My apologies but I’m having real trouble writing a concise post on the question of the role of the press – as should be reasonably obvious, it’s a huge and complex subject.
So I’m trying to see if I can break it down into some smaller parts that are still reasonably self-contained.
So far, there are three:
# War and morale
# Is opposing war built into the nature of modern media – is the message implicit in the nature of our media?
# Reconciling freedom and the shaping of opinion.
Each one is too damn long – or rather I haven’t had the time to write them well and concisely (or, better to think them through to the point that I can write them well and concisely).
But it’s a fun problem to knock my head against, and I can’t imagine a better reason to be blogging.
Is opposing war built into the nature of modern media – is the message implicit in the nature of our media?
A more fruitful question might be something like: “Is opposing US policy built into the nature of modern media in the United States?” I say this because your form of the question immediately invites us to start nitpicking about “Which wars?”, but mostly I think it’s pretty clear that there’s a strong anti-US-government bias that’s operated in the media at least since Watergate. The “investigative journalism is the highest form of journalism” mindset runs pretty deep, and it contributes to this. Administration statements are highly scrutinized, and there’s a presumption that they’re probably usually lying which doesn’t seem to operate in the case of foreign governments, nonprofit organizations, terrorists, etc.
Is opposing war built into the nature of modern media – is the message implicit in the nature of our media?
No, and if you had studied American history you’d know this.
1898: William Randolph Hearst telegraphs to Frederick Remington, then in Cuba to draw pictures of a Spanish counterinsurgency war gone cold. Remington had asked to be recalled, as there was no war.
“Please stay. You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.”
War sells advertising. The default setting for any modern media establishment is to be pro-war. The post-Vietnam phase was brief and atypical. What the media oligarchs dislike is a losing war.
Grenada: good. Panama: good. Somalia: very good, until it was mismanaged and American corpses got drug through the streets, then bad.
Gulf War I: heaven-sent. Remember how CNN raked in millions on its reportage? Remember the “Scud Stud?” Wolf Blitzer? Pictures of Baghdad under bombardment? How about those B-52s, forty years old but still delivering cataclysmic punishment? For Pete’s sake, we even had the Missouri lobbing cruise missiles. And then, the thousands of surrendering Iraqi soldiers, and the grateful Kuwaitis?
Fast forward to 2003. How much critical coverage was given to the run-up to the Iraq invasion? How much airtime did CNN give Scott Ritter? Brent Scowcroft? Madeline Albright? Precious little. How much critical coverage attended the “Mission Accomplished” show? Remember Chris Matthews’ drooling love-fest over the image of the Wartime President, wearing military uniform on the deck of an aircraft carrier?
But now, after a few elections and lots of purple fingers, the violence seems just as bad as ever. The costs are not decreasing, they’re mounting. And the media oligarchs, being relatively savvy businessmen, are sensing a mood-shift among the public (just as they did in 1967, by the way).
And you want to blame the media, not the President and his mistakes, for the changing national mood?
In the Cold War, conservatives were backed up by the “Better Red Than Dead” and “Ban the Bomb” slogans. They were brutal and sandbagged much Western resolve. Religious opposition to Communist Atheism was no match. The Sino-Soviet buildup years of 1956-7 were the low points for the West. Yet, by the Cuban Missile Crisis, surrenderism was at rock bottom. What happened? Anti-Communists from left to Right, led a populist movement in support of the MAD concept; there was a certain genius to Mutually Assured Destruction. War was unwinnable; therefore unlikely. That channeled the Cold War into a series of proxy conflicts and Strong-Man alliances. The lead intellectual of MAD was: Gerhart Niemeyer. Read this historical-intellectual biography:
http://www.mmisi.org/ir/33_01/henry.pdf
Hopefully, the Bush-Doctrine as based on pre-emption, will never permit Islamofascism to reach MAD capacity. Muslims are conditioned to prefer life to death, thus they must never hold Western lives in the balance. NEVER! As Denis Prager recently wrote, the current enemy is worse than Nazism, Japanese Militarism and Communism.
When asked by the House Committe on Un-American Activities, to define the enemy, Niemeyer produced the historical-factual, “Facts on Communism.” In the current context, with the West nation-building in what amounts to enemy states, it would be deemed politically incorrect to define the enemy. Government production of “Facts on Islamofascism,” would more likely read: “Apologies to Muslims.”
I’m sorry, but this is just nuts:
As Denis Prager recently wrote, the current enemy is worse than Nazism, Japanese Militarism and Communism.
No, no, no, a thousand times no.
The GDP of the entire Arab world is smaller than that of Spain.
Nazi Germany had 70 million people in it and dozens of Nobel Prize winners working for its industry. Where is the “Islamofascist” Krupp? Rheinmetall? Messerschmidt? AEG? Who is the “Islamofascist” Heisenberg?
