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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (18143)	11/30/2003 4:47:36 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793648

Rantingprofs Critiques of media coverage of the War on Terror, and the politics surrounding it. NEWS CYCLE ROUNDUP Which, tonight, ends up just being NBC. First, they're at it again in the way they present casualties. Two Japanese diplomats are "ambushed" and the Spanish suffer their greatest loss yet in an RPG attack. Well that's it, that's all I can tell you about either incident. They can pretend this is covering the news, but this is reading headlines out loud. There's no context, no story, no sense of what happened -- which of course leaves people with a sense that events are out of control, that there is no meaning to these deaths, that we are on the defensive. How else can they interpret events when they are basically given no facts to interpret? Second, James Hattori has a piece on the "war of words," that is the administration's displeasure with press coverage. The story, taking a series of pot shots along the way, notes that the IGC, "perhaps taking a cue from the Pentagon" is shutting down al Arabiya. (Perhaps taking a cue? Perhaps you could put up some evidence to back up the innuendo.) Al Arabiya of course protests that in playing Saddam's little love notes to the Ba'ath killers, they're just reporting the news. (Of course that's always the Arab satellite channels answer to everything; they're "just" reporting the news. Of course there is no such thing as "just" reporting the news. I don't speak Arabic and I don't watch that channel -- but I know that answer is utterly unsatisfactory right out of the gate.) But, Hattori notes, the Secretary of Defense has claimed in the past that the Arab satellite channels have been cooperating with whoever is attacking Americans -- they get messages to come and film attacks. But, given "no specific details" this leaves some to wonder if this isn't all just shooting the messenger. (What is this drive the American media outlets have to always defend the Arab channels, especially al Jazeera? They seem utterly charmed by them, just incapable of believing they have any slant at all.) Hattori then produces, I kid you not, a professor from USC, Martin Kaplan who says "the antidote to the messenger we don't like" is of course more messengers, which leads to discussion of the Coalition supported channel. Listen, Professor Kaplan, you're right many in DOD and elsewhere have complained that the Arab channels are relentlessly anti-American, and the antidote to that problem is no doubt more alternatives in the Mid-East market. But the charge here is not that they were producing biased coverage, it's that they were producing coverage that was inciting violence (the IGC's claim) and actually cooperating in the deaths of American troops (the DOD's claim.) More messenger's ain't gonna fix that. I've argued before that in the short term, being first amendment absolutists is probably not the way to go in an environement in which civil society has been crushed for decades. There may be times, as in Germany's anti-Nazification laws, where some restrictions on free speech are warrented for the greater public good and can be undertaken without tyranny resulting. Then as a large WAR AND POLITICS graphic shows behind the anchor, a piece is introduced with the comment that the "enduring image" of the weekend will be that of the president with the troops for Thanksgiving. Therefore, says David Gregory it's time to stary the debate over the long term political effects. Since he may have done it to overcome the idea he has been too "distant from the sacrifices of US troops" as B-roll of an Arlington funeral is played. Whatever you think of the argument that the president should be attending funerals, I'll say it again, this is media generated flap, started and pushed by the New York Times. Remember last summer when people were talking about the 3ID being deployed too long -- you couldn't swing a dead cat without coming across a quote from a soldier saying "I've been in Iraq too long." Where are the quotes? Even anonymous quotes? They've got nothing except from that one mother up at Ft. Carson weeks after this ball got rolling and Democratic political operatives. Speaking of which, conveniently enough, up pops Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart to note that the President has been "conspicuously absent" from the grieving families. Is this really the right spokesman to pick up this banner? Because this begs a comparison, and there is no evidence of President Clinton attending the individual funerals of indivdual soldiers, which is what is being asked of this president. Yes, President Clinton attended services for the Cole victims, but as I have repeatedly noted, that is simply not the same -- it is more akin to the services for the victims of the Embassy bombings, or the Memorial for those lost in Oklahoma City. If military members are asked how they feel about this president, I strongly suspect they will not come back with responses indicating they are gravely disappointed because he is not attending funerals. rantingprofs.typepad.com

