Talk the talk, walk the walk

Three tidbits of news caught my eye today.

The first left me with the feeling of disquiet that comes from having discovering that I have a radically different view of reality than those who are eapparently in step with the mainstream. What I thought was obvious, and should be obvious, wasn't. The story, Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought, had me scratching my head. The administration always downplayed the size of the insurgency in Iraq. They maintained it was a disconnected, unorganized group of hangers on largely fueled by foreign fighters. It just didn't look that way to me. I figured they were just spinning for the sake of spiin. But now I wonder. I know, I know, I am in the cheap seats. But when you disband an army of 600,000 soldiers, doesn't it figure that some of them will go back and fight like crazy? It sounds like they guys at the top are still prone to telling themselves pretty bedtime fairytales about Iraqi love for the American Dream.

Witness the rash of car bombings and mortar attacks that are ramping up the casualty rate. Five more soldiers died today, 20 more were wounded. US Casualties are not going down.

The third story is what continues to evolve between the Isralies and the Palestinians. Today 7 Palestinians were killed during a clash With Israeli troops. I do not have a particularly nuanced view of this conflict. It just reminded me of a scene in The Control Room, Jehane Noujaim's brilliant documentary on Al Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war, in which Lt. Josh Rushing ruminates on the American failure to connect the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the war in Iraq.

Rushing's point? To the Arab on the street Israel and America are the same thing. The images of Arab death they see in Palestine are indistinguishable from the images of death they see in Iraq. The soldiers are the same. The weapons are the same. The helicopters looming over residential neighborhoods are the same. The rational and talking points are often the same. The money comes from the same account.

No matter who gets elected in November, it will behoove us all to examine our international problems as if we had walked a mile in our "enemies'" sandals. Otherwise, the unblinking cameras wielded by Al Jazeera will continue to brand US actions as one with the Israelis. We will continue to misinterpret the size and strength of insurgencies, and not just in Iraq. Most tragically perhaps, we will continue to act is if the power of our ideas should trump the pictures of our actions.