Another great opinion piece

Two in three days! This is amazing. Jonathan Finer, a former Washington Post Baghdad correspondent wrote this one, about the trend of politicians and pundits spending a few days in the Green Zone and then proclaiming that it's either improving rapidly or going to hell in a handbasket. I don't mean to say that people who haven't been to Iraq can't comment on the merits of decisions being made here. Rather, my frustration lies with people who claim to have been totally enlightened by their three days in a heavily-fortified compound. As the author of the op/ed writes, "Prescient insights rarely emerge from a few days in-country behind the blast walls."

The most infamous example of this pattern was John McCain's trip to Iraq earlier this year, when he took a quick trip out of the Green Zone to an outdoor market, then announced that "there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today.” Of course, at the time McCain failed to mention that he was wearing body armor and walking with 100 American soldiers with M-4s with four air assault helicopters circling overhead.

More recently, two Brookings Institution scholars wrote an absolutely inane opinion piece in The New York Times making all sorts of claims about how safe Iraq is. Of course, they were in country for all of eight days, time almost entirely spent in the Green Zone. "It goes without saying that everyone can, and in this country should, have an opinion about the war, no matter how much time the person has spent in Iraq, if any," Finer writes. "But ... those who pass quickly through the war zone should stop ascribing their epiphanies to what are largely ceremonial visits."