The E-mail Weapon: Troops Tackle Bad Media
After my return from Iraq I received phone calls and emails from military friends as they either came back to the US on leave or finished their tours and re-deployed “Stateside.” The typical phone call went like this: “I’m back. It’s great to be home. What’s up? How are you doing?” Then, the conversation quickly moved on to: “What’s with the press and Iraq?” The press usually meant television. On tv Iraq looked like it was going to Hell in a handbasket of flame and brutality; however, the images of carnage didn’t square with the troops’ experience.
Today on StrategyPage, my good friend Jim Dunnigan takes on the subject of “troop/press dissonance” from his typically idiosyncratic angle. I’m going to quote from “There’s more going on in Iraq than a media event” at length. (As the essay notes, there is also more going on in Iraq than a war.) Visit StrategyPage and read the second story, “Journalism versus Reality.”
A column I wrote in early 2005 provides an illustration of Jim’s point . The column considers events in Iraq circa July 2004– and one reason I think the press coverage is all too often spotty, negative, and narrow.
A couple of key grafs in that Creators Syndicate column (dated March 2005):
Collect relatively isolated events in a chronological list and presto: the impression of uninterrupted, widespread violence destroying Iraq. But that was a false impression. Every day, coalition forces were moving thousands of 18-wheelers from Kuwait and Turkey into Iraq, and if the “insurgents” were lucky they blew up one. However, flash the flames of that one rig on CNN and, “Oh my God, America can’t stop these guys,” is the impression left in Boise and Beijing.
Saddam’s thugs and Zarqawi’s klan were actually weak enemies — “brittle” is the word I used to describe them at a senior planning meeting. Their local power was based on intimidation — killing by car bomb, murdering in the street. Their strategic power was based solely on selling the false impression of nationwide quagmire — selling post-Saddam Iraq as a dysfunctional failed-state, rather than an emerging democracy…
Here’s Jim Dunnigan, from StrategyPage November 20, 2005:
IRAQ: There’s More Going On in Iraq Than a Media Event
November 20, 2005: If it weren’t for Internet access to troops, expatriates and Iraqis in Iraq, you would think that coalition military operations in Iraq were a major disaster, and that prompt withdrawal was the only reasonable course of action. But the mass media view of the situation is largely fiction, conjured up in editorial offices outside Iraq, with foreign reporters in Iraq (most of them rarely leaving their heavily guarded hotels) providing color commentary, and not much else. So what do the troops and Iraqis say?
First, there is definitely a terrorism problem. Not an insurgency, not a guerilla war, not a resistance. A portion of the Sunni Arab population refuses to recognize the Sunni Arab loss of power in early 2003. They are supporting a campaign of terror to either get back power or, more pragmatically, to get immunity for most Sunni Arabs for crimes committed during Saddams decades in power. The majority of support the terrorists get is from the amnesty crowd. Hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arab families have one or more members who did Saddam’s dirty work. That has left millions of Kurds and Shia Arabs looking for revenge. Remember, this is where the legal concept of “eye-for-an-eye” was invented thousands of years ago. The children of Hammurabi want their measure of vengeance, and if they get it, the current violence in Iraq will look pallid by comparison. All the prevents a wholesale descent into mutual slaughter is the presence of coalition troops. In other parts of the world (and there are many to examine at the moment) this sort of thing is called peacekeeping. Withdraw the peacekeepers, and what peace there is goes with them.
Second, there is a cultural crises, in the Arab world in particular, and the Moslem world in general. The crises is expressed by a lack of economic, educational and political performance. By whatever measure you wish to use, Nobel prizes, patents awarded, GDP growth, the Arabs have fallen behind the rest of the world. Part of the problem is the Arab tendency to blame outsiders, and to avoid taking responsibility. Tolerating tyranny and resistance to change doesn’t help either. That is changing, and the war in Iraq has become the center of this cultural battle. It began with the 2003 invasion, which was reported by the Arab media as a great defeat for the Western “crusader” army. Until, that is, it was all too obvious that American troops had battled their way to Baghdad in three weeks, and were quickly defeating Iraqi forced defending this cultural capital of the Arab world. This triggered a debate in the Arab world, one that got little coverage in the West. It began when some Arab journalists openly pointed out, in the Arab media, that Arab reporters had not only been writing fantastical stories that had no relationship to reality, but that this sort of thing had been going on for a long time and, gosh, maybe it had something to do with the sorry state of affairs in the Arab world. That particular debate is still going on, largely unnoticed in the West. This is the real war against terrorism, because the terrorists represent the forces of repression and backwardness in the Arab world.
