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TechnoratiJohn McCain's glowing post-visit assessment of conditions in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton's hyperbolically harrowing recollections of her 1996 trip to Bosnia both stand as shining examples of what the British writer Malcolm Muggeridge dubbed "the eyewitness fallacy."
In a brilliant essay, Muggeridge described public figures of strong conviction throughout history -- many of them greatly admired and well-meaning -- who, in eyewitness accounts, saw what they wanted to see, and became what they wanted to be.
"They must believe a lie who see with, not through, the eye," Blake wrote. Muggeridge took this one step further, saying that many eyewitnesses see things with the glass eye they have fixed into their skulls -- and then fervently believe what this glass eye registers.
Surely McCain was seeing the "surge is working" glass eye he has fixed in his skull when he told a town hall crowd this week, "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says." And McCain backed up his claims with what he clearly considers his trump card: "I've seen the facts on the ground."
Well, he was just in Iraq for the eighth time since the war began, so he must know what he's talking about, right? Or was he merely seeing what he wanted to see, in order to become what he so desperately wants to be?
The most memorable example of McCain seeing what he wanted to see, of course, was his infamous stroll through Baghdad's central market last April, which he offered as proof of improved security. Remember the facts on the ground eyewitness account of his traveling companion, Rep. Mike Pence?
It was just like "a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime," reported Pence. Take away the 100 soldiers in armored Humvees and the three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships circling above and his comparison was spot on.
Rep. Lindsay Graham, who accompanied McCain and Pence ("I bought five rugs for five bucks," he said of the market), returned home and later predicted that, based on what he'd witnessed firsthand, "within the next weeks, not months, there will be a major breakthrough" on political reconciliation.
Given that Graham had seen the facts on the ground, it's shocking how that major breakthrough failed to break through.
Clearly, seeing Iraq with a glass eye is not limited to John McCain. Indeed, it seems that glass eyes are standard issue for most politicians and journalists visiting the war zone. You get a flak jacket, a pair of desert boots, and an implantable glass eyeball.
"About two-thirds of the country is in really pretty good shape," reported Sen. Joe Lieberman upon returning from a two-day visit to Iraq in November 2005. "Overall, I came back encouraged." So he was able to assess how things were going in a country of over 167,000 square miles in 2 days? And what were the keys to his being encouraged? According to AP, it was "a profusion of cell phones and satellite TV dishes on rooftops." McCain has his "facts on the ground." For Lieberman, it's all about the waves in the air.
His eyewitness observations empowered him with the same predictive accuracy that Graham demonstrated: Lieberman held out high hopes for a "significant" withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2006. It's now March 2008.
And it's not just pro-war cheerleaders like Lieberman, Graham, and McCain. Even anti-war Democrats are susceptible to the eyewitness fallacy.
"I think the surge is working," reported Jack Murtha after a November 2007 trip to Iraq.
"The military aspects of President Bush's new strategy in Iraq," said Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin in an August 2007 statement released jointly with Sen. John Warner, "appear to have produced some credible and positive results." Levin's assessment, like Lieberman's was based on "a very productive two-day visit to Iraq."
Then there is Hillary Clinton, who during a February 2005 trip to Iraq, said that a wave of suicide attacks was "an indication of [the insurgency's] failure." On her trip, apparently booked by Lieberman's travel agent, Clinton focused on what she at the time thought would help her be what she one day wanted to be, and saw what she wanted to see: "I think you can look at the country as a whole and see that there are many parts of Iraq that are functioning quite well."
But was she really able to "look at the country as a whole"? According to USA Today, Clinton made that assessment based on time spent only in the heavily fortified Green Zone. Prior to her appraisal, her only other glimpse of Baghdad "came from the relative safety of U.S. military helicopters that ferried [Clinton and other Senators] from the airport."
This is a huge part of the problem with these eyewitness accounts: they tend to be tightly controlled and, in the words of a former Army vice chief of staff, "very limited" in scope. According to an April 2007 story in the New York Times, "Members rarely spend more than a night in Iraq, often flying back to Kuwait or Jordan at the end of the day. The trips are heavy on meetings with American military and embassy officials, with almost no opportunities for unscripted encounters with regular Iraqis."
