Learning From History (AGAIN)

I wouldn't expect Glenn Reynolds to read this site under any circumstances, however he makes this comment today in reponse to British reporters questioning Tony Blair after today's bombings in London:

Some idiot correspondent asked Blair if the attacks were his fault because of the Iraq war. And others are taking an equally negative line -- one asks if the propaganda war against terror is being lost.

No -- but if so, it's because of people in the media like these. John Howard's too polite to tell them to read Norm Geras, but he put them in their place with logic, noting that Bin Laden was unhappy about the liberation of East Timor and declared war on that basis long before the Iraq invasion.

Translation: You're idiots, cowards, and political hacks. Yes! The preening, point-scoring irresponsibility of the press, which is if anything worse in Britain than in America, is one of the most striking things about this war, and it will be decades before it recovers. If it does.

Well, yeah. The media hasn't had a grip on this story, or any other story for quite a while, because it isn't about reporting, it is about a narrative where they set the parameters. Activism within journalism reared its ugly head in a big way in Viet Nam. I've transcribed one part of Robert Elegant's "How to Lose a War: Relfections of a Foreign Correspondent" begins his insightful article this way:

In the Early 1960s, when the Viet Nam War became a big story, most foreign correspondents assigned to cover the story wrote primarily to win the approbation of the crowd, above all their own crowd. As a result, in my view, the self-approving system of reporting they created became even further detached from political and military realities because it instinctively concentrated on its own self-justification. The American press, naturally dominant in an “American war”, somehow felt obliged to be less objective than partisan, to take sides, for it was inspired by the engage “investigative” reporting that burgeoned in the US in these impassioned years. The press was instinctively ”agin the Governmnent”—and, at least reflexively, for Saigon’s enemies.

During the latter half of the 15-year American involvement in Viet Nam the media became the primary battlefield. Illusory events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies. For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield, but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen. Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said (surprising as it may still sound) that South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the “native” guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. None the less, the War was finally lost to the invaders after the US disengagement cause the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance.

Since I am considering causes rather than effects, the demoralization of the West, particularly the United States, that preceded and followed the fall of South Viet Nam is beyond the scope of this article. It is, however, interesting to wonder whether Angoloa, Afghanistan, and Iran would have occurred if Saigon had not fallen amid nearly universal odium—that is to say, if the “Viet Nam Syndrome”, for which the press (in my view) was largely responsible, had not afflicted the Carter Administration and paralyzed American will. On the credit side, largely despite the press, the People’s Republic of China would almost certainly not have purged itself of the Maoist doctrine of “worldwide liberation through people’s war” and, later, would not have come to blows with Hanoi if the defense of South Viet Nam had not been maintained for so long.

The article is long and I've only transcribed a part of it. Please read it as Elegant doesn't write a scathing article full of invective and sour grapes; instead it is an insightful look, by a member of the media, into how the media as a whole played a huge factor in shaping the views of those back at home. This view was not a helpful one.

I guarantee that Bin Landen and Zarqawi are channeling Ho Chi Mihn right now and Uncle Ho keeps telling them, "Just hold on...just-hold-on."

UPDATE: Colossus comments. FYI, to everyone: I will be finishing the rest of Robert Elegant's article next month, and it only gets better (to bad it doesn't get shorter).

Also, I promise never to use the acronym FYI again.