Third, the bad guys are really, really bad, but they have many prominent allies around the world. Most Iraqis cannot understand how so many media outlets in the West can keep giving favorable coverage to the Sunni Arab terrorists. These guys are butchers, and many used to work for Saddam, committing the same kind of mayhem. Yet these European reporters come looking for Sunni Arab “victims” of “American imperialism.” How strange is that? Nothing strange, just another cultural quirk. The Europeans are much more risk averse than Americans. We all remember the 1930s, where most of Europe left Hitler alone, hoping that they could talk sense into him, or that he would go away. Eventually, the good people of Europe (at least those that had not been conquered by the Germans) had to fight the nazis. Americans, most of them descendents of refugees from European foolishness, wanted no part of this latest chapter. But the Japanese and Pearl Harbor intervened, and there we were. After that, Europeans had to deal with another of their inventions, communism. This one had also started off in a promising fashion, but had eventually descended into mass murder and tyranny. Still, many Europeans remained fans, at least from a distance, and defended it until communism collapsed in a pile of contradictions and dead ideas. Europeans have a thing about tyranny. While not wanting it for themselves, they are more willing than most to tolerate it for others. Thus the disagreement over going after Saddam. Many Europeans believe that taking down Saddam was just wrong, and continued American peacekeeping in Iraq just compounds the error. Europeans had made their peace, and many business deals, with Saddam. And the Americans went in and screwed it all up. Europeans have been screwing things up far longer than Americans, and consider themselves experts. They are unhappy that the Americans do not follow the lead of Europe in these matters. Moreover, Europeans cannot accept that they could be wrong, despite any evidence to the contrary. This is a major component of European cultural superiority.
And, lastly, we have the major differences between the media version of what’s going on, and the military one. The media are looking for newsworthy events (bad news preferred, good news does not sell, and news is a business). The military sees it as a process, a campaign, a series of battles that will lead to a desired conclusion. The event driven media have a hard time comprehending this process stuff, but it doesn’t really matter to them, since the media lives from headline to headline. For the military, the campaign in Iraq has been a success. The enemy, the Sunni Arabs, have been determined and resourceful. But the American strategy of holding the Sunni Arabs at bay, while the Kurds and Shia Arabs built a security force capable of dealing with the Sunni Arab terrorists, has worked. But that’s good news, and thus not news. But every terrorist attack by Sunni Arabs is news, and gets reported with intensity and enthusiasm.
But in the end, process usually wins. News events are often turned into obstacles. Journalists understand that their audience generally has no memory for past reporting that was inaccurate. What is of the moment takes precedence in peoples minds. Politicians play the same game, rewriting history freely, secure in the knowledge that their followers will go along with the revisions, and their opponents will have to play the news event game to score any points with the undecided. Human nature being what it is, the majority of the population pays little attention to the buzz of news, unless, like an outstanding TV or radio commercial, some journalist comes up with an event that registers big time. This changes perceptions, for a while at least, and often creates an artificial reality in the minds of many. This time, it isn’t quite working that way. The troops can email back their experiences promptly, and this causes a disconnect in many people, between what they see in the news, and what they are hearing from people who are in the middle of it all. How all this will play out is as yet unknown, which is what makes it so interesting. There’s more going on in Iraq than a war.
Remember this quote: First, there is definitely a terrorism problem. Not an insurgency, not a guerilla war, not a resistance. That is the ground truth in Iraq.
This all has been well-said. It is to be wondered how much longer it will be before bubbling morons in the so-called “mainstream press” are systematically, contemptuously ignored, using Web-mediated blacklists of known apologists for evil.
