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23 May 2003: "Further consideration re Salam"

Jeff Jarvis has some further ruminations on those seeking to dissect Salam, and (as usual) he makes good sense.

Certainly, Salam is far from being a neutral and dispassionate observer. Clearly, he does come from a—by Iraqi standards—privileged background, and he's likely to be somewhat miffed that his relatively cushy life has been thoroughly disrupted. But it's equally important to bear in mind that people in wartime try to cling to whatever shred of normality they can; I recall a story about a television license inspector in Sarajevo who was still going about his job two years into the siege. So, while Salam's complaint about no longer having access to an indoor swimming pool may seem awfully petty, it does have to be seen in the proper context.

Perhaps Salam is a thoroughly unpleasant chap when you get to know him; perhaps he's a dilettante who benefited from his family connections to live the good life; for all I know, he may have a couple of skeletons in his closet. From what I'm reading, Saddam's Iraq was not a place where you could be a saint. The point is that Salam provides a rare perspective from the ground in Iraq, unfiltered by sub-editors or PR men, and that is what makes his blog compelling reading. It's probably superfluous to say it would be mistake to take "Where is Raed?" as gospel; Salam may be a little too close to see the bigger picture, as were citizens of, say, Berlin in the spring and summer of 1945. But to build a good picture of events, we must incorporate multiple perspectives, and Salam provides us with one.

As Jeff Jarvis puts it:

This witness brings with him a viewpoint and baggage aplenty. [...] Nonetheless, we need to get used to the idea of getting information from contemporary witnesses who have a viewpoint. [...] All we have to do is know how to judge what they are saying in the context of their times and circumstances.

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