Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/25/2003 4:17:04 PM PST by MadIvan
Heaven help the open society at war. So many of its political instincts must be suppressed even while their rituals are maintained. The right of the citizen to hold his government accountable - the access to information about what is being done in your country's name - must be denied and maintained at the same time.
The generals and the politicians must hold their press briefings. The experts must opine without cease or hindrance. The journalists and the academic strategists must put their questions. And now, what everybody is calling with breathless excitement, the first "real-time" war coverage must be analysed and speculated on ad infinitum.
American and British military spokesmen are confronted with questions about their tactical plans: what will happen if you cannot take Baghdad from the perimeter? Will you be forced to engage in street fighting? What, in other words, is your Plan B, if the initial hopes of securing the capital fail?
Could the generals seriously be expected to tell journalists any of this - thus providing the enemy with critical advance warning of allied intentions? Surely even the most inexperienced correspondent should be aware that it would be inconceivable for such information to be transmitted openly. The details of tactical programmes are a matter so secret that they would be communicable only at the last minute even to officers in the field.
Most often it is the political journalists, rather than the seasoned war reporters, who try to evoke the most potentially newsworthy, which is to say damaging, admissions.
Are you not taken aback (in other words, slightly deranged) by the force of Iraqi resistance? Didn't you expect to have complete control of Basra by now? Has the taking of allied prisoners undermined morale among the fighting forces? (This last is peculiarly naïve, as our Defence Editor, John Keegan, has pointed out. To suggest that professional armies would be in serious danger of losing heart when a small number of prisoners had been taken by the enemy, is insultingly absurd.)
When their questions are brushed off, the media conclude that the spokesmen have no satisfactory answers - that there is no Plan B. They report ominously that the generals are being "evasive". Ye-e-es. Of course, they are. This is war. The information that is being demanded is a matter of life and death.
In fact, it is in the interests of the troops to cultivate as much confusion and contradiction - what used to be called "disinformation" - as possible about their progress and their intentions. But that is not consistent with democratic attitudes and a free press. Particularly in the case of an unpopular war, the need to be seeming to address public concern cannot be neglected. So the normal vicissitudes and fluctuations of on-going battles ricochet around television studios and reverberate through rumour mills.
In a war for freedom, un-freedom is at a huge advantage - and not only in PR terms. It is not simply that Iraqi spokesmen can tell bravura lies without challenge, and manipulate their own media in order systematically to deceive the public, without fear of countermand.
The actual military options of a totalitarian regime are unrestricted by the social conscience that is part of a democratic political culture. Democracy, by its nature, puts the interests and the needs of ordinary people as its first priority. That is its whole point. Life is never to be taken needlessly, not even accidentally if it can possibly be avoided. The free citizens of Britain and America will not accept the wholesale slaughter of innocent people in the pursuit of their governments' ends.
So the allied forces have a greater imperative to protect the lives of Iraqi civilians than do those hapless populations' own leaders. Allied military planners are desperate to avoid being dragged into street fighting in Iraqi cities precisely because it would involve much greater risk to civilians.
But Saddam and his homicidal gang say openly that they wish to bog the allies down in just such a "quagmire" in Baghdad, and to hell with the consequences for its civilian population. Saddam will go to great lengths to block even the allied humanitarian aid that could deliver his own people from starvation and preventable disease.
Iraq is not hampered by the sensibilities of a public that has been educated to believe that every individual matters as much as every other, and that the actions of a country can be justified only in terms of the benefits they bring to their own people. Would that it were.
Indeed, that is what this war is all about: installing in Iraq the kind of government that believes precisely that. When General Tommy Franks says that, whenever Iraq puts non-combatants near military targets it is "abusing its own people", he is articulating the horror of a democrat; the free man's disgust at a despot's contempt for the fate of ordinary citizens. The difficulties that a democratic country faces in having to justify its conduct in war are the best reason for fighting a war to disseminate democracy.
Tony Blair is flying to Washington today to discuss the building of a post-Saddam future for Iraq with George W Bush. There could be some arm-wrestling. Mr Blair may argue for the UN to have moral and practical oversight of the reconstruction.
But if the conduct of this war should have taught us anything, it is the stark contrast between the standards of free and un-free societies. Dictators, even if they sit on the UN Security Council, must not be permitted a role in determining the terms of the peace.
Mr Bush once said that the future of the world will be decided by its free peoples. Surely, after the past week, even the anti-war party must accept the need for that.
Regards, Ivan
BTW,..Thought you might enjoy this.. just got it today in an e-mail. I would direct it to those in HOLLYWIERD whe aren't supporting our troops and our country :o)
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