Iraq attacks raise new concerns about U.S. pullout

Suicide bombings, car explosions and gunfire that killed at least 70 in an apparently coordinated assault suggests Iraqi forces may be overwhelmed by insurgents after American troops withdraw.

Of course, these attacks happened while U.S. troops are still in the country-- making the point about the U.S. "pullout" somewhat hard to follow.

But this is a familiar argument. Remember the Time magazine cover photo of a disfigured Afghan woman last July? The magazine's political point was summed up by the text on the cover: "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." The attack that left her disfigured happened with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The implication in both cases is that violence will overcome these countries due to the absence of U.S. troops-- which obviously obscures the fact that the U.S. presence is often the source of such violence, or the justification used by armed groups seeking to drive out U.S. troops.

This week (7/24/11) it's former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The mistake she cited was when she wore the wrong pin to a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and then said something critical about his Chechnya policy. (The best mistakes are the most self-serving ones, apparently.)

When I saw the headline, I was half-wondering if she'd talk about her famous defense of killing Iraqi children on 60 Minutes (5/12/96):

Leslie Stahl asks Albright: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

To which Albright replies: "I think this is a very hard choice. But the price--we think the price is worth it."

Iraq did come up in the Newsweek piece, when Albright wrote, "We had sanctions on Iraq then, and I was instructed to keep saying terrible things about Saddam Hussein."

I would agree that she said something terrible.

ACORN: 1,224

Van Jones: 267

SEIU: 259

Afghanistan: 97

Iraq: 95

Valerie Jarrett: 52

Mark Lloyd: 50

Al-Qaeda: 50

Bill Ayers: 46

John Holdren: 43

Jeremiah Wright: 42

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 41

Osama Bin Laden: 40

Taliban: 38

Compare and contrast.

And just so there's no doubt in people's mind, the blanket coverage the mini-mobs are lapping up (i.e., the mobs are hugely important!) stands in stark contrast to the way the press often did its best to ignore liberal protesters who spoke out against the war in Iraq.

For instance, in October 2002, when more than 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to oppose the war, the Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

Not that crowd size is the be-all, end-all of an event's significance, but it's worth remembering that no credible count of yesterday's right-wing protest puts it in the 100,000 range. (And the anti-war protesters didn't have the advantage of a highly-rated cable network promoting their event every day for months.)...

But I still think it gets back to the fact that D.C. is just "wired" for Republicans. Anti-war protesters, the thinking goes, were liberal hippies out of step with the mainstream. After all, there was a Republican president and Republican House in 2002, and polls showed reasonably strong support for the war in Iraq. Why pretend the liberal protesters are important?

In contrast, seven years later, Tea Baggers have to be considered a major political movement. There's a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in 2009, and polls show reasonably strong support for the administration's economic agenda, but the right-wing cries can't be relegated to a few throw-away paragraphs in the Metro section.

Benen further quotes Barack Obama's 60 Minutes statement that "in the era of 24-hour cable news cycles, the loudest shrillest voices get the attention," but explains "that's only partially true--it depends on what the shrill voices are saying and from what perspective." See the FAIR Action Alert: "Fox Hunting Trumps Peace Activism at Washington Post & NYT" (9/30/02).