On Gratitude, Apologies and Thanks

William Arkin said recently in his blog on the Washington Post website: "These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President's handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Below are a number of excerpts from a Charlie Rose interview with John Burns, the New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief. Burns has decades of experience reporting from Vietnam to the first Gulf War, to the present conflict in Iraq.

Rose: The question is sometimes asked 'Do you owe an apology to the Iraqi people?' or something like that, and Bush recoils at that and says 'the Iraqi people owe a thank you... not to me, but to the Americans.'

Burns: I think it's important for Americans to know that despite the price that America has paid and the deaths of American troops and how many was it this weekend? - the Blackhawk crash with 13 dead... a very heavy price to pay - the ordinary Iraqi, believe me, the ordinary Iraqi, and I think the vast majority of them are deeply grateful to us for having got rid of Saddam Hussein, and that's not just the Shiites.

Even Maliki... who has proven a vexatious partner, has taken in his speeches recently to saying... he has a preamble in which he says 'make no mistake, that we are deeply grateful to the US.' The entire political class now in Baghdad was an exiled class, and the men now in their late fifties and sixties, the whole of the center of their lives were lost. That's before you take account of the fact that, for example, Maliki says that 160 members of his family were killed by Saddam. These figures are not exaggerated. There were hundreds of thousands of people killed.

Rose: And among most of those people, nobody's going to say 'I'd rather have it the way it was under Saddam than the way it is now.'

Burns: The vast majority of people still believe, I think, at least the ones I speak to, that for all the travails that Iraq has been through, they're better off without Saddam because under Saddam nothing was possible, it was a frozen world. in this world, there's always yet the possibility that this situation could resolve itself.

Rose: He [bush] may be right because... there's still a glimmer that this will turn out alright?

Burns: When we [journalists in Baghdad] sit around at our table for dinner... two things to my mind categorize those conversations... you could never say this is lost. You can't preclude the possibility that a change in a number of things, first of all stabilizing Baghdad, an exhaustion of violence that will come sooner or later... and a realization on the part of neighboring countries that there is not much to be gained for them from a slide into complete anarchy and chaos. And the other thing that we talk about is... what is the alternative?

Burns also comments on Iran. The conversation raises additional questions, such as Shouldn't the Iranians be thankful to us for liberating the Shiites? Amidst all this talk that Iraqis are thankful to Americans, and Arkin saying the troops should be thankful to the American public, logic could also lead one to conclude that Iran be grateful to the Americans for eliminating an enemy of that country and for empowering fellow Shiites.

Here is Burns, in the same interview on Iran:

Certainly the Shiites that I know best in Iraq... do not feel comfortable at all with the notion that- of too close a relation with Tehran. And they certainly don't feel comfortable with the notion that they could end up with an Islamic Republic, such as the one that has governed in Iran. There is no doubt that Iran is playing a very meddlesome role in Iraq.

Rose: How are they doing that?

Burns: Money. Finance. This raid that took place in Irbil two weeks ago... where American and Iraqi troops raided an Iraqi consulate, actually raided and took away people that had no diplomatic status, as even Iran concedes. I think there's no doubt as the American military has laid out, that these were people that are involved with channeling money and weapons into Iraq- and quite sophisticated weapons, and killing American soldiers.

It would be a brave man who could tell- discern exactly what Iranian objectives are. On the one hand, you might think that having waited a thousand years... to see a Shiite political predominance in Baghdad, the interests of the government in Iran would be to sustain and support that government and bite their tongues as far at the American presence in Iraq, which is also sustaining that government. But it seems like what predominates- so I think they have some conflicted objectives here - but I think that their hatred and animosity for the 'Great Satan' at the moment weighs more heavily with them than the interest in sustaining a stable government in Baghdad.

Rose: So is there any purpose in us trying to talk to them as the Iraq study group suggested?

Burns: I sense that affairs in that part of the world- that everything is devolved from power, and that certainly to talk to them from a disadvantaged position... might be difficult. But if you could bring about a more stable situation in Baghdad, where the United States could speak from perhaps a more advantaged position, that would be different - but at the moment, I think the Iranians are enjoying the spectacle of the United States being in so much trouble.

Rose: The President, The Vice President, think, and others- that this is a climactic battle against- the battle against terrorism, and if we lose this, terrorists win. Is it that clear? Or is it just something unique to Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, and its not gonna be some giant victory no matter what happens to al qaeda?

Burns: That would be a bit of a gamble, wouldn't it? I think the fair thing to say is that whether the President of the United States faced an Islamic militant threat before Saddam was overthrown... and as you know there has been a great argument of that, and the balance of what we know seems to lie on the side of there never was as seat of influence for al qaeda under Saddam.

But he adds:

Whatever we make of that argument, that was then and this is now. Now there is no doubt - and you only have to read the Islamic militant websites and listen to what Mr. Zawahiri and Mr. bin Laden have to say about Iraq is that they consider it is to be the main battle ground in their long war with the United States and that there is, Iraq has become, is already, and could potentially become far more of a base for Islamic militancy.

Final thoughts...

There have been any number of adjustments made. They do think about these things. The military constantly review. They have this whole process of lessons learned - for everything from an IED attack, a new IED attack, within 24 hours,every platoon commander in the United States armed forces in Iraq will know if there is something new that has happened in an IED explosion or a roadside bombing two hundred miles away.

And

I've never been involved in a story that's quite so compelling, that weighs quite so heavily on the American interests in the world... for my generation... I think this has been the defining moment.

The man is very insightful. The clarity and insightfulness of what Burns has to say is nearly as surprising and refreshing as the interesting fact that he works for The New York Times, which has taken a consistently anti-war approach. Burns' honest, forthright views are clearly well thought out insider views from a very experienced, seasoned hand.