Big Mac's Iraq Travel Guide for Obama: "Great Green Zone Escapes"

My very reliable sources inform me that John McCain just sent Senator Obama his latest travel guide to Iraq entitled: "Great Green Zone Escapes" (GGZE). Being the intrepid Iraq travel promoter he is, McCain wants to get Obama over to Iraq before the mid-summer heat makes visits to Baghdad so, so unpleasant, since Republicans simply cannot expect a Democratic presidential candidate to just hop on any ol' military transport and corkscrew into Baghdad with an outdated travel guide, can they?

You see, Obama's Iraq travel guide is, well, you know, out of print and out of date -- at least over 800 days old according to McCain -- far too out of date since the last time Obama visited Baghdad. And how can one travel to Iraq without a guidebook hot off the McCain campaign's printing presses? After all, so much has changed since Obama's last visit, if one is to believe McCain.

On its face, "GGZE" is a lavish travel literary achievement -- sort of a conjoined Lonely Planet + Fodors. It is resplendent with insights into the best restaurants in and out of the Green Zone (fresh, freshly butchered goat is apparently McCain's favorite delicacy), a detailed guide to shopping markets open after curfew, a unique rating system to the best hotels in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk, including which have IED blast-proof windows. Oh, and it also includes a special pullout map of the Mahdi Army's checkpoints should one want to pay homage to Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Karbala in a rent-a-Stryker down the so-called Highway of Death from Baghdad.

"GGZE" also provides a walking tour of Sadr City by night (special body armor is a must, but no flash photography permitted), as well as a special feature unfound in any other Iraqi travel guide: "Things to Do When There's No Escaping the Green Zone."

I was fortunate to have smuggled out of Big Mac's campaign a copy of "GGZE," and thanks to my good friends at the HuffPost, they've asked me to review it so that Sen. Obama, should he venture to Iraq, can benefit from a timely expose of "GGZE."

"GGZE" I am afraid, is marred from its first expression of gratitude to Sen. Lieberman, to its last page. McCain fails to provide the visitor with a fair perspective on the riveting sectarian violence that makes visits outside the Green Zone such a risky proposition, even when accompanied by Gen. Petreaeus. His chapter on the splendors of Baghdad misses so many important landmarks, including a maze map of Baghdad's blast walls, a rating to the safest bomb shelters in the Green Zone, Moqtada Al Sadr's weapons caches, and, most importantly, the best road from the Green Zone to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). Moreover, having failed to provide an adequate guide to Iraq's cultural and religious heritage, McCain incessantly mixes up "Sunni" and "Shiite." Any other guidebook seems to have that nailed from the get go.

Surely, McCain could not have forgotten that his own definition of progress in Iraq is immortalized in his own words about that winding road to BIAP -- something to the effect that he will know progress is being made when he can drive without an escort from Baghdad to BIAP. Memo to Sen. Obama: Don't meander down that road just yet!

"GGZE" also fails to include enough historical photos to help the visitor better understand the persons most likely to affect Iraq's future so that Green Zone escapes may become more accessible to the visiting CODEL. Oh, sure, Big Mac's picture album includes the usual fare, including his many visits to safe market places, and Saddam's final moments.

But the one photo that Big Mac glaringly omitted is a recent photo taken in Baghdad (March 2, 2008 to be exact). It captures the essence of Iraq's future: a history making warm embrace between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was on a state visit to Iraq. I will make sure that Sen. Obama sees that one before he departs (and help you savor it if the folks at HuffPost will enable me to post it here).

I can spare Sen. Obama a lot of wasted time if he truly wants to visit the real Iraq -- not the Baghdad that John McCain wants him to see, and upon which to judge Iraq.

If he does travel there, Sen. Obama will see a "safer" Baghdad. Certainly, he will see that our forces have made demonstrable gains by restoring security to vast swaths of Baghdad, and they deserve credit for restoring some semblance of order to some of Baghdad's blood torn neighborhoods.

Undoubtedly, Gen. Petreaus will assure Sen. Obama that Al Qaeda is on the run throughout Iraq, and that with a little more time, more security will return, and more Iraqi forces will shoulder greater responsibility.

Sen. Obama does not need John McCain to tell him that, and Sen. Obama does not have to go to Iraq to see that with his own eyes. All he has to do is read Gen. Petreaus' Congressional testimony of a few weeks ago.

What Sen. Obama, however, should take in should he visit Iraq is this: whether today, tomorrow of two years from now, Iraq's Shiite dominated government will increasingly come under the sway of America's adversaries no matter how militarily successful the surge. PM Maliki is not the future face of Iraq, Moqtada Al Sadr and Iran's Revolutionary Guards are. Further sectarian strife is inevitable, and corruption, misappropriated oil revenues, and intra-Shiite violence to determine who is the head Shiite in Iraq renders the military success of the surge insignificant. The surge will not prevent these events from unfolding...only delaying them.

Wrapping the surge's military achievements around McCain's chest, as if that will undo the failure and calamity of the last five years, is fiction, not fact. Iraq's future is, much to anyone's regret, no longer in the hands of the U.S. military, but in the hands of the Shiite's and their benefactors in Iran. As billions of dollars in reconstruction funds sink into Swiss bank accounts, and Iranian influence grows unchecked from Basra north to Baghdad, our soldiers are fighting for a cause that is hard to find in McCain's "GGZE."

In the final analysis "GGZE" is like any other inadequately researched travel guide. Lot's of wishful thinking substituting for eyewitness inspection of the place, greased palms for a few clean pillows, and implausible details that camouflage the true nature of Iraq's intractably turbulent landscape. Big Mac will have to escape the Green Zone more often if he is to make his travel guide a best seller. Sen. McCain clearly lacks the experience to write a true accounting of what is taking place in Iraq. He sees mirages rather than realities. Sen. Obama best chuck "GGZE." It's not worth the paper it's written on.

Comments

[DaveNoble]

Great post. Politicians who visit Iraq are cocooned in a protective bubble, physically and psychologically. Then they go home to our stable democracy. The Iraqis have to stay in the chaos of their liberation.

A note in passing - William Kristol's column in the New York Times criticized Barrack Obama for not mentioning military service as a form of public service during a commencement address. He accused him of "the soft patriotism of low expectations." Interestingly, Mr. Kristol never chose this form of service as a manifestation of his patriotism. I quess they also serve who sit and pontificate.

[cryingmoon]

Excellent. Hope that the Obama campaign will read and distribute. Too important to ignore!

[stavros]

Ouch!