Japan by 1941 dominated coastal China and Vietnam, had one of the world’s largest fleets, as well as a dedicated (and state-traned and -supported) Army of the first rate. Its fighter planes were superior to almost every other model on the planet.
The Soviet Union from 1945 to about 1970 had a huge internal economy, was virtually independent in almost every raw material, had thousands of nuclear weapons, and tens of thousands of domestically-designed and -produced tanks which were lethally superior to our own. The USSR had client states in the heart of Europe and was militarily as good as invulnerable.
In no way, none, does the current “Islamofascist” boogeyman approach any of the above. (By the way, can Shiites be “Islamofascist” too? Or is it just Sunnis?)
The war on terror is a great laboratory for identifying problems with the mainstream mass media (MSM). The bias of media reports has been studied and the media is known to be left leaning. But there are other problems too. A big part of the problem is that the MSM is for-profit and therefore is fundamentally entertainment, this limits reporting to the sensational and oversimplified.
We complain when entertainers start pushing their political opinions, but that is just what is happening on the network news, only it is masquerading as objective journalism. However because of the need to entertain to make profits, even if the media wasn’t opposed to the war, many reports would still look as if they were. Sensation will always get covered, and rumors of disaster are dramatic. Unfortunately such stories will always affect morale. Why did Fox News, supposedly pro-US, pro-Bush, give live coverage to Baghdad Bob’s news conferences in which he continually announced the imminent defeat of the coalition? His briefings were known to be false because of many reports from journalists embedded with coalition forces. Some people might have though thought he was funny, but it was nevertheless, false propaganda giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
However, the question of whether journalists are patriotic or not is not the right question. The question should be: do journalists give an accurate impression of the situation they are reporting? Unless you can make a convincing case that the reports are misleading, appeals to patriotism will seem like you are asking them to falsify reports. If you can make a convincing case that reports are misleading then you don’t need to discuss patriotism to demand better journalism.
The fact that news stories about rebuilding schools in Iraq are not widely read is not the problem. The problem is the phenomena exemplified by reporting the fact of “mounting casualties” while ignoring the fact of “the declining casualty rate”. Both are true but one creates a sense of drama.
The entertainment effect also prevents reporters from explaining anything that is too complex to report in a short sound bite. Reporters seemed pro-US immediately after 9/11. That’s because they had a lot of simple and sensational facts to report. The media will report facts if they are simple and sensational, otherwise the they will report rumor and spin to generate sensation. Unfortunately reality is often complex and so the media reports often do not give an accurate impression of reality.
Reporters also want to prove their ability and advance their careers by uncovering misdeeds, mistakes, crimes, and incompetence. This can be good for society when real problems are brought to light, but it is also harmful because reporters mostly report bad news because it gives an incorrect impression of reality. Nothing a person does that is non-trivial can be perfect so it is always easy for reporters to generate entertaining stories by focusing on imperfections – spinning success into failure.
The coalition invaded Iraq because Iraq was supporting terrorism and had WMD know-how and on-going development programs. The fact that stockpiles were not found is irrelevant to the real risk of leaving the regime in place. Terrorists don’t need a much of a WMD to kill a lot of people. An army might need stockpiles but terrorists don’t. We didn’t invade Iraq because we thought they were going to invade Iran again and use chemical weapons. We invaded because of the risk that Iraq would give small amounts of a WMD to terrorists who would use them against us. The media didn’t make this clear, they could only focus on the sensation of the failure to find WMD stockpiles.
The anti insurgency operations in Iraq took a while to get started. The US needed to set up an interim government to give political backing to operations like the one in Falluja because they were not against the Iraqi military but against civilian insurgents. Setting up an interim government takes time if it is to be legitimate. Then the US went from area to area removing terrorists and insurgents and leaving Iraqi forces in place to maintain order. The rate at which this could occur was also constrained by the time it took to develop Iraqi forces capable of maintaining public order. Superficial news reports made it seem like the US was in constant combat throughout the country while in reality combat units were moving from one area to another in the central Sunni region. If one looks at the facts one sees the Iraq war as an incredible, unqualified success. Fifty million people freed from a tyrant with WMD capabilities who was supporting terrorists, at a cost of, so far, 2000 causalities. Unfortunately, instead of giving the public the big picture, the media did a “Katrina” on Iraq – focusing on sensational and oversimplified facts and supplementing them sensational rumors and falsehoods rather than reporting the boring or complex truth.
For-profit media companies and professional reporters too often do what gets them the biggest rewards. Journalistic ethic too often takes second place to the pursuit of self interest. This is a consequence of human nature. Successful media companies will provide entertainment in the form of simple and sensational reports and not objective facts because entertainment makes more money than something complicated and boring.
