danger when you go out."
The level to which journalists are endangering their lives in Iraq is unprecedented, according to Packer. He said more reporters have been slain during the three years of the Iraq war than in all the years of the Vietnam War—in part because insurgents attack indiscriminately.
Packer also said that the war has been so politicized since the beginning that most Americans are now bitterly polarized into those who are against the war and those who support it. "The public by and large has been impatient with the story we've been telling, which is inevitably a more complicated picture than the narrative of either side in this war," he said. "I feel as if we're constantly up against the forces of oversimplification."
Garrels was the only journalist to remain in Baghdad when Bush declared war on March 19, 2003, with her first dispatches carried over a satellite phone smuggled into the city, according to Fishkin. Garrels said that people have told her that the constant news reports of what has gone wrong in Iraq do nothing but demoralize the troops and devalue their deaths.
"But if we don't ask questions and learn anything, then they've died in vain," said Garrels, who cited a recent story by Filkins stating that the military is now re-examining mistakes and beginning to learn valuable lessons. "The problem is, it's three years in."
Another problem, at least at the war's outset, was what Packer called the "WMD failure," in which the Washington press corps failed to verify the initial claim that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction. Packer said the media have since been recovering from that disgraceful low and more recently have proved "heroic" for showing the failing state of the war.
"I do think we have been badly, and in a certain sense—I don't mean this legally, but I do mean it morally—criminally deceived by this administration," said Diamond, a Stanford professor, by courtesy, of political science and sociology who coordinates the Program on Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "Our democracy has suffered in the last few years by the way information has been manipulated, selected, cut and pasted to fit the preconceptions that drove us to war."
In terms of how the war is being portrayed by officials in Iraq and those back home, Packer said a major gap exists between some realistic and "able diplomats and generals in Baghdad and a continuing fantasyland in Washington."
However, the panelists also agreed that—despite the "quagmire" that the occupation represents for America—immediate withdrawal amidst all the current instability would lead to an all-out bloodbath in the form of civil war.
"We know what their fate will be if we're not there," Packer said about the Iraqis he has befriended and worked with. "Their fate will be that they will be the first ones killed."
Diamond said the quest for democracy in Iraq is over and that the only question now is whether civil war can be averted. He advocated gaining more international support in the American-led effort to stabilize Iraq. Garrels said failed attempts at establishing a democratic infrastructure, mafia-like officials in power and insurgency violence have Iraqis scattering back to their tribes and clinging more closely to their religion.
"I'm just not sure there's an answer at this point," Diamond said. "We are taught to believe, as Americans, that there's an answer to every problem."
Many in the audience voiced the same frustration during a question-and-answer period toward the end of the symposium. One woman told the panel she initially thought that the solution was to pull right out of Iraq so no more American lives would be lost. But after hearing the journalists say how much more death and anarchy that would cause, she admitted that she no longer knew what to think.
"I would say the agony and confusion you are conveying is the beginning of wisdom," Packer responded. "If nothing else, what this country needs is a grown-up conversation about this war."