John Burns was the New York Times' Iraq reporter from the day the war started. And now, five years on, he looks back on all that's happened. His remembrances should be read for their power and evocativeness, but also because he makes a couple observations that aren't often discussed. "Reporters, too, may wish to make an accounting," he says. "If we accurately depicted the horrors of Saddam’s Iraq in the run-up to the war, with its charnel houses and mass graves, we have to acknowledge that we were less effective, then, in probing beneath the carapace of terror to uncover other facets of Iraq’s culture and history that would have a determining impact on the American project to build a Western-style democracy, or at least the basics of a civil society." It's a lesson worth keeping in mind. The reporting on the atrocities of Saddam was brave, extensive, and astonishing. But it was one-dimensional. In the popular imagination, Iraq was nothing more than tyranny and torture, gassed minorities and quashed uprisings. Americans could go to war, content that they were smashing a house of horrors. It was only later that we learned we'd destroyed a society, allowed a civilization to have its most precious artifacts looted, crushed an uneasy and often brutal equilibrium that covered murderous ethnic tensions. We were told, in other words, that we were going to war against Saddam Hussein. But what we actually invaded was Iraq. And the two were not the same. Another accounting, however, will have to be done by the Times. Their look back section features Paul Bremer, Richard Pearle, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kenneth Pollack, Richard Pletka, Nathaniel Fick, Paul Eaton, Richard Kagan, and Anthony Cordesman. In other words, a bunch of war advocates and a couple centrist analysts and commentators. Even with five years passed, there's not the humility to add on Juan Cole, or any of the other lonely voices who swam against the tide and tried to warn us away from the cliff.
