From Reuters:
A senior U.S. general compared Iraq on Thursday to a "work of art" in progress, saying it was too soon to judge the outcome and playing down violence and friction with Iraqi leaders as "speed bumps" on the road.
"A lump of clay can become a sculpture, blobs of paint become paintings which inspire," Major General William Caldwell, chief military spokesman, told his weekly Baghdad news briefing.
"The final test of our efforts will not be the isolated incidents reported daily but the country that the Iraqis build."
Now, flashback to the posting on this site from two days. I published an email from a source who works in the US embassy on communications matters. He wrote:
So far, the book by the former Washington Post Iraq reporter, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, seems the most accurate picture of what is happening here. He writes about everyone coming to Iraq with good intentions and then being trapped in a surreal cocoon and becoming part of the problem. I spend every day trying to make sure I avoid that bubble syndrome, but I fear it is already happening. We are speaking to an audience [in Iraq] we do not understand. All the communications trickery and flack magic in the world cannot fix that.
So I'm thinking, what will Iraqis think when they hear the senior US general in Iraq comparing the horrific chaos there to a "work of art" in progress? On the gaffe-meter, shouldn't this remark rate higher than John Kerry's botched joke?
COMING SOON. Or maybe it's up by the time you read this--another edition of Bloggingheads.tv featuring me and former White House aide (for Bush the First) Jim Pinkerton. We disagree on the meta-significance of the Kerry remark. Pinkerton claims it reveals the limousine-liberal bias of a guy who married an heiress. I note Kerry is a guy who chose to serve in a combat hot-zone and he merely screwed up an anti-Bush gag. We make no predictions about the elections, but concur that they're all about Iraq--and that ain't good for Bush. Pinkerton celebrates the Wall and missile defense. I get practical: do they work? (How many billions of dollars have been thrown down the rathole for missile defense in the past 23 years?) We both hail NASA's decision to fix the Hubble telescope. It's one giant leap for scientists--and a worthy diversion from NASA's fixation on manned and womanned space travel. Hey, anyone remember Bush's grand announcement in the 2004 State of the Union Speech about his humans-to-Mars initiative? He certainly hasn't talked much about that since then. He must have really meant it, right? Check out our chat when it's up.
Posted by David Corn at November 3, 2006 10:02 AM