Comment by Brother Bark — 11/20/2005 @ 10:23 am
Great. We are in dire need of the truth. Please keep it up. Gary
Comment by Gary Foreman — 11/20/2005 @ 10:40 am
Colonel Bay: I gave up on the media long since…with a few exceptions I found them clueless in my own area of expertise: physical science. If I may be permitted to extend an analogy: while the Iraq LameStreamMedia focuses on the negative and bad items because it “sells”, they also focus on scare stories about health and medicine. So I don’t bother with The New York Times Science Tuesday and its ilk. Like everyone else on the Net, I can go to the source. Strategy Page and your blog are one of my daily stops. I find that Dunnigan’s predictions have by and large come true and your observations ring true. So why bother with prejudiced idiots? After the comic page and local sports, I close the local rag, driven as they are to copy the AP wire. I find myself better informed cruising the Net than wasting the same time with the Olde Media of TV, newspapers, and magazines. Like the dinosaurs, they have evolved as to big for their mental capacity. They have made themselves extinct… Rest In Pieces…
Comment by Good Ole Charlie — 11/20/2005 @ 11:06 am
I guess you have to be polite but I think the media are mostly out to make the effort in Iraq fail. I remember how they discovered the great power they had to influence public opinion during Vietnam and then turned the heat up with negative reporting. It looks to me like they think its their job and that they believe the military is always spinning and hiding the truth and that the truth is always the same - we are losing. It isn’t just e-mail from soldiers its their blogs and those of Iraqis too that are providing a clearer picture for those of us interested enough to search it out. It isn’t clear who is going to win in the information war, but from what I read from Iraq there is real hope that we are getting the Iraqi army trained and have made serious progress in disrupting the terrorists so that the Iraqi army will be able to keep the lid on.
Comment by lgude — 11/20/2005 @ 11:08 am
How did you feel about the mainstream media in the United States, when, collectively, they went beyond the call to drum up public support for the invasion of Iraq? Was that coverage ‘largely fictional’ back then, as you claim it is now?
Comment by Jon Moser — 11/20/2005 @ 11:55 am
This is an exercise in self-delusion. Dont forget that the Vietnamese (granted, a legitimate insurgency) lost almost every single battle, yet won the war. If you want to blame the media for anything, blame them for their almost nonexistant coverage of the war in Iraq, and total blackout of the war in Afghanistan.
Comment by M Grele — 11/20/2005 @ 12:16 pm
End The MIssion Creep: Bring Them Home What we have here is mission creep. The original goal was to overthrow Saddam and install a new government. OK, I can see adding the task of protecting Shi’a in a civil war, but daggone, they will never be free until they defend themselves.
Trackback by Don Surber — 11/20/2005 @ 12:20 pm
Declaring disaster and going home Last night I heard John McLaughlin declare operations in Iraq a thorough-going disaster and proclaim the urgency of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Dr. McLaughlin opposed the invasion and has opposed the war in Iraq from the very outset. I just hear…
Trackback by The Glittering Eye — 11/20/2005 @ 12:38 pm
Maybe I’m alone on this, but why do we trust either the military or the media when it comes to nation-building? This is unchartered territory for both institutions. I think it is important to listen to the military because they are on the ground and have the most intimate view of the situation. However, they are not objective. What makes the US military the finest fighting force in the world is that when the commit to an operation, they focus overwhelmingly on completing it successfully. Were they to step back and reflect on the potential for the mission to fail, It would reduce their effectiveness. So they bull ahead with a positive attitude. We expect nothing less from them, and honor this ability to persevere. The media is also important to listen to, because they are the ones observing and reporting on what the military is doing. They come from a wide variety of political views, and because their job requires at least a attempt to be objective, they can offer a broader context for the war. However, they too will never be fullly objective, and not just of charges that they are dominated by the “liberal establishment.” They can never fully grasp the situation because their profession requires them to write stories that sell newspapers, so it follows that they gravitate to conflict and bloodshed. (Incidentally, the notion that playing up violence is a liberal phenomenom is ludicrous: despite the multitude of postive news that goes on in American everyday, Fox News maintains a ghoulish focus on kidnapped or murdered women.) Bottom line, who is qualified to report on the progress/setbacks of the nation-building in Iraq? Maybe the media doesn’t know what to focus on in their stories, but why should the military know what to focus on? The military was trained to fight, not rebuild a country, and as I’ve stated, they come with their own biases. It is for these reasons that I remain unconvinced that the media is offering a view that is any more out of touch with reality than that espoused by Republicans.
