Behind The Times

Kari Travis | Managing Editor

Iraq is like the illegitimate child U.S. citizens don't talk about.

These days, it seems we don't even like to acknowledge its existence. Think about it. How many times in the previous four years have you heard anything of significance about the conflicted country that once dominated headlines?

You're undoubtedly wrinkling your forehead. Yep, there's that confused scrunching of your eyebrows. Followed by the jaw-drop of realization.

Because it's dawning on you that, in the midst of today's psycho- babble coverage of Syria, Iran and Libya, mention of Iraq has been virtually non-existent on major news networks. Lucky for you, the goal here today is bringing everyone up to speed by explaining why mass media failed to report on the Iraq-related issues.

So buckle up and bring your critical thinking cap. This is not a fluff stuff topic.

Media analysts attribute the loss of interest in the Iraq war largely to the"war fatigue" of news consumers, according to an archived report from the American Journalism Review. The basic point here is that the U.S. got tired of hearing about the Iraq conflict.

In other words, Iraq became a nuisance, so we tuned out the issue. But one peep into reality indicates that conditions in Iraq are not perfectly peachy, and there is no point in pretending the ordeal is over.

Here's a recap. Between the time of the American invasion in 2003 and the establishment of an official Iraqi government in 2010, the bloody conflict convulsed all over news networks. The war cost America the lives of 4,487 service members and also killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, according to a recent report from The New York Times.

All that blood was poured into the construction of a governmental alliance between Sunnis and Shiites, the two Islamic sects that have been in opposition longer than the U.S. has existed. After sticking around enough to ensure the Iraqi government was formed, the American military withdrew on Dec. 15, 2011, leaving Iraq to rule itself.

What followed was, put quite mildly, chaos.

The very day after America packed up and left the country, Iraq's newly instated democracy cracked under sectarian influence. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, decided to cut ties with Sunnis in the government. The result was an order for the arrest of Iraq's Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, according to The New York Times.

Hashimi, not attracted to the idea of imprisonment, packed up and ran to Turkey, where he still lives in exile. As of September of this year, Hashimi had a death sentence placed on his head by the Iraqi government.

If you think that's bad, just wait. It gets worse.

Last month, sectarian violence exploded, quite literally, in the form of bombings aimed at Shiite neighborhoods and security forces. The violence didn't stop there, either. Insurgents also targeted cities in a strategic effort to kick-start yet more sectarian conflict, according to The New York Times.

And so the biggest question to ask as we sit here absorbing this information is: Why aren't these developments receiving greater press coverage?

Nobel Prize winner and Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman proposes that the lack of media interest links back to the fact that America has withdrawn from the situation, both physically and mentally.

"Iraq stories moved to the inside pages of newspapers, and largely off TV screens. Many people got the impression that things had improved," Krugman wrote in an archived New York Times editorial. "The trouble with this shift of attention is that if we don't have a clear picture of what's actually happening in Iraq, we can't have a serious discussion of the options that remain for making the best of a very bad situation."

Krugman's point resonates with a great deal of truth. Ignorance of the situation and a failure to take responsibility wherever we should will bring no solutions to the country's unstable condition. And, as it seems too late for us to take Iraq's baby of a democracy back under America's parental guidance, the very least our country can do is acknowledge the problems that continue to arise out of what has been a very long conflict.

Because if we really want to think that Iraq will improve to the point of peacefully governing itself, then we should stop treating it like our forgotten offspring.