Posted on 03/28/2003 5:36:04 AM PST by Pokey78
I see my column on Monday flushed the late Tariq Aziz out of hiding. No sight of Saddam, though Baghdad's leading taxidermists have now had a week to patch him up. Nevertheless, Mr. John Black writes to chide me for my quaintly passé optimism:
"Your column," he says, "seemed so out of date with developments over the weekend, so seemingly out of touch with the current situation, so, as you would say, so September 10th. You see Mark, as you well know, the story of the day was not precision weapons but the growing bluster and embarrassment of the U.S. administration."
To be honest, I didn't "well know" it. I'm not watching much TV these days, though I occasionally tune in the CBC for a giggle: It's the nearest thing to attending a White Russian tea party in 1917. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps, by the time you read this, Saddam will have won and routed the ludicrously over-confident Yanks, leaving them hopelessly ensnared in the quagmire of Araby to be chastised by scorpions who will defecate in their armpits. That seems to be the general thrust of CBC coverage.
But I'm going to go way out on a limb here: Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I think the Anglo-Aussie-American forces are winning. And, despite whatever "the story of the day" was, they were even winning last weekend.
As it happens, "the story of the day" on Saturday and Sunday was no different from "the story of the day" on Thursday and Friday. If anything, the human toll declined somewhat: In the first two days of the war, the coalition lost 21 people; in the next five days, they lost 17. The difference is that, in the first 48 hours, the deaths were overwhelmingly British and so attracted less attention from the sob sisters of the American networks. If the media's "overarching narrative" of this war is that the first two days were a cakewalk and the next two a quagmire, this précis never applied to the Brits.
In the opening moments of this war, the British lost four times as many soldiers as the Princess Patricias did in that "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan that convulsed the nation for a week. Using Canadian standards of bereavement voyeurism, the United Kingdom should have gone into a mawkish grief wallow for over a month. (This is not to disparage the sacrifice of the Pats: The masturbatory spasm was cannily manipulated by opportunist figures who've never supported either a credible military or its participation in Afghanistan.)
But, if only because of Northern Ireland, the British are more stoic about this sort of thing. As General Wall put it in Qatar, "Notwithstanding these tragic events, we must get on with the mission." Diane Sawyer might find it a bit off-hand, but I say well said. The best way to honour the dead is to press on to victory. Fleet Street has a diverse press from gung-ho right-wingers to unrepentant Stalinists. But it doesn't have a lot of mushy ninnies for whom a run of bad luck is cause to question the entire strategy. There are times when there's something to be said for stiff-upper-lipped public-school emotional repression, and war is one of them.
Then, at the weekend, it was the Pentagon's turn for a run of bad luck, from a U.S. Muslim soldier going postal on his comrades to the parading of American prisoners on Iraqi TV. And the big networks collectively decided that somehow they'd been misled about how "easy" it was supposed to be, and ever since have been convinced that the war plan's a bust. General Franks has been transformed from the new MacArthur into the new MacArthur Park: Someone left his cakewalk in the rain, we don't think that he can take it 'cause it took so long to bake it and he'll never find that recipe again. Oh, no.
Forget it. An innovative war is going very well, and none of the "setbacks" are unexpected, despite the Saddamites' determination in their death throes to plumb new depths in depravity. The allied loss of life is wretched for the families involved but strategically significant only as an historically unprecedented low: Just for the record, there have been 10 American combat deaths to approximately 1,000 Iraqi combat deaths, and there is no reason to believe that ratio will change unless Saddam's conscripts start surrendering faster. As the front page of Wednesday's New York Post, a splendid antidote to the defeatists, put it: "BATTLE AT AN NAJAF. WIPEOUT. GIs KILL 300 IRAQI TROOPS WITHOUT LOSING A MAN." It was Stalin who said cynically that one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. The fact that CNN was able to lapse into its default individual tragedy mode on Saturday is actually confirmation of how badly the Baathists are doing.
Civilian casualties? So low that, as Andrew Coyne noted, Robert Fisk can personally visit each one. If you think mocking Fisky's house calls is a cheap shot, tough. It has the merit of being accurate, unlike the Armageddon predictions of the "peace" crowd. "The United States is about to destroy an entire country and kill 20% of its people," wrote Nicholas Oshukany in Monday's Kitchener-Waterloo Record in Canada. That would be just shy of five million dead Iraqis. When the war's over, I trust a chastened Mr. Oshukany will stand outside Canadian Tire and remove one item of clothing for every 100,000 he's off by.
