Metrics Of Victory

Stephen Green has an incredibly astute essay on the current state of the Global War on Terrorism that touches on a number of exceptionally important ideas. His analysis of the war is dead-on – we’re fighting a very different kind of war. Yes, the tactics of military power haven’t changed all that much, but the environment in which our soldiers fight has. As Green notes:

Previously, I wrote that in order to win the Terror War, we must “prove the enemy ideology to be ineffective,” just as we did in the Cold War. In that conflict, we did so in three ways: by fighting where we had to while maintaining our freedoms, but most importantly by out-growing the Communist economies. I argued that similar methods would win the Terror War. We’d have to fight, we’d have to maintain our freedoms, but the primary key to victory in the Current Mess is taking the initiative.

What I didn’t see then – but what I do see today – is what “taking the initiative” really means.

It means, fighting a media war. It means, turning the enemy’s one great strength into our own. Broadcast words, sounds, and images are the arm of decision in today’s world.

And if that assessment is correct, then we’re losing this war and badly.

Sadly, I’m inclined to agree with him. And this time, the blame rightly belongs with the Bush Administration. They have ceded the initiative to the enemy – and the enemy is using our own media and intelligentsia as a weapon against us. Why is the President letting the Democrats keep hammering him with the same stupid lies about African uranium? Why is the Administration not firing on all cylinders to get the real story out on Iraq? Why is it that every time some left-wing blowhard prattles on about how this was some “illegal” and “immoral” war they’re not reminded of the hundreds of mass graves in Iraq? How come they’re not asked if someone who filled acres of ground with dead children still clutching their toys shouldn’t be removed from power? This is a media war, and we’re barely in the battle at all.

Make no mistake. Our troops are the best in the world. Nobody even comes close. The Iraqis are learning quickly because they’re learning from the best there is. The military gets knocked for being the dregs of American high schools – and that’s a pile of horse crap. Given the choice of working side by side with a former US Marine or working side by side with some preening Ivy League blowhard, I’ll pick the former any day – and I suspect most Americans would. Not only is our military capable, but they’re working under desert condition against a ruthless and evil enemy who blends in with the civilian population, and they have a media that sees the only good soldier as a dead or disillusioned one. And despite all their immense effort, despite the fact that they’re walking around in triple-digit heat with full body armor and still find time to help rebuild schools and give candy to Iraqi kids, they still have to deal with the fact that the majority of Americans never seem to get why they’re in Iraq in the first place.

It isn’t their job to explain that, it’s the job of the Administration. And they’re still asleep at the wheel when it comes to defending their own policies. As Green explains:

Washington was geared up right for the Blitz to Baghdad in 2003. Instead of the broad front of a “stuff” war, our digital troops raced north with almost reckless abandon, heedless of their flanks – and MSM embeds went along for the ride. As a result, reporting was, for a few short weeks, “fair and balanced.” Their lives quite literally on the line, frontline reporters filed their featured bylines with everything from admiration to honest criticism. And they did so virtually always as Westerners first, reporters second.

Today, too many reporters report from the relative safety of Baghdad hotels. Their reports – and the public’s understanding of the war – have suffered as a result. And too few of the original embeds remain reporting for duty. When reporters who don’t see what going on write stories without context, they fail to steel the public for bad news and to put the good news in perspective.

It’s fair to ask if the Iraq Campaign was a necessary component to the Terror War. It isn’t fair to compare Iraq to Vietnam, when the two wars have nothing, zero, nada in common. It’s fair to ask if our soldier are dying in vain, or because of stupid policy, or because of inferior equipment. It’s not fair to run headlines like “Battle Deaths Continue to Mount.” No shit, Sherlock? A real story would be, “Battle Deaths Decline as Fallen Soldiers Miraculously Resurrected.” It’s fair to question Bush’s policies. It’s not fair to act as a conduit for enemy propaganda. It’s fair to ask if Iraq is draining resources from our efforts in Afghanistan. It’s not fair to complain that Afghanistan isn’t perfect yet. It’s fair to complain about indecencies at Abu Ghraib. It’s not fair to virtually ignore atrocities committed by the other side everywhere else in Iraq.

But our media, aware of their power but ignorant as to its uses, would rather play “gotcha” than provide critical perspective.

Germany lost WWI because they couldn’t match our manpower. They lost again in 1945, because they couldn’t match Allied productive might. We could very well lose this war, because our leadership has so far failed to recognize the power of the media. We might also lose because our enemies are oftentimes more media-savvy than we are. We could lose also because our mainstream media seems to find terrorists less unattractive than having a conservative Texan in the White House.

