Bottom Line: Following the standards of journalism adopted by The New Republic and by my post-modern colleagues in the Academy, I have decided to report on my experiences in Iraq.
Now I have never been to Iraq, but I am told (by modern academics) that it is not the literal truth of the story that counts, but whether the story “smells right” or has the right over arching plot.
It seems good to try this out and write a story that is not true, but which accepts all the premises about the War and the troops that I am supposed to believe by people on the left (even though I do not believe them). In this way, I hope to get a job as a house conservative at some left-of-center journal.
What do liberals imagine (and keep assuming) conservatives believe about the War?
Leftists think conservatives believe:
that there are no problems in Iraq,
that all our troops are perfect,
and that the Surge not only is working but has already worked.
Of course, conservatives do NOT believe those things, but a story that was built on what conservatives really believed would not be believed by a left-of-center magazine. They are o.k. with making up facts, but your made-up-facts have to fit the template of what the person making up the facts is supposed to generally believe.
In short, to become a conservative reporter at a liberal magazine, I will have to pretend to be the kind of conservative they can believe in as well as making up the facts of my story.
It is very hard to write for a post-modern liberal magazine.
The Story (none of which is true, but since it would be nice for the left if it were true that conservatives believed the assumptions behind the story, it will pass the smell test for true-enough-ishness.)
By- Anonymous
The first thing I saw when I landed in Iraq on mission for the AP was a banner saying, “Welcome, Yankee! Iraq loves you.”
“Darn,” I said, “why doesn’t the mainstream media report this stuff?”
A burly sergeant stopped me. His arms were full of toys for the kids of Iraq, but his face was troubled.
“There, there,” he said, “we will have none of that kind of language.”
“What?” I replied shocked.
“The kids might be listening and you just used the ‘d-word.’”
“Sorry,” I mumbled as the modern Sir Galahad strode off into the blazing Iraqi sun looking a bit like John Wayne.
As I drove in comfort to the Green Zone, I was shocked at the totally rebuilt City of Baghdad. Not even Bob Hope and Bing Crosby could have gotten into trouble on this road trip and I saw countless national Dorothy Lamours waving at my convoy.
“It wasn’t like this before the Surge.” noted my interpretor.
“Really?” I said, asking the hard questions AP was paying me ask.
“Honest Sunni!” he said with a Huck-Finn-in-Mesopotamia grin, “Things were gosh-darn, I mean, very bad.”
“Do you blame Bush?” I said.
“The Great George, blessings on him?” he looked around nervously. “That kind of talk could stir up violence again.”
Now I was on to something. I leaned over and gazed at him intently to see if he was lying.
“Violence?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I will admit that before the Surge things here were not as good as they are now.”
“Yes?” I said using my best Foer-fact-finding style on the poor man.
“We were fighting. Some of the sides felt that some groups were not deferential enough to Bush, blessings on him, or to our American brothers. This caused some serious tensions that often broke out into violence.”
One hour in Iraq and already much was clear to me. As I passed into the Green Zone (which really should be called the Greener Zone), I realized there was, at that very moment, a rainbow reaching from heaven down to the roof of the American embassy.
I cannot prove that I saw this, since my camera was sadly in my other luggage, but it was there.
What else have I seen in Iraq? Everywhere there is victory in the air. Old men receive brown-paper packages tied up with string containing a few of their favorite things every day thanks to Our Brave Boys in Khaki. Old woman are free to sew warm woolen mittens (a new growth industry) while playing with kittens in front of their new modest, but comfortable suburban homes.
Most heartening of all I saw young people fighting for dvd copies of “Leave it to Beaver” and other American cultural artifacts.
It is no wonder that more accurate polling on the War before I left home (suppressed by the mainstream media) shows that all but a few disenchanted left-wing bloggers support the War.
As a bunny hopped up to my hand to eat some Swiss chard from my MRE in front of my embarrassingly comfortable Haliburton-built hotel (next to Cheney High and Rumsfield Community Hospital), I thought: “The folks back home should hear this.”
It was then I saw a Bradley fighting vehicle swerve out of the road to avoid hitting a precious little puppy with a wounded paw. I saw a tough fighting man get out of that vehicle and make a splint for that paw. He patted the doggie on the head, shed a tear, and then got back in his armored vehicle after handing the puppy and a complimentary “Hello-Kitty” backpack to the a young Iraqi lad.
I know the angels were weeping. I was.
Up Date: Sadly, the response from the center-right community has been anything but accepting of this new experiment. They seem to care, really care, that this tale isn’t true. Still. I can hope for a job at the The New Republic.
All kidding aside, this War is serious business. I pray nightly for my students now there. It is too serious for the left (or the right!) to begin to confuse wishes for truth.
