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May 24, 2005
The News from Iraq
Michael Yon, embedded with the troops in Iraq, has a really interesting report on how newsgathering works outside of the embedding program, and why the news we see is so tilted towards mayhem. The problem seems to be structural: too much of an attempt at serving reporters on the military's part, combined with cheapness and risk-aversion on the media's part. But it's a critical problem, because the effect is to not tell the stories of our troops helping people in ordinary ways under extraordinary conditions, to not tell about finding homes for puppies after arresting a suspected terrorist.
And that skewed perspective eats at the heart of America's one weakness, our one demonstrated way of losing wars: public resolve. If all we see are the body counts, the lies, and the abuses (which are rare enough that two major incidents have been the touchstones for anti-military sentiment for two and over one years, respectively) - if that's all we see, then it's easy for those of us who are only barely convinced that the war is worth it, to become convinced on balance-of-harm or utilitarian grounds that the war is not worth the effort and the side effects.
Once that happens, we have lost. Even when, as in Viet Nam, we had already won militarily. And if that happens in this war, the next 9/11, the next 3/11, will not be a van loaded with explosives, or an airliner, or a series of suicide bombings. Those would happen, yes, for some time and with increasing severity. But if we stop prosecuting the war by ceasing to aggressively work to eliminate tyranny, then the next attack that shocks us will be nuclear, and it will be New York, or Chicago, or Seattle or Paris burning in ruin.
So to win this war, should we play down atrocities committed by Americans? No, but we shouldn't play them up, either - or in the case of Newsweek, make them up. Should we lie about how great the military is? No, we should tell the truth about how great our military is. Right now, our media is primarily telling only one side of this war: the enemy's side. And that has to stop.
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