Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Claire Berlinski, Ed. ·
December 16, 2011 at 4:44pm
Today's the day. Michael's on the West Coast, so I don't know what time he'll be joining us, precisely, but welcome, Michael.
Michael, to open the conversation--does it seem to you that the Americans who were not there understand, generally, what happened in Iraq? If not, in what way are they most seriously misunderstanding the history of American involvement there?
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Mar '11
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Welcome, Michael. I respect your work and have recommended it on more than one occasion. I especially hold the way that you have approached it--putting yourself on the ground (occasionally at risk) and living and working in the places you're reporting on--in high regard.
In addition to Claire's question above, I'd be interested in hearing you address these two (big) questions at some point during your stay with us:
1) Do you think COIN, as pursued by General Petraeus in Iraq, can be a model for this type of operation--that is: success or failure, by your lights?
2) In spite of the number of journalists who were "embedded" with various units in Iraq, I believe there has been a dearth of good reporting (present company excluded) on the subject. Two part question:
a) Why has there been such little solid reporting on what actually happened in Iraq, especially from 2007-2009?
b) Do you think that embedding reporters with military units as practiced under the Bush administration is a practice that should be continued?
Rambling thoughts subject to later clarification/consolidation/fleshing out perfectly welcome.
May '10
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
I bet most Americans recognize word "surge" but couldn't explain it.
My impression of the war in general is that we went there to topple Saddam Hussein, succeeded in doing so, and then spent years building infrastructure and providing training for a people who we share little in common with culturally and will probably work against our national interests for decades to come. One might argue we remained so we could continue to fight "over there" instead of here at home, but isn't that why we're still in Afghanistan?
In other words, I supported (and still do) our invasion of Iraq, but don't understand why our soldiers have been there throughout my entire adult life. Americans who generally don't think much about politics probably understand it even less.
Now that we're leaving, I wonder how many Iraqi civilians will die from old mines and IEDs. A soldier friend once told me about refridgerators rigged to blow. Inside, outside, urban, rural — the bombs are everywhere.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me here.
I'm on the West Coast where my time zone makes me look a bit like a slacker to those on the East Coast. I'm awake now, though, I have coffee, and I'll answer as many of your questions as possible, starting with Claire's. Stand by...
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Claire,
I’ve found that most Americans have understood Iraq slightly better each year than they did the year before.
Some of the best arguments I’ve ever heard about the Iraq war were between American soldiers in Baghdad. The war was divisive over there just as it was here at home, but the division was narrower because Americans who were actually on the ground in Iraq were more or less operating from the same set of facts. I never heard them say “Bush Lied, People Died,” for instance, or anything else remotely that fatuous. If anyone in the Army or Marines thinks we invaded Iraq for the oil, that everyone who prays to Allah is forever hard-wired for anti-Americanism, that the war was going well before the “surge,” or that General David Petraeus doesn’t know what he’s doing, well, I didn’t encounter them.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
And I encounter that sort of thing less often at home than I used to. We can and probably will argue forever about whether invading Iraq was a good idea or not, and I’m agnostic about it myself now after supporting it in the beginning, but after almost a decade of involvement over there, Americans who are paying any attention at all seem to have a decent idea of what happened. There are, of course, exceptions, but I no longer feel frustrated that so many of my fellow citizens haven’t a clue. So much information has been coming out of there for so long that we can finally argue about it intelligently.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Yes, with caveats.
A similar strategy has been pursued in Afghanistan, but it doesn’t work as well there as it did in Iraq. At best it works slower.
The idea is to compete for the hearts and minds, so to speak, of the local population while protecting them from insurgents. It was relatively easy to do in Iraq once David Petraeus figured out how because the insurgents were so unspeakably alien and vicious to the local people. Al Qaeda in Iraq was like an army of Hannibal Lectors.
The Taliban in Afghanistan is hardly better, but Afghanistan is a much more backward and broken society, and the people in the Pashtun community, from which the Taliban hails, seem to have a harder time aligning themselves with foreigners against “their own” for any reason.
The Petraeus model of counterinsurgency can't work anywhere that an insurgency is genuinely popular. The Israelis, for instance, would not be able to do this in the Hezbollah-controlled regions of Lebanon.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
The biggest part of the problem was built into the industry.