The seething "Arab street"? The sleeping giant that Anglo-American imperialism would supposedly provoke? The largest Arab demonstration to date was in Egypt and drew 5,000 people. That's about a twentieth the size of the anti-American protest in Montreal. When the Arab street is more somnolent than a Brossard cul-de-sac, you can safely disregard it.
The ferocious Republican Guard? Broken down into freelance urban commando units, apparently. Not a good idea. You can't turn an orchestra into 40 soloists.
Iraqi TV's still on the air? Great. Why take it out when it provides the best window on Saddam's physical well-being, or lack thereof?
Humanitarian catastrophe? Oh, come on, you guys tried that in "the brutal Afghan winter," and it was all hooey back then.
Oil prices? Down.
Watching the media flog these mouldering Chicken Little McNuggets a year after their sell-by date, you can only marvel at their capacity to misread their audience. Something's changed in a significant proportion of the American people, and their media don't get it. You saw it in Sunday's pitiful Oscar night when, for the second year running, Hollywood couldn't find the tone, couldn't read the mood. Dustin Hoffman's pallbearer routine drew the lowest ratings in Oscar history, and why wouldn't it? America isn't bereft, slumped in mourning. Most of those who tuned out understand that they're winning this war, that there will be horrible days ahead, but that they have to see it through.
The interesting development to me is the indications that this resolve will apply not just to the war but to the post-war world. I have been staggered by the amount of mail I get from Americans expressing gratitude not just to the Brits and Aussies but also the Eastern Europeans -- and expressing complete contempt for Canada, now relegated to "Old Europe" status. And don't peddle me that old line about plucky Newfoundlanders providing food and shelter to diverted planes on September 11th -- which moist-eyed scene was playing more frequently than Antiques Roadshow reruns on Newsworld last year. If an Iraqi passenger jet landed in my field, I'd give 'em a bed for the night, though I'd probably sleep with a gun under my pillow. It's a common courtesy, not a "special relationship" with our "closest ally." It's not enough. It never was.
But we still refuse to accept it. Instead of joining the majority of our NATO and G7 partners in the Coalition of the Willing, the decayed Dominion has embraced a Franco-Belgian-Canadian Coalition of the Whining, a geopolitical version of the Dixie Chicks -- a group of wrinkly Blixie Chicks whose same old song nobody wants to hear anymore. The more the Coalition of the Whining bleat about things that never happen -- from mass deaths to tough UN action -- the less heed the Coalition of the Willing will pay them. The point about that CBC slogan -- "Trusted. Connected. Canadian" -- is that it's increasingly an oxymoron.
So my advice is pay no attention to the "story of the day." Ever since September 11th, I've argued that this is one of those big tectonic shifts, an historical dividing line, like the Great War. Keep your eye on the big picture, not the radio-serial cliffhangers. This war is being won, fast. And those who sat it out are on the wrong side of that historical divide.
Hehehehe, he has got a way with words, eh?
This is precisely what I have chosen to do. I even stopped taping Brit Hume last week ( I usually watch when I get home.) I love Brit, but even his show seems compelled to fill their air time with war reporting, whether the "news" is relevant, necessary, interesting--or not.
I've had enough. If there is real news, I'll hear about it. Otherwise, I am trusting Tommy Franks and the boys to get the job done.
PS--btw, a Steyn tour-de...sorry, let's say, Steyn powerhouse performance, as usual.
Great line. The left is simply not capable of repressing emotion, the grey matter in their craniums has been completely replaced by it.
This article is also dated. Must be a deadline thing.
Journalism is inherently superficial; the most topical book which will be written about Iraqi liberation will be transcendently more reliable and substantial than even the most mature and careful (an oxymoron) daily journalism reports.Journalism is also inherently negative because it's human nature to take good news for granted; it's rare that good news is so unexpected as to be surprising.
And that is Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate.
Not merely Mark Steyn, butbookmarked!
General Franks has been transformed from the new MacArthur into the new MacArthur Park: Someone left his cakewalk in the rain, we don't think that he can take it 'cause it took so long to bake it and he'll never find that recipe again. Oh, no.
Beautiful stuff! Bump!
Well said.
Words to treasure again: -
Coalition of the Whining! Fabulous!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.