Guest columnist
Freedom has become a tough sell in Iraq

By Dave Ross
Special to The Times

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AL MANSOUR HOTEL BALCONY, Baghdad — The birds and the palm trees are enjoying today's hazy heat, the Tigris is only a little rippled by the latest explosion, the car horns sound like a football victory and my balcony has but one bullet divot in the plaster. Life can be good for an American in Baghdad when the TV is off, your hotel is thoroughly guarded and you have a paid, confirmed return flight in your pocket.

The news this past week cratered the arguments for occupation like the mortars that fall every day into the Green Zone, a Hollywood back lot of pristine and ruined palaces with blue and white signs at the intersections reading, "What have you done today for the Iraqi people?"

What the signs don't mention — because it's obvious — is that those Iraqi people aren't allowed into the Green Zone unless they work there. They inhabit the Red Zone, which is probably safer for them anyway. It is one of the many ironies of this benevolent occupation that the Green Zone is the most check-pointed, flak-jacketed and bunkered place in Baghdad. Ambassador Paul Bremer has an escort (which I witnessed but will not describe in deference to national security) that would impress Saddam Hussein himself.

Even Freedom Radio, the coalition's all-hit FM station, boasts that it's "... broadcasting from an 'undisclosed location.' "

As I write this, I can look south into the zone and see black smoke drifting north — the likely result of that dull rumble a few minutes ago. It has happened every day this past week. The coalition never announces what got hit, so these attacks never make the news unless they hit near the reporters' hotels outside the zone. The explosion behind the Sheraton on the April 9 anniversary of the fall of Baghdad — which warranted breaking news banners on all the cable networks — is just another form of precipitation in the Green Zone.

Out here in the Red Zone, the mortars may not be as prevalent, but we have banditry and kidnapping to make up for it. American business ventures never advertise the fact. Americans dare not walk the streets unless they could pass for Canadian, or better — French. (And if stopped by militants masquerading as police, be sure you have the passport to prove it.) The one time I was allowed to walk the streets, in the company of an Iraqi businessman, I was politely reminded every time I lingered at a shop that it's best to keep moving. Even if that means dodging the traffic at intersections that still have no working traffic lights.

Ben Franklin famously warned about trading freedom for security, but if this is freedom, a lot of Iraqis are ready to make the swap.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, coalition ground commander, told reporters during a press briefing, "The Iraqi people must not allow themselves to be taken back to an era just like Saddam imposed on this country just a year ago."

But even with Saddam one year gone, newspapers are still being closed down, checkpoints make it difficult to get to work, Apaches skim the rooftops on the half-hour, the skyline remains littered with high-rise exoskeletons and no one respects their leaders. The Iraqi guards protecting us at the hotel (which I take as a measure of some level of open-mindedness) argued in all seriousness that they were better off under Saddam and the embargo.

Freedom without prosperity turns out to be a tough sell. The majority of the Iraqi people that supposedly want us to stay (and I have trouble believing a reliable poll can be conducted in a country with few telephones and where answers may be chosen out of fear) are sitting at home.

In the meantime, the monument stumps attract only Muqtada al-Sadr posters, not the Bush likenesses that ought to be there. Whatever Bush likenesses do appear are, through some inexplicable oversight, printed on extremely flammable stock.

If that silent majority exists, it's time to call its bluff. As a nation, we should do what Major League Baseball does so effectively. Threaten to leave. Do it with a heavy heart, shed tears, curse the gods that it must be so, but issue the threat.

If we really believe that our mission is to help the good people of Iraq, then it's time to determine whether they really want that help. I suppose that threatening to leave might empower the young militants. But what else is going to jolt the grown-ups?

We are seeing a mission that was justified as self-defense, re-justified as a rescue, became an occupation and is slipping into repression.

It has prompted a search for a suitably scary analogy — Iraq as Vietnam, Iraq as the West Bank. But the danger is not what Iraq will become. The danger is what America will become.

Dave Ross hosts "The Dave Ross Show" on KIRO-AM (710), and spent last week broadcasting from Baghdad. His daily diary can be found at www.daveross.com/baghdad/baghdad.htm

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