So, safely ensconced in the Green Zone, their eyewitness accounts deeply influenced by what they are being told by military officials, visiting politicians frequently start seeing Iraq through rose-colored glasses.
And when they do venture out of the Green Zone in armored convoys, they are often taken to showcase neighborhoods the military has spruced up and fortified -- the Iraqi equivalent of the bustling farms reporters were regularly taken to in Stalin's Soviet Union to mask the famine and deprivation afflicting the country.
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, whose first visit to Iraq was a 36-hour trip last March, managed to see without a glass eye, likening the experience to "drilling a tiny, tiny, little core sample out of some vast geologic mass and then drawing conclusions from it."
So our politicians hunker down in the Green Zone, pay drive-by visits to Iraqi Potemkin villages, and then make grand pronouncements about the state of the country and the success of the surge.
And we are expected to dutifully accept their eyewitness accounts as truth. After all, they, like John McCain, have "seen the facts on the ground."
"It is not surprising," wrote Muggeridge, "that Pilate did not wait for an answer when he asked his famous question: 'What is truth?' He, too, had doubtless been studying eyewitness reports, including, of course, that of Judas Iscariot."
Arianna Huffington is the editor of The Huffington Post and the author of many books, including her most recent, On 'Becoming Fearless….in Love, Work and Life'.
© 2008 The Huffington Post
14 Comments so far
Show AllWe all know the truth, those who write here. We don't count because we are so few. The journalists who appear here simply support what we know. Why is it they do not matter out there where these words should apply. Or on the congressional walls where those boobs who do this to the military and the people can see what the truth truly is? We know but these pages find there way to the bottom very soon.
It isn't complicated. They just a bunch of liars and couldn't care less for anyone but themselves and their own so long as their own are useful to them.
canuckchuck, I heard a heartbreaking story about just that.
When the Americans were invading Iraq and they were bombing 24 hours a day, a family with 2 teenaged girls tried to leave because the girls were hysterical with stress from the noise and fear. They hit a roadblock and the father, who had been educated in an American college and believed that Americans were intelligent and reasonable, got out of the car to explain to the soldiers that he was simply trying to get his children out of an intolerable situation. He spoke English. The soldiers killed him and the two girls.
Both McCain and Graham should announce three weeks in advance that they will be flying into Bagdad for a visit, then drive from the airport to the Green Zone down the main highway connecting the two. This would convince us all how well things have gone with the "surge" and how safe it is in Badgad now. After all Ahmandinajad was able to do this last month. Something no American diplomat has been yet able to do for five years.
Same thing happens if you bring a foreigner to the USA for a couple of days, but only let him see Harvard....he may walk away with the impression that americans are intelligent.
"Surge" must be working and "surge" has to be working. There is no way around. Senator (next President) John McCain is right on that.
4,000 Americans gave their lives; for invading and occupying Iraq, Americans taxpayers spent over $500 billion already in hard cash. For what purpose? One might ask.
Answer is simple: To secure Iraqi oil for American economy.
Iraqi oil belongs to America. Americans deserve every drop of it. With blood and money, Americans bought every drop of Iraqi oil.
Late President Ronald Reagan used to say, history is written by the victors. If Adolph Hitler had won the World War II, our kids would have been reading a different history now.
Let's face the truth: America won the war with Iraq. Therefore, Iraqi wealth belongs to American government.
By hook or by crook, American government must control Iraq.
American tax-payers annually spend over $600 billion for the military-industrial complex to invade other countries.
Senator (next President) John McCain understands that. That's why Senator (next President) John McCain must believe what nobody else wants to believe; Senator (next President) John McCain must say things in public, which nobody believes are true.
And, that's what makes Senator (next President) John McCain so American!