Another problem is that once a reporter publishes his opinions and analysis, he becomes attached to the stand he took and in the future he will spin everything to agree with his initial stance. This is also basic human nature. We see it in science all the time as resistance to new ideas and theories. It is not limited to journalism.
Another factor is that in most high schools, the smartest kids want to be doctors and lawyers and scientists, not journalist. This is another factor in why media reports are often oversimplified.
It is not clear if there is any solution to these problems. They are problems that have always existed, and they are founded in human nature.
However, the internet is a great help to those interested in facts. The low cost of publishing on the internet makes it possible for people who want to discuss facts to do so without needing to seek profits and therefore sinking to the level of entertainment.
Intelligent people may disagree but the unfortunate thing is that for people who are interested in facts and reason, the MSM is not very helpful.
A few points on the MSM:
1) Journalists love to question authority. It is their ethos. Hence MSM journalists are invariably critical of governments, although their liberal tendencies might make them more prone to criticise Republican governments over Democrat ones.
2) Government policy might be partially to blame for the security problems in Iraq, however the negativity of MSM media coverage is wholly responsible for the public perceptions of the war. Opinion polls taken after periods of “good news” invariably higher support for the war than those taken after a sequence of bombings.
3) The media question government, but they shield themselves with the excuse that they report “the news” when Hamas or Al Qaeda engage in their latest rant. The net sum is that governments are ALWAYS questioned, but the private citizen who makes an unreasonable and unjustifiable complaint about something is NEVER questioned.
I’ve always wondered that if I got together 50 people and started protesting about the cost of a can of Coca-Cola whether I’d achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the media even though the basis of my protest is unreasonable.
sticker,
Surely you’re right that the Nazis, Soviets, and Japanese imperialists were more powerful tactically than the current crop of terrorists. But, in fairness to the terrorists, they’ve certainly managed a more impressive slaughter right here on US soil.
But tactics are only one element of war.
Here are two key questions: what were the objectives of our previous enemies, and could we have reached accomodation with them? Another question is strategic: how do they seek to achieve their goals?
I don’t think the Nazis or Japanese realistically thought they could conquer and rule the US by military force, and I’m sure we could have reached some sort of compromise with them if we had sold out Asia and Europe. The Soviets certainly wanted the US to be Communist, but again, I strongly think we could have–indeed, in some sense we did–reach a political accomodation.
Islamofacists, including both Shia (in Iran, for instance) and Sunni, clearly want to rule the US, and indeed they’re already making inroads, given for instance the pathetic surrender of our “free press” and bastions of “academic freedom” in the cartoon controversy. Also, consider the current legal action in Canada against the Western Standard for publishing the cartoons.
So it isn’t crazy to think they might be more dangerous, given their broader objectives and apparent strategic savvy.
#5 — that was a great post.
The problem we have today is in the nature of the systems involved, not the particular war, policy, or way the war is going. Kids today say something like “I call BS” when they hear more junk in the mainstream media.
Well I call BS. I did a little research last night on death rates. We’ve lost something like, what? Two Thousand people over three years? Say a casualty count of around 10K?
I direct your attention to the CDC report of 2002 regarding mortality rates in the United States.
Death by assault with a gun totals 11,829. Looks like we’re much better at killing each other than the enemy is at killing us. Kidney infections a death rate of 788 that year. Perhaps we should be arming folks at the American Kidney Foundation so they can take a more active role in Kidney defense. We lost 762 to the accidental discharge of firearms.
Now here’s the kicker. The total death rate for ages 25-45 is around 200 per 100,000. You guys can debate the numbers and do the age ajusting and all of that, but the fact remains that if you have a random population of 150K Americans, you get all sorts of medical problems. People get sick, they die, they run over themselves in Jeeps, trucks, and motorcyles. They shoot one another on purpose and by accident, and they don’t take care of themselves as well as they should.
We’re not seeing that perspective because as #5 said, news is all about entertainment, not reality. Somebody dying of an infected toenail is nowhere near as exciting as something that goes boom and has screaming people and blood and guts. Especially if you can put the politicians on afterwards to argue with each other. It’s like cake and ice cream to those media folks.
So you’re about twice as likely to die over in Iraq than if you sat around Burger King all day. I’m not a statistician, but I would guess that the rate is significantly less than a dedicated hobby of bunging jumping, skydiving, or general aviation. Perhaps it is more honorable to take up rock climbing than defend your country. If so, I find that value system somewhat strange.
AL — you are wasing a lot of my time with this subject! LOL. But it’s a tough subject and therefore fascinating. Perhaps by discussing it we can help each other come to a better understanding.
Daniel Markham, you don’t seem to understand basic research or statistics.
Well I call BS. I did a little research last night on death rates. We’ve lost something like, what? Two Thousand people over three years? Say a casualty count of around 10K?
