Blogging Virgin

It may be hard to believe in today's Internet universe that allows anyone to become a pundit, but this is the first time I have ever blogged, if that is a word. In fact, I almost never even read blogs, much less write them, but my friend Arianna Huffington's invitation to contribute to huffingtonpost.com was too intriguing to turn down.

Maybe my lack of interest in the blogosphere has something to do with the fact that I'm 68 years old and still mired in the Gutenberg era as editor of The Hill, a nonpartisan, nonideological newspaper covering Congress, which I helped found in 1994. But I am an avid reader of newspaper and TV websites, including our own, and a big fan of Google, and am gradually getting used to fact that most people no longer write snail mail letters but communicate almost exclusively via email. Besides, two former colleagues of mine, Marty Kaplan, whom I worked with on Vice President Mondale's staff, and Robert Schlesinger, a former political editor of The Hill, also have been persuaded by Arianna to share their thoughts with huffingtonpost.com's readers.

Actually, if truth be told, I have been writing my own blog for the past ten-and-a-half years in the form of my weekly column in The Hill. In fact, just last month, I wrote my 500th "On the Record" column, which, for those who are interested, can be read on our website, along with the articles and columns that resulted from my recent 10-day trip to Iraq (more on that later). The subject of my column, "500 and counting," was the same as the first column I wrote in our inaugural issue on September 21, 1994, which was about journalistic ethics, a term some critics of the media consider oxymoronic, just like many of us journalists consider terms like congressional ethics or corporate responsibility equally nonsensical.

I noted that I had offered readers of my newspaper something on the order of 300,000 words while expressing my opinions, insights and prejudices, which I guess is pretty much the definition of a blog. At any rate, I pointed out that journalism has changed dramatically in the past decade with the advent of the Internet, 24-hour cable TV, radio talkshows like Imus in the Morning and Laura Ingraham (I contribute a one-minute political commentary to their programs on their Washington, D.C., outlet) and bloggers.

And while we journalists certainly have had our share of scandals -- USA Today Pentagon correspondent Tom Squiteri is the latest casualty, having been forced to resign last week for lifting quotes from another newspaper without attribution -- I declared my belief in the important role of journalism in our society: "A free and unfettered press is still one of the cornerstones of our magnificent system of democratic self-government," I wrote. "And it doesn't work very well without a press that is free to nip at the heels -- and ocacionally take a big bite out of -- those officials and bureaucrats to whom the people have given the power to govern them."

I went on to express my outrage at the effort of federal prosecutors to force two reporters, Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times, to reveal the identity of confidential sources who leaked information about CIA operative Valerie Plame. I suggested that Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago-based attorney who is in charge of the CIA leak investigation, would be better advised to spend his time and energy investigating real criminals, like the 14 reputed Chicago mobsters he recently indicted in connection with 18 unsolved murders over the past four decades.

We at The Hill take pride in the fact that we have sent more than 50 young reporters on to major newspapers, magazines and broadcast organizations, including The New Yorker, The New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Palm Beach Post, ABC-TV, CNBC,Gannett Newspapers, Congressional Quarterly and Business Week, to name a few. I always tell young reporters there is no substitute for first-hand reporting, which is why I decided to go to Iraq in March. My wife, understandably, was not thrilled at my decision, but I felt it was important to talk to some of the men and women who are doing the fighting -- and dying -- and see for myself what we're up against in this greatest projection of American military, economic and political power since Vietnam.

I think I got that as I traveled the length and breadth of Iraq, which is the size of California, while speaking with several hundred people, including those in charge of the coalition forces that have occupied Iraq since the American-led invasion two years ago, as well as soldiers and Marines, U.S. and Iraqi government officials, private contractors involved in rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, fellow journalists and ordinary Iraqis.

As I wrote on my return, while explaining why I will continue to write about Iraq in the future, "There is just too much at stake in Iraq, and in Afghanistan as well, to turn away from the momentous story being played out daily in Baghdad, Basrah, Fallujah, Mosul, Nafaf, Ramadi, Tikrit and dozens of other places where U.S.-led forces are trying to shape the history of the 21st century."

I added, "As I told Gen. John Abizaid, who commands all U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, what we're trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan is like putting together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in the dark. He didn't disagree, and no one I spoke to, from four-star generals to Marine grunts, tried to disguise the fact that we can expect to have a major presence in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come."

In fact, I explained, several generals told me that counterinsurgency wars, as this one is, typically take seven to 10 years to complete. Most Army and Marine officers say they hope U.S. troops will be used almost exclusively in an advisory role while Iraqi security forces take over, but that goal is clearly still a long way off.

Training enough Iraqi security forces to replace U.S. and coalition troops and quell the horrific violence of insurgents and Islamic jihadists is one of the three big challenges in Iraq, along with creating a new government and rebuilding an economy shatered by war and 30 years of Saddam Hussein's misrule.

The latest supplemental appropriation of more than $82 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan approved by Congress brings the total cost of the effort to implant a semblance of democracy in those countries to more than $300 billion,which is in the neighborhood of the $500 billion spent for the Vietnam war. Thankfully, the cost in lives, at least those of the American military, is far below that of Vietnam, but as some point in the not-too-distant future, I think the American people will begin to ask, as they did of the Vietnam war, if this is worth it.

I don't know the etiquette involved in blogging, but thanks to anyone who has read my initial venture into the strange new -- for me -- world of blogging.