Comment by Nate — 11/20/2005 @ 1:57 pm
[…] y; however, the images of carnage didn’t square with the troops’ experience. Read the whole thing. Related Posts: Unofficial Marine DictionaryEven A Stopped Clock Is Right Twice A DayThe Med […]
Pingback by Say Anything - North Dakota’s Most Popular Political Blog » Media’s Coverage/Real World Disconnect — 11/20/2005 @ 3:02 pm
Information Warfare and Instant Communications Strategy Page takes a brief look at the disconnect between media reporting and the view of soldiers who are in the fight.American troops are developi…
Trackback by Media Lies — 11/20/2005 @ 4:28 pm
Understand the the target of the media campaign might not be what it seems. Consider the 18 year-olds who will be voting in 2006 who have been hearing crap on TV (their main media source) since they were 14 years old. They believe it is true. They don’t have any life experiance to draw from. They are the must vulnerable to revisionist history because they don’t know better. There are going to be a whole lot of new voters that have no clue how they are being led by the nose and it is so sad. Someone needs to reach out to these kids with the real story.
Comment by crosspatch — 11/20/2005 @ 4:53 pm
Ah, yes…but when foreigners see only BBC and CNNI, which tend to stress anti American things while ignoring the positive, they think these are “official” US/Brit news sites… CNNI touts every bombing without condemnation i.e.without showing wounded civilians and of course without showing positive US achievements. Twelve Sunnis protesting “atrocities” in Shiite jails got the same amount of time as 200 000 people in Amman protesting terrorism the day before. And the papers here are worse: leftist professors and Maureen Dowd hold the line. Sigh
Comment by bonkie — 11/20/2005 @ 6:06 pm
The E-mail Weapon: Troops Tackle Bad Media I am sick of the media constantly telling us that this is another Vietnam and that we are in a quagmire. They are lying to us. They want the terrorists to win. Austin Bay Blog gives us a way to fight the disinformation they shove down our throats eve…
Trackback by Noahware — 11/20/2005 @ 7:36 pm
I am sick of the media constantly telling us that this is another Vietnam and that we are in a quagmire. They are lying to us. They want the terrorists to win. Austin Bay Blog gives us a way to fight the disinformation they shove down our throats every day. They could not even report on the possible killing of al-Zarqawi without lacing the report with crap about how bad things are there. Like so many reports from the MSM, these reports are peppered with statistics of how many Americans have been killed in Iraq, how many people died this weekend, how we torture terrorists, blah blah blah. They can not even report on the good news without twisting it into bad news. Freedom bad, Dhimmitude good. They are practically rooting for the terrorists. It’s amazing that these asshat reporters still feel that they’re unbiased.
Comment by Noah Bawdy — 11/20/2005 @ 7:39 pm
Some of these comments are laughable. The media “going beyond the call” to raise support for the Iraq invasion? I guess you are referring to the repeated showing of the towers burning and falling, the desparate people leaping to thier deaths to escape burning or suffocation. Or maybe you are referring to the 24/7 coverage of Daniel Pearls beheading. The media has never shown a pro-invasion bias in it’s reporting. The media lies thru omission, leaving out important contextual elements to create a false impression which does not accurately reflect reality in order to affect domestic politics. From small things such as reporting “10 deaths today from car bombs” instead of denoting that the deaths were Iraqi women and children, instead of American soldiers. That is not even mentioning the intricate contexts of a multi-faceted insurgency which consists of foriegn jihaadists, anti-occupation Iraqi’s, and actually Baathist opposition. The media’s coverage of this war is totally biased toward creating obstacles to the Bush Administrations successful completion of any of thier agenda items. That is its only purpose, reality be damned.
Comment by Joel Mackey — 11/20/2005 @ 7:58 pm
“LameStreamMedia” I like that one Good Ole Charlie !
Comment by Noah Bawdy — 11/20/2005 @ 9:34 pm
Nate. “Maybe I’m alone on this, but why do we trust either the military or the media when it comes to nation-building? This is unchartered territory for both institutions.” Uh, how about Germany and Japan after WWII ? Hardly unchartered territory.
