Laura Ingraham, Headed For A Hotel Balcony In Iraq Real Soon
We know Laura Ingraham is a very smart woman. I'm already hearing howls from the commenters, but it's true: She's a former Supreme Court law clerk, Reagan Administration speechwriter, multiple author, and high-rated radio host (the most listened-to female radio host in the country) and is also an articulate and telegenic TV commentator. She's not a fringe player, either; she was just on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos and was just signed to Fox, where she now appears regularly on O'Reilly. This is fact, not opinion — and does not go to the content of her remarks, or books, or how, er, nice she comes off as being. (I'll save you wondering: She doesn't.) So with a woman as intelligent as Ingraham, as used to fending off perceived liberal attacks, you'd think she'd have come up with something a little sturdier to support her position that the Iraq war was going well yesterday on "The View."
"We have, right now in Iraq really good news coming out of Baghdad," said Ingraham. Well, let's hear it! "We have violence down, sectarian violence down, the al-Qaeda is being pushed out ...you can stay with your narrative that we're big losers and we're going to lose in Iraq, the truth of the matter is things are turning around for the better."
Okay. Well, that is debatable and has definitely been debated, but Ingraham makes those statements without really providing backup, which would be nice, or context, which is key. It's true that numbers are down in recent months — roadside bombs and deaths of both Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. But Ingraham doesn't acknowledge a key factor in the dropped numbers: Population displacement. The Iraqi refugee crisis is huge, as giant chunks of people have been driven from their cities by the same sectarian violence she claims is down. Well, sure — it's down now, after displacement or ethnic cleansing. So that's sort of a Pyrrhic victory. Also, the sad fact remains that 2007 — with six weeks to go — has become the deadliest year for American soldiers in Iraq.
Ingraham knows this, of course, but rather than grapple with what is really happening over there — complicated progress, hobbled by steps back with every stride forward — Ingraham turns it into an issue of patriotism. Hear the tone in her voice as she responds to Barbara Walters, who makes the legitimate point that the "I think this is a country that is still unhappy about it." (For evidence of same, see: Election 2006, House and Senate.) Responded Ingraham: "But could it change, Barbara? Do you want to win in Iraq?" Again, the tone: Slightly accusatory, more than a little condescending. The "Do you want to win in Iraq?" canard is oft-used by Conservatives in these debates, explicitly making it an us-versus-them equation, where the only answer is "yes" which means the only alternative is to support the war. The real question is not "Do you want to win?" but "What is the best and safest way to end the war, to keep our troops and nation safest?" but that's a much more difficult question, and one which has to acknowledge the patriotism of both sides. Ingraham, of course, is not interested in such discourse.
It's a tired argument, one that should really be obsolete in 2007, after so many false promises and hoped-for-corners-turned and six-more-months and obfuscations and scandals. But it's the kind that Ingraham has been putting forth for literally years, back when she claimed that journalists in Iraq weren't bothering to go out with troops because it would mean leaving their hotel balcony. This, of course, fed straight into the "media ignoring good news from Iraq" meme — even though journalists in search of a feel-good story would either find it cut short by a murder or be injured before they could even get there. Is it important to note that there have been improvements in Iraq? Absolutely. Is it just as important to do it responsibly? Yes. But that's a "View" Laura Ingraham has much less of an interest in taking.
Laura Ingraham: War In Iraq Is Going Well [HuffPo]
p.s. Also, she was wearing black sequins on O'Reilly last Friday. I'm sure she was going out, but, well, it was weird.
Loading comments…
Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | November 13, 2007 09:54 AM