Focused Engagement Strategy

Posted by mauer

Posted: February 3, 2007 - 6:42 am

BAGHDAD, Feb. 3 — I thought I was attending a press conference.

Iraq reconstruction officials from the State department, Army and Army Corps of Engineers hold a press conference for Iraqi media. That's Erich Langer on the left in front of the map.

The handouts said “Press Conference.“ There were officials at the table, reporters in the seats and TV cameras in back. The officials spoke. The reporters scribbled. When the moderator opened it up for questions, I rose to speak. I was told to sit down.

I was American. This was a press event for Iraqi and Arab media.

As a point of fact, all the officials were Americans: someone from the State Department, the rest from the Army and the Army Corps of Engineers. The man who sat me down when I stood to speak was Erich Langer, a public affairs officer with the Corps.

I think this was one of those events where U.S. officials complain the media doesn’t report the good news. It was a roundtable about reconstruction efforts, in particular in the criminal justice system.

The state department official, Jim Santelle, spoke of 30 courthouses being rebuilt around the country, and another five new ones under construction. (Is this number significant? No clue from the official. This is a country of 26 million people, give or take those that have fled and the foreign fighters who have arrived for the insurgency. Between the state and feds, I’m quite sure we have more than 30 courthouses in Alaska.) There are new prisons, better prisoner transport and new witness protection programs. There are more places for Iraqis to sue each other, or to be tried by criminal courts.

Another official said it was exciting to be restoring services to Baghdad, though he also had no specifics.

Lt. Commander Mike Lowry said the United States was working to help ”rehabilitate Iraqi citizens who happened to be outside the law.” He didn’t say how.

Maj. Robert Nash said his unit was building gas stations and other facilities on one side of the Tigris River in Baghdad, and Lt. Commander Jeff Powell said he was doing the same on the other.

The U.S. government is spending nearly $1 billion in Baghdad alone, they said.

By this time, more than an hour had passed. There was such a hubbub in the room you could barely hear what they were saying. Few of the Iraqi journalists were listening.

Why should they? Everything was a generality. What was being done to make life better under the occupation? How many petrol stations actually were being built? How much gasoline were they delivering? Why do the drivers from the McClatchy bureau have to wait three to four hours to fill up? Why are the lines of cars, buses and trucks so long at gas stations that they make terrific targets for car bombers?

What is the need and what has been delivered? There wasn’t an iota of real information.

Col. Robert Ruch of the Corps told them the U.S. government was pursuing a “focused engagement strategy.” Then he said that different official groups in the reconstruction effort were being asked to draw up lists of the “top three needs” of the people in their neighborhoods of their jurisdictions.

That was too much for my Iraqi colleague from the McClatchy bureau. He put his head in his hands, turned away from them and from me. Then he turned back to me and said in a stage whisper: “In four years time, they’re just now asking what are the top three needs?”

All I could do was shake my head. I was just as incredulous.

“You made a big mistake to come to this press conference,” he added. “This is a waste of time.”

“No,” I whispered. “It is boring, but not a waste of time. I am learning something very important.”

Finally Langer, the corps official who was running the press conference, called for questions. I stood up.

This is what I would’ve said:

“Today I had a conversation with an Iraqi who just joined our bureau as a translator. I asked her what her life was like. She said the one or two hours a day of electricity isn’t enough for heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer. The kerosene man and the bottled gas man are too afraid to deliver to her neighborhood. The garbage piles up in her garage and on the street because it’s not even collected monthly anymore and the rats are bigger than cats and scare the dogs. Her son’s school is forced to post snipers on the roof to protect the kids. When they go out for recess, the children must stand next to the perimeter walls because when mortars explode nearby, the hot shrapnel arcs over the wall and lands in the center of the school yard. How does what you’ve said today have anything to do with this woman’s life?”

OK, so I didn’t get to ask that question. But the Iraqi reporters had similar ones of their own. The U.S. officials responded that things would get better, maybe when security got better.

What was that billion dollars buying, anyway? Sorry, couldn’t ask.

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