Superb media analysis by Stephen Den Beste.
.......We've seen something of that same kind of thing in the news reporting from Iraq. Whenever there's bad news, we get headlines; when there's good news, it lands on the back pages. Last summer we got told there was huge discontent among Iraqis because unemployment was so high. But the "unemployment" story vanished from the radar screen – because it got corrected.
Of course, the general process over the last year hasn't been smooth; there have been advances and setbacks. Each time things got worse we got told; when they got better that wasn't news.
In a lot of cases the problem has been that the reporting has left out critical information so as to let us all misinterpret what we are told. For instance, there's this report from Thursday:
More than 280 Iraqis have been killed and 400 wounded this week in the U.S. Marines' siege of insurgents in this city west of Baghdad, the director of Fallujah's hospital said Thursday.
First, keep in mind that he might be lying. During our operations in Afghanistan in October and November of 2001, the Taliban routinely exaggerated their reports of Afghan casualties resulting from American operations there.
But even if we accept his numbers, notably absent from this report is any indication of how many of those who were killed or wounded were active combatants. Quite frankly, by using the bland term "Iraqis" collectively for all of the casualties, this news report tries to portray all of them as innocent victims, uninvolved civilians. That's exceedingly unlikely. There can be no doubt that many of them were killed or wounded because they were shooting at the Marines, and the Marines shot back.
Some of them likely were civilians, however. That said, how many of those became victims because they were being used as human shields by combatants?
What inspired me to write was this news report. It's from Reuters, which has been responsible for some of the most blatant distortion in news reporting of the war we've seen from any "reputable" news collection agency. It begins:
US Forces Attacked in Baghdad, Offer Falluja Truce
Street fighting erupted in Baghdad on Saturday and sporadic gunfire echoed across Falluja despite a new U.S. truce offer and an effort by Iraqi officials to secure a peace deal with insurgents in the western city.
It then rounds up nearly every recent example of resistance it can find, and then reports Bush's response. The overall effect is to strongly imply that everything is going to hell; the US is on the ropes; Bush is lamely talking tough in public, but the Americans are actually desperate – and so they offered a truce to the insurgents in Falluja in hopes of disengaging there.
There are hints in this report of the true situation, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
The Wapo handled this little better. As I look at the front page there, I see this:
US Makes Plea for Ceasefire in Fallujah
Sounds like the US is on the ropes and asking for mercy, doesn't it? After all, we're "pleading" with them for a ceasefire.
That linked to this article, which carried the headline "U.S. Asks for Ceasefire in Fallujah". That's not quite the same.
But it's still deceptive. You have to look at a lot of different reports in order to figure out the true picture. From this report, we learn that the American ceasefire in Falluja was only for 24 hours. It also says that the Marines are moving reinforcements in. Other useful info comes from this, and this, and this.
If you peer through the fog and deliberate obfuscation, and put all the pieces together, it turns out that what really happened in Falluja was that the Marine commander halted offensive operations there for 24 hours, in part to let certain panicked members of the Governing Council try to talk sense into the militants, in part to let a third battalion of Marines come up in support, but mostly in order to let a lot of civilians leave the city. The offer that got delivered to the insurgents was a surrender demand: All insurgents, and especially all foreign jihadis, would have to peacefully yield themselves to the Marines and go into custody.
Based on this, it doesn't seem likely that the insurgents will surrender. My expectation is that the Marines will go back on the offensive soon and will complete the process of crushing the insurgency there.
America wasn't begging for mercy from the insurgents; it was offering them mercy. They were given a chance to surrender. If they don't take it, the Marines will kill most of them and take the rest prisoner.
For the last few days, quite frankly I haven't been paying close attention to the news reports from Iraq. Such reports as I did look at said about what I expected they would, and since I already knew their script ahead of time – it's all going to hell; it's all Bush's fault – there was no information to be gained. (As Wretchard pointed out, part of the script is that when things go badly for America then we are "hapless"; when things go well then we are "bullies".)
We won't be able to really learn what is happening there for quite a while, by watching long term trends. The press is doing its damndest to turn this into a rerun of the Tet Offensive, and as strange as it may seem, that's the biggest danger we now face. Recently, Victor sent me the following email:
Do you think it is possible that the US can lose the war that were are now engaged in, with the Islamic fanatics? If so, how?
Sure we can lose, and by far the most likely way for us to lose is for us to give up. In the last 30 years we are perceived to have done a lot of that, and our enemies have watched carefully. They know they have no hope of defeating us militarily but they don't think they have to.
The reason we were attacked in September of 2001 was because bin Laden believed we'd fold and surrender. He more or less expected America to respond the way the Spanish did after 3/11. Our enemies now understand that it won't be that easy, but they still hold out hope that eventually we'll lose our nerve.
There may come a time when we have to consider the possibility that the current strategy and campaign has to be significantly altered, but we are not close to that point yet. The recent uprising in Iraq is not an indication that we have failed.
We are often told we must study the lessons of history, and especially we are admonished by those opposing this war to study the lessons of Viet Nam. There are many aspects of that conflict which can teach us important lessons, and much about how it was fought and how it was managed politically to criticize. It is perhaps even arguable that we should not have fought there at all. But irrespective of any of those lessons, there is a very clear lesson to be learned from the Tet Offensive (which was only reinforced by the 1991 Gulf War): civilians can give away politically what soldiers have won on the battlefield.
The five fundamental elements of all war are objectives, strategy, tactics, logistics and morale, and it is possible to win on any of those levels. In this war, our enemies know they have no chance at all of defeating us strategically, tactically or logistically. All attempts to divert us from our objectives have failed. They perceive our greatest vulnerability to be morale, though not the morale of our troops.
They perceive our greatest vulnerability to be morale on the "home front". Even if they can't defeat us militarily, they can win if they convince us as a nation to surrender. If we come to believe we've been defeated, then we are defeated no matter how well or badly things are actually going.
That's how our enemies hope to win this war. But they can only gain such a victory if we citizens permit it. We are now and have always been their primary target. Each and every one of us is fighting this war inside their skulls, and that is where we have the greatest risk of losing. |
