The media is often referred to off-handedly as a strategic factor. But we still don't fully appreciate its fatal power. Conditioned by the relative objectivity and ultimate respect for facts of the U.S. media, we fail to understand that, even in Europe, the media has become little more than a tool of propaganda.
That propaganda is increasingly, viciously, mindlessly anti-American. When our forces engage in tactical combat, dishonest media reporting immediately creates drag on the chain of command all the way up to the president.
Real atrocities aren't required. Everything American soldiers do is portrayed as an atrocity. World opinion is outraged, no matter how judiciously we fight.
"Massacre of Jenin", anybody?
Time is the new enemy
That's a soldier's conclusion. I'm thinking through ways the military can work on the way it interacts with the media differently. But one thing the military can do is realize that sometimes it's just better to take the pain of ripping off the bandaid
And once again, the IDF says, "Welcome to our world!" The Israelis have always known, in every war, that they fought with a stopwatch ticking; decisive wins were never allowed unless they happened too fast to stop, as in 1967. In 1973, the Great Powers called "stop" after the Israelis turned the tide from the losses of the successful surprise attack and had starting to win decisively. To this day, the Yom Kippur War (or the Ramadan War, to give it its Arabic name) is taught in Egypt as a big Egyptian success.
I tell you, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the practice run for everything. |
