As I read it I think of the job Burns was tasked with when writing the article: sum up the mood, atmosphere, and minutia throughout Baghdad as “shock and awe” hits the city–as the entire country is thrust almost overnight into war. His verbs are fierce, his sentences long, but packed with enough description to almost make you think you’re reading a novel. He begins:
From the missile-streaked sky, Burns shoots into the city’s empty streets.
It’s important to revisit these moments from time-to-time. It’s important remember what 2003 felt like to understand the war’s evolution to 2007. Burns’s article stands out because it doesn’t capture just a moment in time, but a moment in which history is about to change forever. The skies are on fire, and the slow rumble of American tanks and convoys is beginning its northbound race to the waiting capital.
“On the deserted roads, no fire engines could be seen. Any survivors in the buildings appeared to have been left to their fates.”
The article ends:
And so the war began.
“Viewed from across the river, successive strikes turned the hundreds of acres of palace grounds and their carefully manicured palm trees into a stadium of light, as though war had finally begun to reveal some of the secrets of one of the most forbidden places in Iraq.”
