Lecture: Aaron Glantz
Aaron Glantz visits NYU Journalism.
Photo by Megan Thompson, © 2006.
RELATED:
War correspondent Aaron Glantz wasn’t anywhere near Baghdad when he realized that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was already a debacle. In March 2003, the Pacifica Radio correspondent was reporting from a small Turkish village, which American forces had accidentally bombed. “I figured that if we were hitting the wrong countries, the situation on the ground in Iraq would have to be pretty bad,” Glantz said, in an April 4 lecture at New York University’s Department of Journalism.
Glantz recounts this war story, along with other vividly personal revelations about life as a war correspondent, in his 2005 book, How America Lost Iraq [Tarcher/Penguin]. In the memoir-cum-political polemic, the reporter details his three tours of Iraq and asserts that the U.S. war was doomed by a series of tactical missteps. Before a rapt audience of NYU faculty and students, Glantz read from his book and related some of the experiences that compelled him to write it.
Once Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown, Glantz decided to go to Iraq as an unembedded reporter. “[It was important that I be] out on my own, independent of the U.S. military,” he said. When embedded with the military, a journalist must abide by the Department of Defense’s rules and restrictions—which include wearing clothes “subdued in color and appearance,” and not driving a vehicle “while traveling in an embedded status.” Glantz believed that being chaperoned by the U.S. military would compromise his ability to get the real story. According to him, the U.S. government had a vested interest in promoting an image of Iraqis as a bunch of rebellious insurgents who could only be dealt with through force. Glantz was convinced that public opinion in Iraq would be far more nuanced than the U.S. military let on.
When he arrived in Baghdad, Glantz discovered that “the vast majority of people that [he] talked to were supportive of the American invasion, [because the U.S.] had ousted Saddam Hussein.” This attitude surprised the reporter, whose liberal politics (which he makes no effort to hide) had led him to assume that most Iraqis reviled the American troops as infidel crusaders. “It’s not that I was trying to get antiwar stories, but it went against my expectations,” said Glantz.
Unfortunately, his prediction that Iraqi opinion would turn against the U.S. soon became a reality. Glantz outlined the strategic mistakes he believes contributed to this shift in opinion. The continued lack of basic services in Iraq has promoted anti-American sentiments, he said. “All of the things that were broken in the early days are still broken,” said Glantz. The U.S. government has been unable to restore electricity and running water to the Iraqi people. “Imagine trying to sleep in the summer when it’s 130 degrees and you don’t have a fan—you would be grouchy,” Glantz quipped.
The U.S.’s treatment of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has also fueled resentment, said Glantz. The U.S. media frequently depict al Sadr as a “a fiery young radical” whose followers are poor and uneducated, he said. What the media don’t mention, according to Glantz, is that al-Sadr’s popularity is due in part to his efforts to provide Iraqis with the basic services the U.S. has failed to deliver. When the American government decided that al-Sadr was interfering with their rebuilding efforts, they shut down his newspaper, arrested his advisors, and vowed not to rest “until he was captured or killed,” said Glantz. These totalitarian tactics shook the Iraqi people’s faith in the U.S., according to Glantz. “Even those who disagreed with [al-Sadr] said, ‘Wait a minute. We thought this was supposed to be a democracy.’ In a democracy, you deal with people you disagree with by having a discussion,” he said.
Glantz also cited the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as a turning point in Iraqi public opinion. He recalled meeting a businessman in Baghdad who initially supported the U.S. occupation, because his father and brother had been captured and killed by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen. The man grew disillusioned, however, after two of his cousins were detained at Abu Ghraib without being charged. “[This is] the same struggle as under Saddam’s regime,” Glantz recalled the businessman saying. “It’s just been replaced by the Americans.”
Finally, Glantz notes, the U.S. attack on Fallujah has contributed significantly to Iraqi resentment of the American occupation. Glantz arrived in the city in May 2004, immediately after the U.S. air strikes. Shortly after he got there, he witnessed a medical team digging up the body of a woman who had died when her car was hit by an American bomb. The woman’s neighbor had buried her on his front lawn. She was being exhumed and readied for burial in a municipal stadium, serving as a mass graveyard. “[The team] was covering [her body] in formaldahyde,” Glantz said. “An image like that sticks with you.”
Images like this one — visceral, haunting — are what sets Glantz’s first-person reportage apart from much of the mainstream media’s coverage of Iraq, which tends to underplay the deadly realities of war. While the New York Times ran stories like “Kerry Ties Prisoner Abuse to Bush’s Handling of War”, Glantz showed precisely how Bush’s handling of war was playing out on the ground in pieces such as “Fallujah Cannot Even Bury Its Dead,” which weaves together the gruesome stories of humanitarian aid workers, and relays the shocking fact that “the U.S. military does not deny shooting at ambulances.”
In spite of all the atrocities and bloodshed he witnessed in Iraq, Glantz wishes he could go back for a fourth tour of the country, but feels the situation has become too treacherous. “If it weren’t so dangerous, I would still be over there, reporting, instead of here, talking about a book.”