"The mood of how this war is going in Baghdad and Arab capitals is
better than in Washington and London," Abizaid said.
This Part 2 focuses upon the critical reality that there are two adversaries that must be overcome, and includes below
an Open Letter To the Directors of the NYT, BBC, NPR and CBS . The adversaries
are:
- The terrorists: the jihadis worldwide, their partners in Iraq – the ex-Baathists
and the criminal gangs (100,000 of which Saddam released just before OIF).
- The legacy media exemplified by the NYT, Guardian, BBC, CBS, NPR etc.
Adversary 1 is obvious. Adversary 2 is the eager and active partner that makes
a victory by the armed Adversary 1 possible. Adversary 1 murders – primarily
innocent civilians, takes and beheads hostages, with these clear objectives:
- To intimidate the civilians in their sphere to allow them a base. A base
to build bombs, to cache munitions. A base from which they can sneak out
to murder civilians and counter-terror soldiers both in Afghanistan and in
Iraq. This is a classic, proven successful Mafia strategy.
- To hinder the development of democratic institutions and infrastructure
reconstruction, with the goal of preventing stability and security.
- By delaying stability and security they hope to exhaust the patience of
the Coalition publics to the point that the voters force a withdrawal.
The partner, Adversary 2, is essential for Adversary 1 to succeed:
- Adversary 1 knows they have zero possibility of military
or political success.
They have never achieved a military victory above the platoon level in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
- The terror leadership knows they are fighting an information war, with
the target of that war being the Western publics.
- Every murder, every atrocity has a clear objective. That is to provide
their partner, Adversary 2, with the video and stories that they can use
to fill their pages or "dead air" (industry jargon for the 24hrs daily you have to fill with something).
- Every print/TV without-context
story of "another car bomb, another beheading" run by the NYT or BBC directly supports the terrorists and advances
their agenda. Each such story gives hope to the terrorists and eats away
at the patience and resolve of the Coalition publics.
- By supporting the terrorists through their coverage, these legacy media
are directly responsible for more deaths of civilians and soldiers.
- Without the support of their media partner, the terror leaders
will look for a new strategy. Without that media magnification, the impact
of a car-bombing is net negative for the terrorists – it turns the local
public against them while it has no military significance.
- The terror leaders
are not stupid men. How they would revise their strategy after losing their
media partner I do not know. How could it be worse?
Among the Coalition publics are some citizens who ignore the legacy
media, and instead seek out the true story of the war through networks of deployed
military or Iraq friends, Iraqi or military bloggers, or writers like Michael
Yon who risk their lives every day reporting outside of the Green Zone.
These informed citizens still find it difficult to appraise progress -
even the military and Iraqi leadership have difficulty measuring progress.
But by accessing objective information they have reason for
cautious optimism: so
long as the will to fight is sustained until stability and security are achieved,
then the almost 50 million people of Iraq and Afghanistan will have the opportunity
to govern themselves and to join the global economy. Their countries are never
likely to be governed like Switzerland. They are likely to incorporate elements
of Islam in the way they govern. But they will have the chance of freedom,
for perhaps their grandchildren to attend a college, and for their future female
offspring to succeed in business or politics.
Open Letter To the Directors of the NYT, BBC, NPR and CBS: you will probably
never read this, but if you do, then know this – every day you are killing
people, civilians as well as brave soldiers. You can end this killing by
ending your sensationalist reporting on terrorist atrocities. Instead you will:
- Not endeavor to "spin" your reportage to be favorable to the party in power, nor to the success of the mission. You will report the facts, ensuring that the facts are in context.
- Explain the facts you report by researching the hard way, in the field. Why are the terrorists bombing and beheading? How are the civilians reacting to these attacks. What is morale of the Coalition soldiers? How do those soldiers view their mission, their leadership, their resources – are they sufficient?
- Fund regular polling of the Iraqi and Afghani publics.
- In your reportage you will treat the briefings by the respective governments
and the Coalition military as true – unless you uncover counterfactual information.
- Report on the terror atrocities only as part of the overall report on progress, challenges and Coalition casualties.
One more new policy for you media Directors. Help the
anti-terror Coalition communicate with the public. You are professional
communicators. It should be obvious to you that the Bush administration in
particular is doing a very poor job of communications, of explaining to the
public the Coalition strategy, the actual progress and setbacks in the war.
Meet with the principals:
- "We
see this communications weakness, so how can we help you to present
all the information to your public?".
- "How
about arranging an ongoing series of informal interviews with the leadership.
And we’ll publish the complete interview transcripts on our website – we
will no longer publish just out-of-context fragments that make you look
bad".
- "We
need to do new polls, of both Coalition and Iraqi publics. Here are our
draft questionnaires – what do you think, are there key questions or context
we neglected to include?"
And dear Directors, every time you meet President Bush, remind him that the
public wants to help too. They are willing to make sacrifices in this multi-generational
war. Lead them. Show them where they can help – don’t just tell them to "keep
on flying and spending". You have told your citizens over and over again
that this will be a generational war. Now tell them how they too can become
citizen-soldiers.
Lastly dear Directors, help put an end to the fantasy ideology of Al Qaeda.
Now that you have many empty pages and many free air hours (that used to be
filled with bombs and bodies), launch an in-depth series to document the true
history of Islam and its conflicts with non-muslims. Initiate a global communications
program with your foreign-media peers – objective: educate the muslim peoples
about their true history, about the benefits of joining the global economic
community, about the benefits of assimilation into their host countries.
Now, back to Austin Bay – who has many strong points to make on these
issues:
Progress in
this war has been hard to follow for a reason. The Bush administration hates
the Washington press corps, and vice versa. If hate is a verb-too-far then
substitute "fundamentally
distrusts." The
Washington press corps reflects the ethos of the national press, and that ethos
is left-liberal Democrat. No, this "press" isn’t a monolith; yes,
competition breeds a kind of diversity, but since Tet 1968 and Richard Nixon’s
election Republicans haven’t gotten a fair shake from the New York-Washington-L.A.
media axis (even though Tet occurred during a Democratic administration).
Niggle over individuals, pull this stray story from that odd report, but
the weight of evidence is heavy.
For the strategic good of the United States, and global liberty in general,
however, this poisoned White House-press relationship
may prove to be a huge problem. Al Qaeda’s jihadists plotted a multigenerational war. In the early
1990s our enemies began proselytizing London and New York mosques and in doing
so began planting cadres throughout the world. Even if Washington leads a successful
global counterterror war, many of these cadres will unfortunately turn gray
before it’s over. That means a multiadministration war, which means bridging
what my friend Sam Palmer (a genuine liberal warrior, God bless him) identified
as the whipsaw of the U.S. political cycle.
The Bush administration has not done that–at least not in any focused and
sustained fashion. My mother predicted this. December 2001: Mom phoned and
said she remembered being a teenager in late 1942 and tossing a tin can on
a wagon that rolled past the train station in her hometown of Plainview, Texas–a
World War II scrap metal drive. She knew that the can she tossed didn’t add
much to the war effort, but she felt that in some small, token, but very real
way, she was contributing to the battle.
"The Bush administration is going to make a terrible mistake
if it does not let the American people get involved in this war. Austin,
we need a war bond drive. This matters, because this is what it will take."…
Please do read, and re-read all of Austin Bay.
UPDATE: On the topic of effective, successful communications Grim at The Fourth Rail analyzes Donald Rumsfeld’s WSJ 18 July op-ed "War of the Words".
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