A minimal amount of searching would have revealed to you that our “casualty count” is precisely 2,328 dead, and 16,653 wounded.
So you’re about twice as likely to die over in Iraq than if you sat around Burger King all day.
I find this equivalence nauseating. Our armed forces are facing death daily, and you compare it to “sitting around Burger King all day?” A more cynical reader than I am would be tempted to suggest that you perform a live test of this proposition yourself: sit in Burger King one day, sign up for the Army the next. Report back in a couple of years.
I’ll leave it to you to discover the difference between 11,000 deaths by gunshot among 300,000,000 people and 2,328 deaths among 150,000 service personnel.
Stickler. What a great nickname. Suits you well.
I left the rest of you to argue mortality rates. Good that you are nauseated. War is an awful thing, and it should nauseate you.
I’m happy with the conclusions I reached. You can have fun with the numbers all you want. Yes I understand the difference between totals and rates (as I explained), and yes I could very well look up precise numbers.
But I’m not arguing precise numbers. I’m talking about principles. I’m asking for perspective. Aside from your queasiness, I’m not hearing a lot of perspective from you.
Care to talk about how many French civilians we killed during the D-Day landings? Or perhaps the fire-bombing of Dresden? How about the casualty rate on some of the Pacific amphibious assaults? If you want to talk about the function of media perspecive in time of war, well, you need a little perspective, that’s all I’m saying.
stickler, the news media of 1898 was as dramatically different from that of today as the movie makers of 1942 were from those of today.
And re Gulf War I, one of the reasons we stopped before destroying the entire Iraqi army was the perception that the media would demand an end ot the slaughter on the “Highway to Hell”.
A Newsweek article on Norman Schwarzkopf, titled “A Soldier of Conscience” (March 11,1991), remarked that before the ground war the general was only worried about “How long the world would stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell out of Iraq without saying, ‘Wait a minute – enough is enough.’ He [Schwarzkopf] itched to send ground troops to finish the job.”
Things are different now.
A.L.
Care to talk about how many French civilians we killed during the D-Day landings? Or perhaps the fire-bombing of Dresden? How about the casualty rate on some of the Pacific amphibious assaults? If you want to talk about the function of media perspecive in time of war, well, you need a little perspective, that’s all I’m saying.
Stop it with the World War II references. That war is over, and the current occupation of Iraq is nothing like it.
And re Gulf War I, one of the reasons we stopped before destroying the entire Iraqi army was the perception that the media would demand an end ot the slaughter on the “Highway to Hell”.
A Newsweek article on Norman Schwarzkopf, titled “A Soldier of Conscience” (March 11,1991), remarked that before the ground war the general was only worried about “How long the world would stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell out of Iraq without saying, ‘Wait a minute – enough is enough.’ He [Schwarzkopf] itched to send ground troops to finish the job.”
You say “the media,” Schwarzkopf said “the world.” He meant the coalition put together by George H.W. Bush, a coalition which included local powers whose populations would no doubt have been appalled at (to them) gratuitous shedding of Arab blood.
Schwarzkopf had a sense of strategy and diplomatic reality. You are worried about the American media.
“…Stop it with the World War II references. That war is over, and the current occupation of Iraq is nothing like it…”
The question on the table is what is the role of the media in time of war? Personally I’m interested in the more specific question “has the media evolved over the last 50 years or so to prevent a democracy from engaging in any protracted war at all?”
Historical references are necessary for the discussion. I can’t see how you could have it without them.
You mean “devolved” don’t you?
I’m sure the media loves war. It gives them exciting headlines and helps them sell papers. But, as has been accurately pointed out, after a while they tend to focus on the negative news simply because in a “protracted war” that’s the only interesting news they can get. As long as US forces are rolling across the land in a massive blietzcreig, sweeping the enemy before them, there’s lots of positive material to report on. It’s exciting. If you’ve ever been in a warzone you’ll know that the loacls tend to come out and watch the fireworks instead of hiding under their tables; even for them it’s exciting. However, once the main conflict is over and the military moves into more of a policing duty, it starts to get boring fast. You see the same trend in their reporting of local news – the vast majority of it is composed of accidents, murders, assaults, and government contreversies. Government studies are usualy reported with a tone of skepticism, whereas the works of, say, environmental lobby groups is reported as gospel. Why would we expect their coverage of a drawn-out conflict to be any different? The problem isn’t how they report on war; the problem is with their entire approach to reporting.
As long as US forces are rolling across the land in a massive blietzcreig, sweeping the enemy before them, there’s lots of positive material to report on. It’s exciting. … However, once the main conflict is over and the military moves into more of a policing duty, it starts to get boring fast.