Comment by Noah Bawdy — 11/20/2005 @ 9:38 pm
Nate, “They come from a wide variety of political views” ? Are you blind and/or deaf ? They sing a chorus ! They constantly portray our struggle against Dhimmitude in the darkest light.
Comment by Noah Bawdy — 11/20/2005 @ 9:44 pm
Joel Mackey, You are dead on dude. Good comment !
Comment by Noah Bawdy — 11/20/2005 @ 9:45 pm
The StrategyPage article was very on target. Milblogs by soldiers and Marines are quite informative and effectively counter the MSM even without intending to do so. Personal emails to friends and family that get forwarded also tend to get the correct message out. This begs the question: Why is the military shutting down so many milblogs? I’ve noticed several of my regular milblogs have voluntarily ceased posting in response to their superiors’ requests. In each case, I thought the affected milbloggers were very careful to not violate OpSec concerns, and the information they did pass was most effective in providing an educated and accurate view of actual events and situations in Iraq and elsewhere. In short, they provided a most impressive positive picture of the military in their individual combat zones. Combining the various observations reveals a general pattern of quality leadership, personnel and strategy. The military benefits greatly from these reports. I hope the military can be persuaded to allow reasonable milblogging to continue, perhaps even providing a few general guidelines and instructional briefings to assist potential bloggers. (Note: I do not suggest a completely unregulated or unsupervised milblogging environment; there does need to be an element of accountability.) BTW, the MSM has lost much credibility with me because of their (too frequent) inaccurate and often clueless reporting in the areas in which I personally have some expertise and/or knowledge (like military, aviation or southern border problems). I assume that if they err in these areas I know, they probably also err in the other areas as well. The MSM also does not seem to have an effective self-correcting mechanism or the ability/desire to correct factual or bias-induced errors. #12, I think you’re on to something. It’s a very sobering thought, too.
Comment by E. T. — 11/20/2005 @ 11:37 pm
It is not only the military and those of us that support the war who are complaining about the media. There are alot of Iraqi’s who are the one’s that are said to be suffering so bad and want us out now, are complaining too. The Iraqi’s are the one’s who are paying the heavy price for their freedom, but they know it is working. In fact, I have even read complaints about it on other Arab blogs.
Comment by EXDemocrat — 11/21/2005 @ 12:21 am
Disconect Between Troops and Press Austin Bay notes a major disconnect between troops in Iraq experience and what the press reports. Anybody who’s been reading blogs, especially military blogs run by people wh…
Trackback by Dean's World — 11/21/2005 @ 4:59 am
Thanks for setting the record straight, it nourishes our collective conciousness. By the way, forgive this petty indulgence: Crisis is singular (CRY-sis). Crises is plural (CRY-seize). Please keep up the great work! Language is powerful, so I will remember that this is a terrorism problem, not a guerilla, insurgency, or resistance problem. Thanks again, David
Comment by David Christian — 11/21/2005 @ 6:27 am
Nate McArthur! Japan! Any of this ring a bell with you? (Hello? McFly?)
Comment by Sean — 11/21/2005 @ 8:04 am
I sure don’t remember any media pressure to invade Iraq. I remember a lot of the Democratic spin about Bush not ‘employing diplomacy’ and urging him to kowtow to the U.N. I remember a lot of criticism for the administration’s refusal to, in Bush’s words, ask for a “permission slip” to defend America. This is why the Internet is becoming so vital to the preservation of the facts. The Left is so used to misstating things (ie: lying) and getting away with it that it is a rude shock to suddenly have the public having access to quotes that prove them to be lying. Look at the recent effort to rewrite history by the weak-kneed poll-driven hacks who suddenly want to have it both ways, having supported the war when the public did and now needing to back away from it after the success of the media in convincing them the war is bad. Finally, there is a way to get the truth out there, as the statements of the Left are coming back to haunt them. And talk radio is helping a lot. The other day Sean Hannity had Kucinec on his show, and read a statement by Bush, which Kucinec decried as “LIES”. When thet statement proved to be by Hillary Clinton, Kucinec veered off into some rant on some other subject and outscreamed Hannity when Hannity tried to pin him down on whether he was now claiming that Hillary LIED!. We now have the ability to counter the falsehoods of the Left and the MSM. I copy and e-mail nearly everything I read that contradicts the popular wisdom as evidenced by the New York Times. And I know that what I send out gets sent on. When my brother said that “no one ever claimed Dick Cheney sent Wilson to Africa” I could google Cheney Wilson Afric and come up with the transcript of a Chris Matthews show where this claim was repeatedly made. Blogs like this one, and the ability to do instant searches to track down information, will provide us with the tools we need to finally be able to fight the MSM and the anti-America crowd.