Embedding with infantry units during the surge was less explosive than embedding during the invasion. I got plenty of material to write about, but I never broke the type of story newspapers most like to publish. The material I got was the kind that goes into long magazine articles, narrative dispatches, and books. Yet the majority of print journalists write for daily newspapers where editors were primarily concerned with explosions and body counts.
To write about explosions and body counts, you have to stay in a hotel and survey everything from afar. You can’t go into the field and cut yourself off from everything except for what’s in front of your nose. When I embedded in Sadr City, for instance, I had no idea what was going on anywhere else in Baghdad, let alone Fallujah or Mosul.
I had a completely different experience there than my colleagues whose job was to write the grim headlines. And there were more like them than there were like me.
Sep '10
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Sorry I'm late to the discussion, but I had an office holiday party to attend. Anyway, Michael Totten, I'd like to know what has made you an agnostic on the Iraq War after having been for it at first.
Apr '11
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Welcome Michael. To add to the questions you already have to answer. Where do you foresee the future of Iraq going with US ending its military presence in Iraq? And, what was the most surprising thing you learned from your time covering the surge? Thanks
Oct '10
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Michael,
Welcome to Ricochet. My question is very simple. Now that it's all over for the United States, do you think our involvement there was worth the price we paid?
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
And Michael, I'd be curious to know what your gut says about Liz Sly's reporting from Iraq, particularly this piece, in which she argues that fears of Iranian attempts to fill the vacuum left by the Americans are overstated. Is that your sense as well?
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
I should note that Michael conveys this well in the book. It's very much worth reading.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
By the way, Michael, there are also questions for you on this thread. (To keep things simple, it would be best to answer them on this thread.)
Aug '11
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Michael,
Are you available for Book Signings in the Portland area?
Sep '10
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Yes, immediately after Road to Fatima Gate, which I'm reading now (incredibly slow reader am I).
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
I should note that Michael conveys this well in the book. It's very much worth reading. · Dec 16 at 11:22am
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
I thought it would be much cleaner and shorter. Or, rather, I thought there would only be one war in Iraq, the one against the government of Saddam Hussein. I did not foresee an insurgency or a terrorist war.
I feel a bit stupid about that in hindsight, but I had my reasons. The Kurdish north had been free of Saddam’s rule for a decade, and the people there felt and still feel overwhelmingly grateful. Most Americans don’t know it, but Iraq’s Kurds are among our best friends in the world. Unlike the Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey, they are uncorrupted by terrorism. And unlike the Arab parts of Iraq, Kurdistan is overwhelmingly pro-American and even pro-Israel.
Iraq’s Arabs, I thought, would be more like Iraq’s Kurds than they are. That was my biggest error. Arab culture are politics are very different indeed from Kurdish culture and politics. I didn’t know that when the war started, but I sure know it now.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
The only thing that would surprise me at this point is if Baghdad ever resembles Paris the way Beirut slightly does.
The place is mind-bogglingly dysfunctional and that makes me a pessimist. But it’s much less violent and deranged than it was, so that makes me a bit of an optimist.
A lot of what happens inside Iraq will be determined by what happens outside. Regime-change in Syria and Iran would almost certainly help. Will either of those things happen any time soon? Who knows?
I don’t think there’s much else the United States can do at this point to make Iraq better. We no longer want to be there. Iraqis no longer want us to be there. So, for better or for worse, we’re leaving.
I find myself somewhat persuaded by those who say we are leaving too soon, but I don’t think even if John McCain were president that we’d stick around all that much longer. The difficult relationship between our two countries has already gone about as far as it can go.
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
cbc: Michael,
Are you available for Book Signings in the Portland area? · Dec 16 at 11:30am
Yes.
Sep '11
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
Michael,
I am a very big fan of your work. Thank you for visiting Ricochet. What do you think are the long-term prospects for the Iraqi Kurds? How are they doing in post-Saddam Iraq?
Sep '10
Re: Ricochet Book Club: The Long-Awaited Discussion With Michael J. Totten
I read somewhere that you do not see the events called the Arab spring as having been elicited by democratic activities being implemented in Iraq. (If I'm misquoting you, apologies.) Is that an indication that you do not see external affairs as driving these tendencies—now seemingly extending into Russia and even China? Or that there are simply too many forces acting together to be able to single out one or two?