The current occupation isn’t “getting boring,” actually. And that’s the problem. Your first sentence could also read: “as long as US forces are winning the war, there’s lots of positive material to report on…”
The problem is, of course, there isn’t much positive material to report on right now. Because we’re not “winning.” I think it’s fairly clear to any honest observer that for the media to have good stories, there needs to be objective, hopeful events actually happening on the ground. Those events we’ve had (capturing Saddam, taking Fallujah a couple of times, holding elections) haven’t made the violence stop.
Bob Woodruff and Jill Caroll, among others, were actually on the ground trying to find out what was going on. If Iraq were actually getting safer and more stable, as we were promised would happen, their stories would have turned out much better than actually was the case, no?
It’s not the media’s fault that there are car bombs and death squads and chaos in Iraq. Those things are driving the news because they’re actually happening.
The MSM won’t cause us to lose the war on terror. We can’t lose the war on terror – the force disparity is just too great. The only way we can lose is to cease being Americans, and that is something beyond the MSM’s power even with the lefties helping. The MSM is going extinct like the dinosaurs for many reasons unrelated to its politics – the latter is more a symptom of on-going extinction.
Ditto for the left – their world view is too disconnected from reality. Even their domination of academia is ultimately self-defeating – the major thing kids learn in school is how to forget everything they learned the year before.
The most the MSM and left can do to us in the war on terror is increase Arab fatalities by several score million – perhaps more than a hundred million – by causing us to lose interest in saving Arabs who could be saved before we lose our patience and go genocidal on the rest.
I repeat what I’ve been saying for years – the major question concerning America’s victory in the war on terror is how many Arabs survive the experience.
As for the Muslims in Europe, we’ve seen that one before. The ones who survive will be the ones who get out before the native Europeans go atavistic.
stickler, I’m having a little difficulty in understanding the point you’re making in #4 above. When you write:
are you arguing that risk is proportional to GDP? Or Nobel prize winners?
That doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny to me. Perhaps if this were a conflict of pitched battles and industrial might it would but it isn’t and I don’t see the relevance. Could you expand on the thought a little so I can understand what you’re getting at?
The most the MSM and left can do to us in the war on terror is increase Arab fatalities by several score million – perhaps more than a hundred million – by causing us to lose interest in saving Arabs who could be saved before we lose our patience and go genocidal on the rest.
I repeat what I’ve been saying for years – the major question concerning America’s victory in the war on terror is how many Arabs survive the experience.
As for the Muslims in Europe, we’ve seen that one before. The ones who survive will be the ones who get out before the native Europeans go atavistic.
Remember, kids: it’s “The Left” that’s disconnected from reality. Realists like Mr. Holsinger realize that genocide is regrettable, but necessary. And it’ll be the media’s fault!
Eliminationist genocidal fantasies sure are fun, but I have better things to do than discuss current events with half-literate madmen.
And, Tom Holsinger, I believe the concern is discussed pretty well by Rudy Rummel is his post today at Dean’s World. Here’s how he ends the post:
are you arguing that risk is proportional to GDP? Or Nobel prize winners?
That doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny to me. Perhaps if this were a conflict of pitched battles and industrial might it would but it isn’t and I don’t see the relevance. Could you expand on the thought a little so I can understand what you’re getting at?
It isn’t a conflict of industrial and economic might? Then what is “it?” Nazi Germany was one of the most powerful nations in the world, with advanced weapons systems and industry. Whatever our enemies in the Middle East might be today, they pose no existential threat to the United States whatsoever. Nazi Germany had an industrial and scientific base which did pose an existential threat to our nation-state.
“Whatever our enemies in the Middle East might be today, they pose no existential threat to the United States whatsoever.”
Developing a nuclear weapon and handing it off to an international terrorist isnt a threat?
No, it’s not because, as I indicated in the comment above, that’s not how power is measured. We took more civilian casualties on September 11, 2001 than we did in the entirety of any war in the 20th century. And our economy took an enormous hit as well—at least $1 trillion worth. So I guess existential threat is a judgment call. 20 or 30 or more attacks on the scale of 9/11 would be an existential threat from the standpoint of harm it would do to our economy. The United States that was left wouldn’t resemble the United States of September 10, 2001 much.
Also, I’m having a little difficulty reconciling this:
from comment #4 of your with this:
from comment #12 of yours. Are there some guidelines for when World War II references are and are not appropriate? Could you flesh that out a little?
I think that stickler is defining “existential threat” a little too narrowly, Mark. The problem as I see it with that line of reasoning is the neither Germany nor Japan presented an existential threat to the United States in 1942: neither could bring the war to our mainland. I see the standard as risk rather than existential threat.
stickler,
You are victim to two fantasies – the lefty one that 9/11 did not happen and so won’t happen again, and the much more widespread and commonly held fantasy that current trents always continue uninterrupted. Related to the second is a belief (not a fantasy as there is certainly room for argument about it) that _The Germans Have For Real Changed And Can’t Possibly Go Atavistic Again_.
