OxBlog

# Posted 10:51 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

BUT DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY...The WaPo has an intersting article on crime and law enforcement in postwar Iraq. But there are some telling contradictions in the article which demonstrate how the media often portrays the occupation as being much worse than it actually is.

For example, consider the following items:

[Sauzen Khazi] runs a currency exchange shop and is poised to flee in that direction.

The shop didn't require armed guards in the past, when Saddam's government swiftly caught and punished thieves.

And

[In] the city soccer stadium, the 18th Military Police Brigade is recruiting former Iraqi policemen, but only those who worked at the lowest level. Many officers can't be trusted and are despised by the public. They were corrupt and enforced the law mainly through terror.

So which is it? Did the Ba'ath government catch and punish thieves, or were its police officers corrupt and brutal?

Driven by expectations of failure, the media uncritically assumes that everything that goes wrong now was not going wrong while Saddam was in power. But what I suspect is this: With the world so focused on the most brutal and horrific crimes of the Ba'athist dicatorship, no one paid much attentions to the lesser frustrations of life in a totalitarian state such as rampant crime and a total lack of law enforcement.

This isn't to say that everything that has gone wrong is Saddam's fault. It seems clear that the provision of electricity, clean water, and waste removal services were in much better shape before the war. But restoring such services is mostly a technical challenge, not an institutional one such as hiring honest and competent judges and law enforcement officials. The US should have invested much more in planning for the occupation, but some things are just beyond its control.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion