Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Discouraging News from Baghdad
This in my email today from my friends at the US Embassy in Baghdad:
Things here are every bit as bad as you see in the news. Bob (who looks terribly tired in this interview and that's also as bad as it looks) is extremely discouraged - this may be the last TV interview he does. It is far too difficult for him to retain any kind of intellectual integrity while trying to find something positive to say about the mess we're in.
We are safe in the IZ which remains quiet, but Bob and I both ask for your prayers for our Iraqi friends, colleagues, and all the good people trying to do the right thing here in Iraq. I trust all of this is in God's perfect plan; it certainly wasn't ours.
The link she sent for the interview won't work, and I don't know the source of the feed. I'll try and get a transcript of the interview. Thankfully, their 2 year tour of duty will be up in July and they will be moving to a new State Dept. post - hopefully with the title "Ambassador" attached this time - he's earned it! I know that they will both have mixed feelings about leaving a job uncompleted, and a sadness with the inability to complete that job to the best of their capabilities, but I also know how hard they have worked over there, and NO ONE tried harder to resolve the mess than they did. Perhaps that's the most discouraging thing of all. If someone as committed and talented as Bob can't make a difference, I'm pretty sure it's a lost cause. But then, we already knew that didn't we?
For the administration's sake, I hope they don't stretch Saddam's neck. It seems that he was the only one who could run the place with any semblance of order.
tfg: You know, we had this exact same conversation when Bob and A. were here two months ago, and he was trying to choke down an award for State Dept. Service from Condi with a straight face. The bit that made it rewarding, is that it was kind of like the People's Choice Award for the State Dept. His peers awarded him for it due to his competency and bravery and the difference he makes.
As Bob likes to point out: "I do not serve at the pleasure of our President. I serve in spite of it".
Is it better to kill a despot that killed or gassed a couple of thousand civilians in order to maintain a society, or to let another country come in, find no weapons of any threat, and then kill (collaterally speaking of course) thousands and thousands of citizens?
Granted, said dictatorship provided stability within a culture of torture and repression, but at what cost? And how are we viewed in anything less than a positive light when we act or condone the same?
For the administration's sake, I hope they don't stretch Saddam's neck. It seems that he was the only one who could run the place with any semblance of order.