Europe won’t go Islamic. Enough Europeans will eventually fight that the normal superiority of the Western way of war will be decisive in determining who wins. And the historically normal beastliness of the Islamicists before then will be decisive in determining what happens after that. Well, the historically normal behavior of Germans will also have something to do with what happens to Europe’s Muslims.
Please consider that you have overlooked a reason why the Europeans wanted to let the Serbs slaughter the Muslims of Bosnia, and the implications of that when Muslim immigrants try to take over their first European country.
I don’t deny that the American people won’t have the patience to adjust the attitudes of all the Arabs in the Middle East. I do say that we won’t tolerate further attacks on us at home.
You resolve this dichotomy with denial, both a denial that we will be subjected to further attacks at home if we don’t adjust the attitudes of all the Arabs, and denial about our tolerance of such attacks.
Because you deny that 9/11 happened.
I do agree with you that the Islamicists do not pose a mortal threat to us. To Europe maybe, but not us.
#24 Tom
Who of the “Europeans” exactly wanted the Serbs to exterminate Muslims?
I was old enough in those times, and I don’t really remember similar positions.
Stickler, some wars are a matter of economic and industrial powers pitted against each other. Some aren’t, but it doesn’t mean the risk is much smaller.
I would think an existential threat is one that might cause the threatened entity to cease to exist.
If New York were nuked, I would posit that the Liberal, tolerant United States would cease to exist, at least for some long number of years. What you’d have instead would be an America that might live down to every fever dream imagined by the most paranoid among the Democratic Underground.
Oddly enough, the reason I support a low-intensity conflict in the Middle East is because I think it’s the best way to avoid totally destroying it 2, 5, or 10 years from now.
Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think there IS a rosy scenario. So far, the Bush Doctrine seems the best bet among a lot of bad choices.
(Which, of course, has little to do with the role of the Press, except that any analysis beyond the soundbite or the photo-op seems beyond them. In that regard, I don’t know whether the modern press is any different than its ever been. Maybe they’ve just developed a taste for a different stretch of the bottom as of late.)
“…Oddly enough, the reason I support a low-intensity conflict in the Middle East is because I think it’s the best way to avoid totally destroying it 2, 5, or 10 years from now…”
Bingo.
Give this man a cookie.
Fabio,
The governments of France, Germany and Great Britain. Well, France under Mitterand because he’d been bribed by the Serbs. Chirac changed that when elected, until the Serbs bought him too.
The problem is, of course, there isn’t much positive material to report on right now. Because we’re not “winning.”
Are you out of your….
Let’s start that again.
Let’s take recent events. So the Iraqi military with the assistance of US forces raids a building, kills a handfull of insurgents, locates a weapons cache, and makes multiple arrests.
What does the headline read?
Not “Iraqi forces prove capable in raid”
Not “Weapons cache seized”
Not “Iraqi and American forces working well together”
Not “8 insurgents arrested”
Not “Insurgent hideout raided”
Not “18 insurgents killed”
No. Instead we get an article claiming that US and Iraqi forces raided a mosque and executed 40 innocent people at prayer.
Now, why do you suppose that might happen? Certainly there’s good news that could have been reported. Maybe it’s not proof we’re winning the war, but it’s deffinitely evidence that things are going right. But instead of chosing one of a dozen positive ways of looking at the situation, the media publish the one negative (and quite obviously false) claim about the operation.
The answer’s quite clear. A headline that says “Iraqi Soldiers raid insurgent weapons Cache; kill 18, arrest 12” sounds a little interesting, but it doesn’t sell papers. A headline like “US Soldiers butcher 40 Muslims at prayer” on the other hand tends to automaticaly grab peoples attention. Especialy if they can get some Abu-Gharib pictures to publish right beside it.
Take a look at some of the headlines bud. Then read some of the stories. You’ll notice a distinct trend to downplay any good news while trying to be the first to report the rumour of the newest disaster.
No. Instead we get an article claiming that US and Iraqi forces raided a mosque and executed 40 innocent people at prayer. Now, why do you suppose that might happen?,
Well, either because the Main Stream Media is just making stuff up.
Or, maybe because the people screaming about that mosque raid are Shiites active in the new Iraqi assembly majority. You know, the people who will make up the majority in the New Iraq we’ve spent all those billions of dollars to set up.
“Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said in a statement that he had spoken to Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and was assured that an investigation of the incident would be conducted. President Jalal Talabani on Monday called on U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to support a U.S.-Iraqi investigation.
“The government needs to act quickly to take control of the security issues and keep it all under the Iraq’s control,” said Jawad al-Maliki, a member of parliament aligned with the leading Shiite political bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance.