To: unclewest who wrote (18143)	12/1/2003 10:59:57 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 793648

here is the FBI definition of terrorism. "the unlawful use of force against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in the furtherance of political or social objectives". By that definition George Washington was a terrorist, as was anyone who ever rebelled against established authority. You could argue that by that definition the American bombing of Iraq, which was undoubtedly “unlawful” in the jurisdiction in which it occurred, was an act of terrorism. I would suggest that a terrorist attack is one directed at civilians or non-combatant forces in the furtherance of political or social objectives. Once forces are engaged in an existing armed conflict, whether declared or undeclared, it’s hard for me to define action that is part of that conflict as “terrorism”. That’s semantics, of course. It was an ugly fight, and a lot of ugly things happened. The American mistake was in seeing the fight as one between bad guys on the left and good guys on the right, and acting accordingly. The reality was that we had bad guys on the left and equally bad guys on the right, with something approaching good guys in the center, walking a thin line between the communists and the people who wanted a return to fascist dictatorship. We dove into that conflict in an appallingly chaotic way, without really understanding it, and to this day I think we did more harm than good. The Philippine government had a strategy for addressing the NPA; it was an intelligent strategy based on a realistic assessment of the internal dynamics of the left and of the relationship between the left and its mass base. We tried to undercut that strategy because to our people, who looked at it through the inappropriate lens of Vietnam, it looked wrong. Fortunately we failed: they held their course and the strategy worked, but it got much messier than it had to. It’s hard to communicate just how weird it was. We had all kinds of freelance spooks: Singlaub was over on behalf of WACL, spending the reverend Moon’s money and promoting the formation of civilian “anti-communist” militias that ended up serving as little more than hit squads for the provincial autocrats, who weren’t exactly nice guys. (He was also convinced that he was going to find Yamashita’s treasure and use it to fund the Contras, but that’s another weird story). We had a certified psycho named David Berg, aka “Moses David” head of a sect called the Children of God, spending suspiciously large amounts of somebody’s money and openly trying to persuade military officers to stage a coup. The embassy was a nuthouse, more spooks than straight guys, most of them new on the scene and totally ignorant of local conditions. Everybody protecting their turf, clinging to their sources. It’s not in any way surprising to me that people on our side became targets Some other factors may also come into play, such as the Cuban and N Vietnamese influence and support of a communist takeover of the Philippines or at least Luzon. There was no Cuban influence. None. There were rumours of Vietnamese activity, but it was never terribly effective and there was no significant impact. The Chinese had a hand in, but pulled it out back in the ‘70s, after NPA incompetence sank (literally, in one case) several attempts to provide arms. Even the most extreme anti-communist ideologues in the intel community never claimed any significant foreign influence on or support for the NPA. The NPA grew to the extent it did not because of foreign support, but because the Marcos government, with it’s spectacular corruption and clumsy brutality, was bad enough to drive people to the communists and not efficient enough to fight them effectively. American support for Marcos did more to boost the Communist cause than anything any Communist country did. The purpose of his murder was to intimidate the US Government and to coerce the Philippine Government to withdraw agents that had infiltrated the NPA. The single greatest purpose was actually to gain status and recognition for the Alex Boncayao Brigade (ABB), the unit that pulled it off. There was a massive internal power struggle going on in the NPA at the time – a struggle that was eventually a major factor in the organization’s collapse – and the ABB was pulling out all the stops to demonstrate that it was the most aggressive and militarily capable of the competing factions. Certainly they wanted to have an impact on US policy, but there was no assumption that killing one man would intimidate the US government. The idea was to bring US involvement into the open and try to generate sentiment against that involvement within the US. US involvement in Nicaragua was a major domestic issue at the time, and they hoped that if the American exposure became public knowledge, it would have to be scaled back. I don’t think “coercing the Philippine Government to withdraw agents” was ever an issue. Certainly there was no chance that the Americans would apply pressure for withdrawal in the wake of the killing. The opposite was more likely to be true. Some believe that Rowe's assassination was part of a larger attempt to intimidate US Special Forces. I have a very hard time buying into any kind of conspiracy theory on that. I don’t think anybody actually engaged in the fight believed that killing one Special Forces officer would intimidate the rest. That is not at all in line with the SF reputation: even their enemies respect them too much to believe that. It would also assume that the NPA people involved were under some kind of external control, and I really don't think that was the case - even internal control was pretty dubious by that point. In the years after the fall of Marcos in ’86, large numbers of NPA leaders and followers walked away from the organization, leaving only the hard-core ideologues behind. I’ve been able to discuss these issues at length with many of them. Many stories there, many of them long ones and very sad ones. Much more complex than many Americans are willing to credit.