The Perception Problem

Matthew Continetti writing in the current Weekly Standard about Senator Kit Bond (R.-Missouri), whose son is serving in Iraq:

In early May, Bond visited Iraq with Republican senators Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Olympia Snowe of Maine and California GOP congressman Darrell Issa. One day the group drove into downtown Ramadi in a Cougar Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Not long ago in Ramadi, al Qaeda ruled. When Bond visited, the place was--relatively speaking--quiet. Bond, his colleagues, and Maj. Gen. W.E. Gaskin--the commander of Multi-National-Force-West--along with two U.S. Marines carrying M16s, took in the old city college and visited Marines. They stood at Firecracker Corner, so called because of all the firefights that have taken place there. They saw a mosque that American soldiers had rebuilt.

Bond was amazed. To him, the progress was palpable. Months ago, a visit to Ramadi was unthinkable. But the Sunni sheikhs who dominate Anbar politics had turned against al Qaeda in Iraq and joined forces with the Americans. Things were changing.

When the group returned to America, Bond did everything he could to get the word out to his fellow GOP senators. It wasn't enough. Snowe issued her own press release, written before the visit to Ramadi. "So far, this trip certainly underscores the fact that there is not a military solution to the problem," she said. Snowe never issued a release about what she saw in Ramadi and elsewhere in Anbar province. Her silence underscores lesson number one in the debate over the war: When American politicians look at Iraq, they see what they want to see.