The ongoing negotiations to form a government were canceled Monday as the fallout from Sunday’s raid consumed political leaders. It was unclear whether the talks would resume Tuesday.”
Are you, Mr. Alex, unaware of who these people are? Do you not understand how critical this situation is? Do you really think the “MSM” is making this up?
Pardon the length of the post, but I think the article Stickler linked to provides an interesting test case. I invite Stickler and anyone else to read the Tribune article he linked to, then my rewrite, and ponder whether they provide different impressions. I added one sentence as background on Sadr, lifted from a Chicago Tribune account of Najaf in 2004.
American military officials released a statement on a raid against a gathering place for members of a kidnapping cell. The raid was led by Iraqi commandos and soldiers from the Iraqi counterterrorism force assisted by U.S. Special Forces. U.S. officials reported 16 insurgents were killed, three were wounded, 18 were detained and a large cache of weapons was found, including 32 AK-47 assault rifles, five grenades, four rocket-propelled grenades, two rocket launchers, two heavy machine guns and 12 switches used to make bombs.
Some Shiite political leaders erupted in anger over the raid. Iraqi officials said that they thought as many as 22 unarmed worshipers were killed in the operation late Sunday on a complex made up of several buildings including al-Moustafa mosque. The mosque is known to be where many loyalists of the Mahdi Army and followers of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr pray. Sadr, once a pariah whom U.S. officials branded as a murderer, dismisses as illegitimate any government put in place while foreign troops are on Iraqi soil. Pentagon officials said that they did not believe troops entered a mosque. Witnesses said the troops did enter the mosque, part of a complex made up of several buildings. Shiite politicians offered little to counter U.S. military reports that a large cache of weapons and bombmaking material was found inside the complex, or an eyewitness report from a local resident that confirmed that people inside the mosque complex shot at the American and Iraqi troops soon after they arrived in the area. “They provoked the Americans,” said the witness, who asked that she not be identified by name. U.S. officials also said American troops were fired upon first.
An aide to Sadr blamed the U.S. military for the raid and criticized the Iraqi government for being too slow to speak out against the Americans. “The [U.S.] occupation force should be blamed for this in the first place, and then the Iraqi government for their silence,” said Salman al-Freji, the Sadr aide. Sadr, who holed up in the Imam Ali shrine with his militia supporters in Najaf during a 2-week battle with American and Iraqi government forces in 2004, has about 30 allies in parliament, which make up a powerful bloc in the United Iraqi Alliance. The UIA was quick to condemn the raid and blamed both the Americans and Iraqi forces for acting without restraint. Many Shiite political leaders, mindful of Sadr’s clout, were unwilling to directly contradict his account. Khudair al-Khuzaie, a parliament member with the UIA-aligned Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said one person who was wounded in the incident told him that an Iraqi soldier bound and beat him while he lay bleeding from a leg wound.
The incident further complicates an increasingly strained relationship between Shiite political leaders and American officials. Shiite leaders have chafed in recent weeks under pressure from the U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, to form a national unity government. Khalilzad has been pushing Shiites and Sunnis to find consensus, something he touts as a necessity for Iraq to avoid plunging into an all-out civil war.
Khalilzad said last week that militias, many of which are loyal to various Shiite political parties and religious leaders, have become a larger problem than the Sunni-dominated insurgency. Sunnis have complained that militias, such as Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq’s Badr Brigade, have been responsible for sectarian violence, kidnappings and intimidation. Shiites, particularly in the southern part of Iraq and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, counter that the militias are effective in providing protection where government security forces have largely failed.
Khalilzad has insisted that Shiite leaders crack down on the militias, an obstacle he believes needs to be removed to lessen sectarian tensions. His style and insistence seem to have irritated some. “I don’t think he is playing a diplomatic role,” al-Khuzaie said of the ambassador. “He is now acting as if he is the high commissioner. He speaks as if he has the country under his guardianship.”
What remains to be seen is whether this rift between the Shiites and the Americans can be quickly repaired as Iraq, with the heavy involvement of U.S. diplomats and military commanders, attempts to put together a government that is widely acceptable in this increasingly divided nation.
The ongoing negotiations to form a government were canceled Monday as the fallout from Sunday’s raid consumed political leaders. It was unclear whether the talks would resume Tuesday.
The incident, and subsequent fallout, raises questions of who has control of Iraqi security forces–the U.S. military or the fledgling Iraqi government–and has led several prominent Iraqi politicians to call for an investigation. “The government needs to act quickly to take control of the security issues and keep it all under the Iraq’s control,” said Jawad al-Maliki, a member of parliament aligned with the UIA. Baghdad Gov. Hussein Tahan called the raid “cowardly” and said Baghdad’s provincial and city councils have decided to sever relations with the Americans until an Iraqi-led investigation of the incident is completed. The raid took place about 30 minutes before the evening prayers were to start, and elderly men and a child were among the dead and wounded, he said. “These were worshipers,” Tahan said. “They are guilty of nothing.”