Comment by Almiranta — 11/21/2005 @ 9:47 am
[…] r(); Manufacturing Failure Austin Bay takes a look at how the troops are appalled by the media coverage in Iraq. It seems as though whenever you talk to someone who h […]
Pingback by Single Malt Pundit.com — 11/21/2005 @ 10:18 am
Col. Bay: The “Journalism versus Reality” article is spot on. For the entire time my son was in Iraq, he complained about inaccurate and outright false reporting. The general consensus of the troops on the ground is that reporters are to be distrusted and avoided. Decorum prevents me from using his terminology to describe them.
Comment by Don Miguel — 11/21/2005 @ 1:40 pm
# 6, M Grele :“This is an exercise in self-delusion. Dont forget that the Vietnamese (granted, a legitimate insurgency) lost almost every single battle, yet won the war. “ Is your name Hanoi John Kerry by any chance? The only ones deluding themselves are the loony left of America, who haven’t seen any terrorist vermin they don’t love. The war in Vietnam was not lost by our brave soldiers. That war was lost by the anti-American liberal media and the loony left of America, lead by villainous traitors like Hanoi John Kerry. The trouble for the loony left today is, the liberal media don’t control the gateways to information for the American public anymore. We have Rush Limbaugh, we have Fox, we have the conservative blogs. This war is going to be fought till it’s won. Since the Democrats have never had any backbone in this country for the last 40 years at least, the Republican Party is going to continue to win the residential elections as usual, and carry out measures that protect America, rather than surrender to terrorism.
Comment by Smithy — 11/21/2005 @ 3:28 pm
“The media is also important to listen to . . . They come from a wide variety of political views, and . . . their job requires at least a attempt to be objective . . .” Hah! Mainstream “objective” journalism is a fraud. It is the business of flattering the writer and the reader at the expense of the reputations of the subjects of its reports. They don’t try to be objective, they try to keep their reputation within journalism for going along and getting along. You show me someone who resists saying that the Burkett “documents” were crude forgeries and I’ll show you someone is is trying to get along with CBS and NOT TRYING to be objective. ” The media are looking for newsworthy events (bad news preferred, good news does not sell, and news is a business).”
Comment by Lynn — 11/21/2005 @ 4:43 pm
[…] ly Not Too Much The Troops Are Fighting Back on the Second Front Austin Bay Blog » The E-mail Weapon: Troops Tackle Bad Media They’re winning - handily! - in Iraq, and t […]
Pingback by Electric Desert » Blog Archive » The Troops Are Fighting Back on the Second Front — 11/21/2005 @ 10:14 pm
[…] ly Not Too Much The Troops Are Fighting Back on the Second Front Austin Bay Blog » The E-mail Weapon: Troops Tackle Bad Media They’re winning - handily! - in Iraq, and t […]
Pingback by eCorry.com » Blog Archive » The Troops Are Fighting Back on the Second Front — 11/21/2005 @ 10:23 pm
First, there exists a portion of the population that cannot admit that Bush won the election. This includes leading democrats such as Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy. This includes reporters such as Daniel Shore and Dan Rather. This includes Cindy Scheehan (sp?) and Micheal Moore. Next, there is the media that needs to splash stories of impact across their front pages or as leads for the evening news. Finally, there is this almost inextricable desire to denigrate the United States, the world’s only superpower. Combine all of these forces to understand this combined message to undermine the US, its leadership and its international efforts. These forces were successful once before to cause the US to change its direction. The war was Vietnam and the general public, fed on messages that took this position, began to believe that success was failure, winning was losing, and that the war could not be won. nothing could have been further from the truth. the Tet offensive was a decisive vistory for the US and the South vietnamese. Yet, it continues to be the belief of millions of Americans that it was the beginning of the end of the war. The north Vietnamese quickly understood the power of the media and its message. They leveraged this to bring Kissinger to the peace talks in Paris and to negotiate a draw down and pullout of US forces. The result, by 1975, was victory for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. We are seeing this same turn of events today with calls for timetables and schedules. The Muslim