LESSONS FROM THE STORY OF THE BAGHDAD DIARIST

The Army says the New Republic's stories, written by a soldier serving in Iraq, are false. The Weekly Standard has been making the assertion that the stories were false from the beginning, backed by a number of bloggers, and they say that the soldier in question, Private Beauchamp, has said he made them up, speaking under oath to Army investigators. One Iraq War veteran, writing in Slate, takes a measured view of the situation. My view? In war, atrocities happen. I am reminded of the story, from WWII, of the American soldiers, leaving Europe to head back home after the German surrender, who were given a survey which asked, "Describe any atrocities you have seen". One soldier supposedly turned to another and asked, "Do they mean ours or theirs"? As a former soldier myself (although only of the peacetime variety) I cannot discount on its face any story that shows soldiers behaving badly. I have seen many instances of bad, even immoral, behavior. Wartime veterans have told me stories of American troops behaving badly (ask any WWII veteran who served in an Army or Marine unit that saw ground combat if he ever saw or heard about enemy prisoners being summarily shot). So, it is not that Private Beauchamp's tales are impossible to believe. What is bothersome about this situation is how The New Republic allowed itself to succumb too easily to the belief that American soldiers would behave badly, without doing the really difficult work of checking the facts thoroughly. I can only surmise that the magazine's editors simply believe we are "the bad guys", and should withdraw from Iraq posthaste. Of course, The Weekly Standard seems to think we are "the good guys", and advocate our continued presence in Iraq. Wartime veterans will tell you that the concept of "good guys" and "bad guys" doesn't really apply in combat, which involves only "those who want to kill you" and "those who can help you stay alive" (and, unfortunately, "those who just happen to be in the way"). In the end, the Private Beauchamp/Baghdad Diarist story is less about the realities of combat, than it is about the domestic political debate about the Iraq War. The editors and writers at The New Republic, and their like-minded colleagues at other publications, wish to show the evils of this war in order to help "educate" the public to agitate for its speedy conclusion. The editors and writers at The Weekly Standard, and their like-minded colleagues at other publications, wish to "educate" the public about the good that is coming from and will come from fighting, and winning, this war, in order to sustain their morale and commitment to the fight. If you want to be a straight journalist, and an informed citizen, you need to realize that this war, like all wars, cannot be neatly plugged into concepts of "good" and "evil", since there are large measures of both to be found within it. It seems to me, therefore, that the best way to analyze it is to determine, as a citizen of the United States, whether the prosecution of this war is helping, or hurting, the national security of the nation. That process is not well served by a debate over whether or not one private and his squad mates engaged in misbehavior, however disgusting or disturbing.