President Jalal Talabani on Monday called on U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to support a U.S.-Iraqi investigation. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said in a statement that he had spoken to Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and was assured that an investigation of the incident would be conducted.
bgates,
Good summary. I’ll add that the sectarian violence the Sunnis complain of stems very largely from Sadr’s thugs.
This is what we get for letting Sadr live; a decision that remains one of the biggest and most consequential failings in the entire war.
The excellent comment #5 points to the conclusion that the MSM has created an image of itself as impartial arbiter of truth that it is incapable of living up to. This image was always self-delusion, but before the development of alternative media such as talk radio and blogs it was hard for anyone who wanted to point out that the emperor had no clothes on to get their message out.
It must be very hard for American journalists to abandon this myth, because stepping down from their Olympian detachment means accepting a reduction in status – or perhaps, admitting that they didn’t deserve this status in the first place. There must also be a fear that admitting to being partisan would mean a loss of audience, especially if it were partisanship for a minority segment of opinion.
But the illusion could only be sustained as long as the media landscape was totally dominated by a few like-minded outlets, and history will view the imperial MSM of the past few decades as a short-lived aberration. Blogs aren’t destroying the old media, they’re just forcing it to return to reality.
Stickler,
Could you respond to my comment #7?
Rob Lyman:
Islamofacists, including both Shia (in Iran, for instance) and Sunni, clearly want to rule the US, and indeed they’re already making inroads, given for instance the pathetic surrender of our “free press” and bastions of “academic freedom” in the cartoon controversy. Also, consider the current legal action in Canada against the Western Standard for publishing the cartoons.
I seriously doubt there’s much point to this dialogue. Your questions contains so many presumptions that I find laughable that I doubt we’ll be able to bridge the gap. “Islamofascists” is a useless term favored by ideologues who clearly don’t understand fascism or Islam. To believe that the Iranian leadership “wants to rule the US” is ridiculous. They want to keep ruling Iran, and further the security of the Islamic Republic in the region. If you’re afraid of the Pasdaran parachuting into Colorado (“Green Dawn?”), then we have little to say to one another.
To equate Iran or Iraq (neither of which attacked us on 9/11/01, remember) with Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan is intellectual sloppiness of the most breathtaking sort. The only threat they pose to us is of niggling pinprick attacks on our own forces in the region, or one-off terrorist blows made possible by our own government’s failures, as in September 2001. They cannot overthrow our Republic. They could seriously disrupt our economy by interrupting our oil supply, but that is a problem we have brought on ourselves and could — had we better national leadership — begin to solve ourselves.
Stickler,
Perhaps it is pointless to have a discussion with someone who, specifically invited to consider something other than tactics when discussing war, scoffs at the notion of Iranian paratroops in Colorado. I’m happy to join you in scoffing at that straw man. Or shooting at him, whatever you prefer.
Look, neither Hitler nor Tojo could have overthrown our Republic by armed force. Hitler simply never had a navy that could put a force larger than a platoon on the beach, and he couldn’t even resupply the small platoons of sabateurs he did land (or prevent them from being caught and executed). Tojo did have such a navy, but anyone who thinks he could have put a force larger than a platoon on the far side of the Continental Divide is nuts. But to know that you’d have to pause for a moment to think logistics instead of tactics.
The Soviets at least had ICBMs. But a conventional land invasion? Forget it.
Rioting mobs in the middle east have prevented the publication and disemination in the US of a handful of harmless editorial cartoons in mainstream outlets like newspapers, universities, and Borders (thank you, DoD, for the Internet!). George W Bush simply could not do this if he tried, and he’s the “most powerful man in the world”. If the loudest advocates of one of our most important freedoms are unwilling to defend it agasint a mob of Muslim extremists thousands of miles away, then the wholesale surrender of our rights to domestic or imported nutjobs of one sort or another seems inevitable. Perhaps our Republic will not be toppled by tanks, but there will be little point in having it if it no longer stands for a robust form of freedom.
This is a strategic rather than tactical victory for our enemies, achieved through both the threat of harmless little “one off” terrorist acts and the exploitation of a huge strategic weakness in our culture, namely the strange need of our elites to avoid giving the slightest offense to anyone or anything (other than white evangelicals and NASCAR fans, who are fair game).
As for the objectives of Muslim extremists, I’ll take them at their word when they say the wish to destroy the Great Satan and convert the world to Islam. Maybe they’re lying, I don’t know. I’m not in a mood to smile indulgently and assume the best.