The Bush-Cheney-Gates-Petraeus Potemkin village strategy is working. You pay off erstwhile enemies not to shoot at you, embed journalists, and choose the safest spot with heavy security for photo-ops. If things are so safe, why are so many people being killed every day, why is there so much fighting going on, and why are there more than 4 million refugees? The real objective is to hold things together until the election so John McCain can ascend to the throne and protect Bush and Cheney from accountability for their literally millions of felony counts.
Arianna Huffington, please tell me in this media subversion atmosphere, and government control, of the truth with its use of journalists like Tony Snow and Wolf Blitzer, who wants the truth? Come, come, Arianna, It's all about money and oil nothing more. These people whom you mention don't want to see anything else but bank deposits for themselves and their friends who occupy the high offices, as you know the likes of SO! So why the erudite writing at this time, five years later, about these failed thinkers and con men? Do you want us to believe that you care so much or is it that want us to know that you write so well? The pose of media associate is wonderful but can you take off the gloves and really tell it like it is or are you afraid of not being received in the high places?
Arianna is absolutely right on the money!
"Or maybe they have just the one evil eye which they keep passing around between themselves…"
Wish I'd said that!
"his admministration and supporters of the occupation aren't even looking at anything that contradicts their positions."
Or maybe they have just the one evil eye which they keep passing around between themselves...
"The violence is a good sign!" says the president from afar.
He needs to put on his flight jacket and swagger down a Basra street or Baghdad street.
Let's see how good violence is.
With the ongoing attacks on the Green Zone, I wonder how the Potemkin village experience will be modified to include the 'good' violence.
Blackwater fever is just one iceberg in a sea of trouble. As reported on Commondreams, this potentially fatal disease is a result of at least 70% of the population not having safe drinking water. Add to this a population weakened by stress, forced migration, malnutrition and lack of medical care and you have a recipe for periodic infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics.
I had tried to find photos of lakes of wastewater on the web but was unable. Without a clean water system and sewage system, that water's somewhere.
Had there been an iota of good intentions in Bush's War and Occupation, the water and electricity would have been repaired several years ago.
But we have Halliburton providing bad water to OUR troops! Support our troops!
There are 4.5 million displaced Iraqis out of 28 million. Or more properly,27 million live Iraqis based on the John Hopkins/Lancet study.
As for the eyewitness accounts, they have been cheerleaders of this occupation.
This admministration and supporters of the occupation aren't even looking at anything that contradicts their positions. A horse with gloucoma wearing blinders has more vision than this gang. At least the horse would try to use its vision.
Oil is only a payoff for the West's efforts at providing PROXY COMBATANTS for Israel--for protecting Israel from expanding, encircling Islamic Arabism; a Jewish nation-state having supporters throughout the West willing to destroy the entirety of Western civilization for Israel's sake. That's the gut-wrenching truth of why Western democracies are sacrificing blood and treasury in the Middle East; especially the U.S., which has enough off-shore and on-land oil reserves to last 300 years at her present rate of consumption, and which reserves were PURPOSELY capped and/or not drilled because Israel's supporters poured millions of dollars into ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT groups' coffers, to work at keeping America from oil/energy independence and tied to Israel's interests in the Middle East. That's the truth you'll NEVER see nor hear reported in Western mainstream news media, because Israel's supporters control what's fit to be said or printed about why the West wars with Islamic Arabism.
All this talk of "progress" is nothing but wishful thinking pro-war propaganda. To truly measure "progress", these pro-war politicians should walk through the streets of Baghdad and go shopping at the markets of Baghdad alone, unarmed with no protection from soldiers, security guards, roof-top snipers, or helicopters. Until they are willing to do this, I'll take whatever they say about "progress" with a huge grain of salt. Indeed, were these pro-war politicians to do just that, I get the impression that some REAL progress would happen in Iraq, arguably some of the best progress to happen in Iraq since the war's start. Their friends, families and colleagues might deny this represents real "progress", but I disagree.
Until that happens, this "progress" represents nothing more than the old "Potamkin Village" ruse in my opinion- http://cruisemates.com/articles/ports/europe/RussiaRivers2.cfm