Whose the Enemy?

Wretchard points to a reporter from the Courier-Journal in Iraq who delivers some very revealing information as to the nature of the press in the 21st Century:

Just the process of working on that story has revealed many things to me about my own country. I'd like to share some of them with you:

* Lesson One: Many journalists in Iraq could not, or would not, check their nationality or their own perspective at the door.

* Lesson Two: Our behavior as journalists has taught us very little. Just as in the lead up to the war in Iraq, questioning our government's decisions and claims and what it seeks to achieve is criticized as unpatriotic.

* Lesson Three: To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous. ... "Dexter Filkins, who writes for The New York Times, related a conversation he had in Iraq with an American military commander just before we left. Dexter and the commander had gotten quite friendly, meeting up sporadically for a beer and a chat. Towards the end of one of their conversations, Dexter declined an invitation for the next day by explaining that he'd lined up a meeting with a "resistance guy." The commander's face went stony cold and he said, "We have a position on that." For Dexter the message was clear. He cancelled the appointment."

* Lesson Four: The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil.

* Lesson Five: What it's like to be afraid of your own country. ... "Once the story was finished and set to come out on the street, I was rushing back to the States -- mostly because we could no longer work once the story was published -- and I found I was scared returning to my own country. And that was an amazingly strange and awful feeling to have. Again, you could call me paranoid, but the questions about what might happen to me once in America -- where at least I would have more rights -- kept racing through my brain."

Read the rest of Wretchard's post which seeks to examine how the military has had to adapt for the press who, over the course of the war, has consistently misrepresented the American-side of the story.

My post, however, is more general in response to this journalist's "lessons" in Iraq. Ian Wood describes the obsurdity of the neutral observer here:

There are other sources - a certain Mr. Rather springs to mind - who still labor under the misapprehension that they are objective members of an information priesthood. I've written about that priesthood before. There are also those on either end of the political spectrum who, implicitly or explicitly, believe that bias in reporting is something that must be stamped out, and that it can be stamped out.

This is nonsense, and it breeds weak minds.

To begin with, true objectivity is value - neutral. It assigns no moral superiority to one fact over another. A polling day free of violence in Basra is a fact, and so are seven dead Marines in the crater left by a roadside IED outside of Falluja. Mr. Fisk repeatedly sets up the straw man that journalistic objectivity means that "everyone has to have 50% of each story," but facts don't take sides. They just are.

Second, I'm not value neutral. Neither are you. And if you can find me a newspaper, network, or reporter who's truly value - neutral, I'll give you a big amoral cookie. Part of the process - the work - of being as a critical thinker in an information society is recognizing the fact that value neutrality, and therefore objectivity, is a myth.

Regardless of the intentions of the press, they do have a story to tell, and it is one that hasn't been very favorable to the country that, ironically, protects their free speech. But, this story is a repeat of an older story they are so fond of reliving: Vietnam. In Part One of an article I transcribed by Robert Elegant, he said this about the roll of the press in Vietnam:

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.

Elegant describes many events during his time as a war correspondant, where the American press editorialized either by ommission or by commission. Sometimes events were fabricated that put Saigon and Washington in a negative light, other times successes by American and South Vietnamese forces were unreported. The picture the American people were getting about Viet Nam was not "objective" or "reality." It was a narrative developed within a collective group that had control of the mouthpiece, and was able to whittle the patience of the American population down to nothing. No one knows when that point was reached, but it is clear that by the time the protests were gathering momentum, America had no chance of winning in Viet Nam.

Most importantly, Elegant points out another danger caused by the press: American policy in the aftermath of Viet Nam was flacid due to it's failure in Viet Nam. Resolve gave way to compromise and timidity, and compromise in a world filled with nefarious characters, leads to people taking advantage of you.

Elegant's hypothosis sounds a truism with regards to Iraq. The consistently negative reporting of how America is losing the war has effectively neutralized American policy towards dealing with other terror supporting regimes in region. Syria and Iran have each been given another life as the United States cannot act against either country unless blatantly provoked. Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power and Syria has assassignated leaders opposing their occupation of Lebannon. Both countries have actively harbored and supported terrorists who have directly attacked and killed our own people. Yet, the resolve of American politics, which in the long-run is ultimately driven by popular support, is apparently requiring a more blatant provocation than these examples before being spurred into action again.

Getting back to the press, I do not have any problem what-so-ever with the press reporting "bad news." There is plenty of bad news in Iraq that is legitimately bad news, and it should be reported. There are a number of people in Iraq who don't like us being there, and there are times where insurgents score some big hits. Corruption is rampant in Iraqi society and warlords still rule.

But, it is completely different story to say, either implicity or explicitly, that America is losing the war. In my discussions with many politically well-informed people, I get nothing but blank stares when I ask what they know about the Anbar Campaign in Western Iraq. We've been engaged since the summer in one of the most important and specacularly successful campaigns the U.S. Military has ever engaged in, and the stories only seem to hit the front page when something bad happens. The Anbar Campaign was the foundation that made the December 15th election such a widely particated in event for all of Iraq.

Our military is engaged in Iraq, they are winning (not without casualties or setbacks), and our leadership has committed to seeing it through. But, we are only able to do this because we are already committed. The wider war on Islamic fascism still needs to be waged, but Americans as a whole do not have the confidence to deal with two countries that have openly, yet shrewdly, killed some of our very own without having to face any consequences.

My thesis is that our press, not the Islamic fascists, has been the instrumental force in depleting any will the American people once had by reporting a narrative in Iraq that is false. So, my open-ended questions are thus:

• With Islamic Fascism (secular and religous) being defeated in Iraq, yet still holding strong in Syria and Iran, what are the chances of another attack on American soil at or greater than September 11th?

• How many more innocent people are going to die in order for us to shun this fifth column, and turn and fight this plague on humanity to the finish?

I'm not hopeful. Long-term, we will win this fight, but when we come face to face with hell again, I hope the more than 50% of the population will be willing to drop the gloves and finally finish what we are capable of finishing if we'd just fully commit to it. If that is the case, than not only will Islamic Fascism be defeated, but we'll also see the downfall of an elitist press that has, regardless of intention, been responsible for giving too much power to America's enemies.

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at December 28, 2005 11:18 PM | TrackBack