woiyo wrote:Another Opinion Piece from the NY Times. That's 2 opinions and one from a so called Liberal Bias New Papers Editorial Staff.
A War We Just Might Win
By MICHAEL E. O'HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK
Published: July 30, 2007
In a previous post I mentioned the relations between the press and the military. In light of the post of the op-ed piece from the NY Times its probably appropriate to examine the relationship more closely. I do not want to mislead anyone in regards to what I learned general's email. There was nothing in it save the specific names of BADR Corps and JAM. The email was simply an on site internal verification by a senior military officer of things that I already knew. People to whom the contents and analysis in the email come as a surprise probably either do not pay close attention to the news from several different sources our whose biases do not allow them to see, hear, evaluate, and understand what they see or read in the media.
I'll apologize in advance for the tome that follows, but I believe that I have a fairly unique view of the distrust that fills the gulf between the media and the military, and a little background is necessary in order to understand my comments. I will also apologize for the disjointed organization of what follows. It is a complex subject, and I have had a problem trying give it some order, logic, and direction. FWIW, I flew combat missions with the Navy over Vietnam from a couple of different carriers flying the Douglas A-4E Skyhawk. I was also trained in school as a photojournalist. Those two facts should help explain why I not only say I what I do but also why I am comfortable and reasonable confident in saying what follows.
The "dance" between the media and the military and/or government is complex, difficult, and full of mistrust on both sides. Like any group of people of a particular craft, the media in Iraq are a mixed bag. Some are excellent, some are average, and some are morally and intellectually bankrupt and downright dishonest. The quality of the news that we get from Iraq as well as obvious distrust between the media and the military has roots in the Vietnam conflict, but those roots are not what the typical conservative rant would have us believe, i.e., "The media's only goal is to make us lose the war."
There is no doubt in my mind that the typical reporter, photographer, or cameraman tries to report the facts as he/she see them. What a reporter "sees" is distorted because it is viewed or filtered through three sets of less than perfect lenses.
The first set is owned by the reporter. No matter how honest and unbiased he/she is or tries to be, a reporter's set of beliefs and opinions will add some distortion to what he/she sees and understands.
The second set of lenses is a special subset or bifocals used in press briefings by the military and interviews of military personnel. This set of bifocals can be either tack sharp or highly distorted depending on the individual reporter's past experience in regards to the veracity of previous encounters in briefing or interview sessions.
The last set of lenses are those of the military. More properly it is a set of filters rather than lenses and involves not only what and how information is released to the press but also the media's access to various military operations. A historical perspective might help.
In WWII, as it has been in every conflict since, the military has controlled the media's access. A reporter could not and cannot simply take a flight to a war zone and walk to the front lines. He/she must be certified by DOD as the representative of a specific media outlet. In WWII, a reporter's access to the front line action was controlled by the military, but once at the front a reporter was fairly free to go anywhere he wished. His reports, however, were passed through a military sensor to make sure that no usable information reached the enemy.
In Vietnam the certification and access process was much the same, but the medium of television had more impact on the nature and conduct of the conflict more than the entire history of reportage in all of the wars previously. Television had an immediacy and visual, visceral impact that was new and totally unexpected. It brought the war into the living rooms of American, and the American public didn't like what it saw.
Combine that with the repetitive, less than candid "There's light at the end of the tunnel" assessments and body count statistics by senior military and civilian leaders combined with the seemingly at will large scale attacks by the North Vietnamese such as the Tet Offensive in 1968, and the public became convinced that we could not win in Vietnam. The press did not have to color or slant its reportage for that to happen, but the stories and broadcasts at the time clearly reflected many reporters option that what they saw did not tally with what Saigon was saying about the war. The news analysts and editorial writers were even more blunt in their comments and evaluations.
There were many negatives that grew out of the Vietnam War, the most important of which were an intense distrust of official military press releases by the media and a belief by the military that the media was an adversary. This distorted view of each other has carried forward to today, and the first gulf war only exacerbated the mutual distrust.
During the first Gulf War, the military was determined to control the news in order to prevent what could be called the "Vietnam Media Effect." Practically all news of the conflict was from two sources, the daily military briefing and the CNN team that was in Baghdad. Few reporters or photojournalists were embedded in front line units, and those that were could not send out reports until the war was over or they returned to a rear area. The media, quite justifiably, loudly cried fowl and the Congress and the public agreed with them.
