MSM day-to-day spin on the Iraq war has a kind of schizoid, up and down quality, in which for a time, the spin seems to be that the surge is working, and for another time, that it is not. Of course, we know that some in the press function as mere stenographers for administration spin, and we also know that coverage of Iraq and of chaos there is presented as backdrop for the horse race coverage of a year long presidential campaign. At the moment, the overall assessment of Iraq appears to be one employing a "glass half-empty, half-full" metaphor to describe a scenario in which both violence is now escalating but a functioning Iraqi government remains in control.
(Incidentally, Bush himself has recently used this metaphor in yet another unique display of the Bush syntax.)
To which, I say, if this is a metaphor, and if, as the likes of McCain and his stenographers claim, the glass is half-full, what is the glass doing there in the first place? Who ordered the drink? And, when all is said and done, who's paying the bar tab?
As we see in a story in the New York Times, and carried on the MSN website
Iraqi offensive revives debate for campaigns
Iraqi offensive revives debate for campaigns
McCain faces particular risk as fighting mounts with Shiite militias
The heavy fighting that broke out last week as Iraqi security forces tried to oust Shiite militias from Basra is reverberating on the presidential campaign trail and posing new challenges and opportunities to the candidates, particularly Senator John McCain .
The fierce fighting — and the threat that it could undo a long-term truce that has greatly helped to reduce the level of violence in Iraq — thrust the war back into the headlines and the public consciousness just as it had been receding behind a tide of economic concerns. And it raised anew a host of politically charged questions about whether the current strategy is succeeding, how capable the Iraqis are of defending themselves and what the potential impact would be of any American troop withdrawals.
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made the Iraq war a centerpiece of his campaign; he rode to success in the primary season partly on his early advocacy of the troop buildup. The battle in Basra broke out as he returned from a trip to Iraq this month, proclaiming that violence there was down and that the troop escalation was working.
The article goes on to quote McCain as saying about Maliki's willingness to fight the militias that "I think it’s a sign of the strength of his government,..I think it’s going to be a tough fight. We know that these militias are well entrenched there. I hope they will succeed and succeed quickly." It also refers to the Democrats' assessment that the fighting in Basra as evidence that the American troop buildup has failed to provide stability and political reconciliation — particularly if the fighting leads one militia, the Mahdi Army , to pull out of its cease-fire, with an Obama quote of "The presence of our troops and their excellence has resulted in some reduction in violence. It has not resolved the underlying tensions that exist in Iraq."
Overall, press coverage of Iraq is quite schizophrenic at the moment, with, for instance, one report, at the top of a Google News search, saying
Iraq says Sadr's order will help restore peace
Africasia, UK - 52 minutes ago
Firebrand Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's order on Sunday to his fighters to withdraw from the streets will help restore peace, government spokesman Ali ...
and the one right underneat it saying
Sadr digs in as Basra attack falters
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 55 minutes ago
"Not for fighting brothers" ... Salman al-Feraiji, the head of Moqtada al-Sadr's office in Sadr City, takes weapons from Iraqi forces in a symbolic gesture. ...
and the one underneath it saying
Sadr militia defies Iraqi call to disarm
The Age, Australia - 1 hour ago
Mahdi Army representative Sheikh Salman Furaiji with Iraqi national policemen who offered to hand over weapons to the militia in Sadr City. ...
Interestingly, the latter of these two reports are from Australian papers, one generally liberal and the other generallly more conservative in their editorial leanings - and neither is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Coverage such as this reflects a chaos of uncertainty, which has been present in Bush's invasion of Iraq all along and will be a very large snafu that Bush hands over to his successor (who most certainly will have a thankless task in getting a handle on this snafu). While the corporate media may want to try to come up with a frame for Irag, with the frame for the past 12 months being a tacit endorsement of the surge, those paying close attention can ascertain some truths for themselves, including that the U.S. is lacking in either a goal or an exit strategy. Neither Bush nor Cheney nor any of their advisors or neo-con cheerleaders, nor for that matter McCain, can adequately and precisely explain why we remain in Iraq, nor what conditions will allow us to leave. They tout "victory" there, but fail to explain what this is. It is obvious, for those who have been paying attention, that not only have the costs of this war been ever escalating but the benchmarks have been ever changing. One could reasonably conclude that chaos in Iraq is a direct consequence of the chaotic method of governing by the criminally incompentent Bush administration.
The Iraqi "glass" may - depending on who you ask - be either half empty or half full, but the larger point is this: we the American people did not necessarily order the drink, and it's a good thing we didn't as the drink contains toxins; and on top of everything, we are going to be paying (to the tune of $3 trillion) for this toxic drink for the rest of our lives.