A more serious man
Contrast NYT reporter John Burns with the insipid fellow we quoted below:
[the] big scale of killing in this war is something that is new to me and to many correspondents who have covered many of these regional wars in the last fifteen or twenty years. The brutality, the nature of the killing, the way the killings are carried out, the suicide bombings, and we experienced this personally, in a sense, that we have to find a way to survive in the middle of this, and we have had to adopt measures which by the standards of the major American media are extraordinary, simply to be able to operate in the middle of this. So if I’m asked for comparisons between Sarajevo and Iraq, all I can say is that this war seems a great deal more brutal and bloody than even that very unpleasant war in Bosnia.
But I want to say, Hugh, and I’m sure we’ll get to this later on, the conundrum is this. If you leave, there’s all likelihood if the United States withdraws its forces in a precipitous manner, the likelihood is it seems to me that there will be a great deal more killing. If you stay, of course, the counterargument, which we can also recognize, based in Baghdad, if you stay, what if you cannot stabilize the situation, and American blood and treasure continues to have to be poured into this situation, then it comes down to in an end, a calculation which only the American people can make between, if you will, of the Iraqi interest and the American interest, the American interest in bringing the boys home, and saving for the casualties, or leaving the enormous strain that there is on the American taxpayer, now $400 billion dollars already spent, that’s an extremely difficult issue to resolve.
It’s of course at the very core of the political debate in the United States. We can recognize just how difficult that problem is, that if we’re…if I’m asked, as somebody who lives in Baghdad, and has been for five years, about the consequences, all I would say is if you’re going to do that, if you are going to pull back, you have to recognize that there is a very, very high price that’s going to be paid by Iraqis…
if it’s correct that 3,700 people died in October across Iraq, think about this. You take the American troops away in this situation, leaving Shiite death squads to move into Adamiya in force without any kind of protection, he said it won’t be 3,700 dead in a month, it’ll be 3,700 dead in the night in Adamiya. Now that may be an exaggeration, but it reflects the kind of fears that are quite widespread, amongst Sunnis in particular, but also to some extent amongst Shiites in Iraq, about the consequences of an American troop withdrawal.
Whose judgment seems more considered? Who seems the more serious man?