This time reporters were embedded in front line units before the fighting started and the technology had progressed to the point that the reporters could report the action as it unfolded with no delay. Just about the only restriction that the military put on the correspondents was to not reveal either their exact location or what was planned. What resulted was some of the best front line reporting ever seen. Generally the military was happy and the media was happy. When the country started to fall apart relations between the media and the military began to sour as well.
This distrust and often open enmity grew out of the military's frustration with the media's criticism first of the military inability to control and prevent the looting and lawlessness that swept the country, and second its inability to control and prevent the ever increasing violent attacks by the insurgency. There is an irony here that closely parallels the irony of the media/military standoff that developed in Vietnam, and it has to do with the difference between the media's perception of what the military's mission should be, and what the actual orders and ROE (Rules of Engagement) that the military had to follow.
In Iraq as in Vietnam the military can rightly say that every campaign was a resounding success and that it was never defeated on the battlefield. The press can rightly say that the military failed to achieve or is failing to achieve the national objective in Vietnam/Iraq. The irony is that both are correct, and therein lies the distortion and enmity between the two.
Hopefully all of the preparatory material above will explain what follows.
The media uses the enemy produced video because it is the most dramatic video available, and since dramatic video increases both viewer attention and the number of viewers the media feels it use is justified because it is news. Of course the problem is then that the negative gets reported and the positive is lost. As such, I have tended to ignore the repeated videos of IED explosions except those that have obviously been captured by the media. A great deal of the IED video and/or video of the carnage following an attack on some civilian target by the enemy come from the enemy itself.
If the media could get as compelling video of US and/or Iraqi forces kicking the hell out of the insurgents as the enemy provides, it would chose it first, but such video is damn near impossible to obtain. The enemy IED video is captured by remote cameras in position waiting for the attack and the operator is in no danger. During a fire fight, the media embedded with units on attack cannot move and chose the best locations from which to capture video much less select locations in advance for the best dramatic impact.
Another problem is in the root word of "news." Something old is not new and if it is not new it cannot be news. When the things stagnate, there is nothing new to report, and when there is nothing new to report the media tries to report why it has stagnated. Inevitably the military gets blasted for not achieving success, and that deepens the distrust.
When something like the new strategy introduced by LGEN Petraeus to arm and actively enlist the Sunnis in the fight against al Qeada begins to work, this distrust tends to slow down the reportage on the successes. Were I a working journalist in Iraq today I would try like hell to get close to some of the Sunni tribal chiefs and get the story from that viewpoint because I think that is where the success or failure of the surge rests.
I view what is reported in the press and what is said by the administration through my own set of filters based upon my understanding of the history of the relationship between the media and the military. My view is influenced by my understanding the relationships, the history, the job of a journalist in a war zone, and the job of a weapon carrying service member in the same war zone. As compared to the general public this gives me a fairly unique view of what I read in the paper or see on TV. (Anyone with a similar background, i.e., trained as a journalist and tempered as an active combatant in Vietnam, would likely have the same sort of viewpoint.)
A good example of what I am talking about relates to the surge and the change in tactics. The first positive report from the Sunni areas I saw was on the News Hour on PBS about a month or so ago (the same time frame as the general's wayward email) about arming the Sunnis as part of the new strategy. It was the first good news from Iraq in a very long time but I did not either rely on that one report or give one isolated report much credence. It was only after I read his email that I felt the PBS report was unbiased and accurate. The email was a semi-internal confirmation of what I had gleaned from the media. I must mention, however, that I do not wait for an internal confirmation report before evaluating the accuracy and believability of a news report. If several media outlets have the same story written and/or covered by different reporters, I will accept it as accurate until proven otherwise.
Before the change in strategy, i.e., actively getting the Sunnis on board, and the seeming success of the surge, I viewed Iraq as a country in which the military would not and could not fail militarily but also would not and could not prevail militarily. It was a country where we would fail to achieve our national objective of establishing a friendly Arab democracy in a hostile region that could help offset the influence and activities of Syria and Iran. I no longer have the same pessimistic view.
With the reportage of the successes of the surge from the metrics of reduced attacks on civilians and fewer civilian deaths as well as fewer attacks on our own military, I view Iraq in a much different light. I now believe that success in Iraq from the standpoint of providing a stable and peaceful environment for the government to grow and mature is possible, if and only if we do not take some precipitous legislative action back here in the US. It is still to be determined if the "freeing" of the Sunnis will backfire once al Qeada is suppressed or if the government will be able to form a lasting coalition and gain control of the country and its borders.