The media has lost credibility with the vast majority of the American public A recent study from the John F. Kennedy Center for Government at Harvard University found that the press ranked the lowest in the list of trusted institutions in America – and the military ranked the highest. Yet the media is influencing the war in Iraq as much, if not more, as our military is. The bravery and valor of our troops in Iraq is being met with the cowardly and snide criticism of our mainstream media.

Green notes why the media should sit up and pay attention to all of this:

There is no “fixing” the American mainstream media, unless change comes organically. When I wrote last year that we can’t win this war by giving up our freedoms, I wasn’t kidding – without a free press, we’re doomed.

But I do mean to serve notice to the MSM.

When a nation loses a war, it looks to punish the people it believes are to blame. After Vietnam, neither Washington nor our Armed Forces were ever the same again. But if we lose this Terror War, our media will be seen as largely to blame. They’ll suffer blame for their ignorance and for their petulance. They’ll suffer blame for seeing al Jazeera as comrades closer than the privates and NCOs and officers fighting to protect the First Amendment. They’ll suffer blame for putting their hatred of a Republican President before their love of country. Whether that assessment is fair or not, it is how the public will see things.

Then the public would demand changes. And they’d probably get them, courtesy of a government looking for scapegoats, real or imagined. Should that day come, we’d lose our free press, and we’d lose our freedoms. We’d lose our country.

I don’t mean to imply that the MSM needs to hop on board the bandwagon and cheerlead for any President along any military campaign, no matter how foolhardy – far from it. In case you hadn’t noticed, I used a good portion of this essay to complain about Washington, and that’s something the media can do a whole lot more effectively than one small blogger. Criticism is just necessary, it’s a necessary good. But the MSM needs to relearn constructive criticism, and they need to remember which country defends their rights, and which group of people would gleefully slit their throats.

And therein lies the problem. The media and the left wing are all fixated on George W. Bush. Come January 2009, no matter what, Bush is gone. When Bush is gone, the media will finally have gotten what they wanted. They might even get one of their favored party’s officials in the Oval Office.

But that won’t help us if Iraq is a cesspool of terrorism. That won’t help us if the media’s gotten their way and al-Qaeda was handed the biggest victory they’ve ever had. That would be cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who would inevitably killed in the conflagration. All the progress in the Middle East – the liberation of Lebanon from Syria control, the burgeoning pro-democracy movements across the region, the fear of the autocrats that they could end up just like Saddam – all of that will disappear if Iraq fails.

It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, black or white, we can’t afford failure in Iraq.

Yet the media would be all too happy to report on the last US helicopter leaving the Green Zone as al-Zarqawis thugs start their rape of the Iraqi people. What does that tell us about the state of this war? Furthermore, what does that tell us of the loyalties of the media and many within the left these days? It’s one thing to argue that the war is being fought incorrectly and we need to change strategy. Kerry flirted with that idea, but never fully developed it, and his proposed solutions were incredibly naïve – Europe has neither the will nor the strength to bail us out in Iraq. However, the vast majority on the left want us to leave, no questions asked. That position is simply idiotic, and would lead to vast repercussions worldwide – not to mention the near certainty of genocide in Iraq.

So far, the enemy has been allowed to seize the initiative in the media war. The Bush Administration has barely been able to hold their own, and public dissatisfaction is rising. For all the talk about GOP talking points and some vast right-wing conspiracy that secretly controls the media, the Administration has utterly abrogated the key task of keeping the American people informed of the real progress in Iraq and the real reasons behind the war. This is partially due to the fact that the CIA utterly dropped the ball on our WMD intelligence, and had Bush made the humanitarian case stronger than he did, he could have avoided much of the flack.

Great leaders aren’t afraid to step into the spotlight and defend themselves. President Bush showed great leadership after 9/11 – yet today he’s completely unable to win the war at home. Perhaps it’s the stresses of the constant and vicious attacks of the rabidly partisan left. Perhaps it’s the strain of great responsibility. Whatever it may be, the President needs to be on the front lines of the media war, making sure that the American people are reminded time and time again of why we fight and what we’re fighting for.

The fates of Iraq and America are linked, and we dare not throw the people of Iraq to the wolves. We are in a battle against a foe that knows our weaknesses, and they’ve been exploiting them constantly. Al-Qaeda’s leaders know that the American military can never be defeated on the battlefield. But we can be defeated at home, and as our soldiers win the war on the ground in Iraq, we dare not lose the battle at home.