terrorists have not leveraged this yet but it will come and Reid/ Kennedy will become the spokes persons for terrorist victory. We cannot let this occur. The Internet and these forums have beome the front line in the battle of truth versus eyeballs/copies sold. Thank God for these new delivery channels of facts and discussion. (oops, was I politically incorrect to mention God?) We are a great nation that permits and fosters discussion and debate. What we cannot tolerate are lies, innuendo, and recrafting history. We are facing a war of gargantuan proportions. These are not the uniformed representatives of a sovereign nation. These are religious zealots who will kill anyone (including their own), brutally and without any shred of humanity. (the next critic of Abu Graib or Gitmo needs to review the tapes of the beheadings.) These people are savages. We cannot reason with them. We need to find them, kill them, cut off their right hands, and bury them in mass graves with a couple of swine amongst them. In WWII, a belligerent captured without uniform was summarily executed as a spy. These are worse, exploding human bombs, triggering IED’s and beheading the non-believers. This is harsh but needs to be said. To those nations that harbor Muslim terrorists, they need to be put on notice that they are next in line after iraq. The UN is a totally corrupt and non-functional entity who actively participates in oil-for-food, raping of innocents, and who stands by as millions are killed in Africa. We are effectively and efficiently waging this war on Muslim terror. Do not let the voices of the left leaning media, the leftists in the Congress, and our supposed allies in Europe sway our minds or our hearts. We must fight the good fight, support our troops and our commander in chief while reviewing their performance and questioning our intentions and goals. But we did not pick this fight, the Muslim terrorists did, with the USS Cole, 9/11, the towers in Saudi Arabia and on and on. We got a black eye at Pearl Harbor, we got a bloodied nose on 9/11, but, by God, we are giving it back to them now, one at a time. God bless America! Keep our troops safe! Islam is the last unreformed religion. Reform is in the air. it smells like gasoline in the morning! It is the smell of victory! Just my two cents. Paul
Comment by paul — 11/22/2005 @ 12:40 pm
If you listen closely, you can hear the voices of History. Every one of those voices, from Thucydides, to President Lincoln, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gen. Douglas McArthur are saying the same thing, “There is no substitute for Victory.” The Peloponnesian War dragged on for almost 30 years without Victory as the Greek Historian Thucydides tells us, the Battle of Gettysburg did not end the fighting during the American Civil War, the Allies did not liberate France and when they got to the border with Germany say, “We’re done. Everybody pack up and go home.” For President Roosevelt, Victory meant unconditional surrender, something that did not happen in Korea, much to Gen. McArthur’s disappointment. It is good to remind oneself that as Leon Trotsky, a man who knew about such things, is reputed to have said, “Insurrection is an art form like any other…” And, like any other art form, insurrections, and the craft of countering them, can be mastered. But, you must be committed to doing so. Such commitment is not demonstrated by deciding, “Well, this is too hard. Let’s just forget about it, and just bring the boys home.” Lastly, if you should the occasion to talk to many of the veterans of the 1990-1991 war against Iraq, they will tell you their greatest regret is the feeling that they did not get the job done when they had the chance; and someone had to go back and finish what they did not. Regardless of the fact that the decision was not theirs to make, regardless that they had indeed “accomplished the mission” of throwing Saddam’s army out of Kuwait, many still feel, “If only they had let us go all the way to Baghdad. We were ready for that. Then everything would be different now.” Maybe so, and no doubt the right decision was made at the time. The right decision now, however, is not to quit, equivocate or lose one’s nerve. The latter, of course, may be tough for some politicians staring re-election in the face, but they are not the ones doing the bleeding. Politics only appears to be a blood sport, it is not war. War however, what is happening in Iraq, is very real, and can tolerate nothing less than Victory.
Comment by Mike Anders — 12/5/2005 @ 12:00 pm
SPARTANS, NO MATTER WHAT THE POLITICIANS DO, YOU HAVE VICTORY!
Comment by NICK — 8/10/2007 @ 11:07 am