Yesterday I had to go to the Green Zone. You can see it from our roof. It is probably less than 200 yards away, only a big wall separates us. By road it takes an hour. We got into two armored cars and drove out of our compound, past our blast walls, past our two tall metal gates, past our platoon of Iraqi armed guards. We wove our way out of our little neighborhood, dotted with other press offices (each with their own platoon of armed guards) and government ministers (even more highly protected). Despite all this security, someone planted an IED around the corner from our gate just last week.
Out of our neighborhood, past an Iraqi Police checkpoint, into Baghdad traffic. Turning into the first checkpoint outside the Green Zone, traffic stops. Ever since the Parliament bombing two months ago, the security checkpoints have been as slow as molasses. It used to be, if you were a Westerner, if you had the right pass, you could slide through some of the checkpoints. No more. So we are stuck in queue after queue. Insurgents (or is it militias?) mortar the Green Zone just about every day. I hope the car next to me isn’t filled with explosives. I hope a mortar doesn’t hit us while we are standing in line. It would be too ironic to get killed while waiting at a security checkpoint.
After one security checkpoint comes another. We get out of the cars, are frisked (not very efficiently, one of our security guys had a pistol on him and the Peruvian hired hands didn’t find it), the sniffer dogs come out and smell for bombs. Back in the cars, off to the next check point.
The purpose of my visit was to cover the American Ambassador’s press conference. It is said to be a big deal, all the media is there. Yesterday was the first public meeting between the Iranian and American officials since the 1979 Revolution. I ask what about the meetings in 1985, when John Poindexter brought a bible and a cake, where we swapped weapons for money for the Contras. I’m told that was an unofficial meeting, this is the first official meeting. I think, if anything is to be accomplished, perhaps a secret meeting might be more efficacious.
The American Ambassador tells us Iran would like a tripartite security arrangement in Iraq. Iran, Iraq, and the United States would all provide forces to police the country. This, of course, is one of the nightmares that is fueling the Sunni insurgency. Any deal with neighbors to provide security in Iraq has to include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan as well as Iran. Anyway, the notion that outside powers can force peace on the Iraqi people is probably a chimera.
The intense focus on security, the lack of it, the bloated bureaucracy more interested in pleasing their Washington masters than understanding Iraq, the naiveté, I feel the Green Zone may well be a metaphor for the failures of American foreign policy.
I know a guy; I think he may be CIA, working out of the embassy in Beirut. When he travels outside of the Embassy compound, he is surrounded by bodyguards. But then he rarely leaves the compound. I wonder how he can find any intelligence if he only talks to people like himself. I wonder what is the point of having intelligence agents if they can’t leave their house. Beirut, by the way, is not a dangerous city. Westerners party all night, even now.
A Captain, West Point grad, very smart, tells me he is leaving the army. He insists our military is stretched too thin, that we need a draft, more soldiers, that we have no chance to control Iraq with the troop levels we have. He is certainly right, even though we spend more on war than the rest of the world put together.
If you want to have an empire, you must run risks. If you want to fight a war, you must be willing to sacrifice your sons. We Americans sensibly don’t want to take risks, we certainly don’t want our sons to die. Despite our predilection for Rambo movies, we are not a warrior race. We are trading people. If we want Middle East oil, we need no bases here, we just need to pay the going rate. Let us return to our commercial roots. The lust for empire has done America no good. We don’t have the talent for it, and even if we did, in today’s world the profit is in commerce, not war.