Do media victories mean anything (how America's enemies manipulate our media)

Asymmetric warfare is a hot new topic, portraying the fearsome prospect of high tech American troops brought low by less well equipped, but better thought out, foes. Somalia, in 1993 (“Black Hawk Down”), and Iraq, in 2003 (RPGs from every direction) are touted as meaningful lessons of the power of asymmetric warfare.

But let us know forget that asymmetric warfare works both ways. In Somalia, the Somalis took over 30 casualties for every American killed or wounded. That was done through the use of superior American training, firepower (on the ground, and in helicopters overhead) and situational awareness (helicopters and more radios.) The battle in Mogadishu is only considered an American defeat because the American government considered 18 dead G.I.’s a defeat, even if over 500 Somali fighters died as well. At the time, the Somalis considered themselves defeated, and feared the return of the Army Rangers the next day to finish off the Somali militia that was terrorizing Mogadishu. The media declared the battle an American defeat, and that’s how it became known. Asymmetric warfare includes having the media in your corner, for that can easily turn a military defeat into a media victory.

The same thing almost happened in Iraq in 2003. During the first two weeks of the American advance into Iraq, any real, apparent or imagined delay of the coalition forces was instantly declared the beginning of a coalition defeat. Even as American troops moved within sight of Baghdad, the pundits were still gravely talking about bloody house to house fighting. There was much talk of asymmetric warfare by the Iraqis, and there was a lot of guerilla type attacks. But the American troops came up with new tactics faster than the Iraqis could think of ways to get around the American advantages.

Using the media as an asymmetric warfare weapon is pretty common, and sometimes it works. It worked in Somalia. It worked several times in the Balkans during the 1990s. Islamic fundamentalists use the media as one of their more potent weapons. The use of imbedded reporters during the Iraq war is seen by the Department of Defense as a use of asymmetric warfare against potentially dangerous media. Indeed, many media pundits have said as much, and darkly warn that the media cannot tolerate more such "defeats" in the future.

It's no accident that all this talk of asymmetric warfare began in the United States during the 1980s. America has long been a user of asymmetric warfare. During the colonial period, wars with Indians and other colonial powers were full of new developments in asymmetric warfare. Today, the Department of Defense is full of organizations that specialize in dreaming up new asymmetric warfare tactics, and figuring out how to defeat those potential enemies might develop. At the same time, many of the Department of Defense establishment (senior generals and civil service officials), are hostile to asymmetric warfare. After all these nasty little tricks can make trouble for the major weapons development projects that occupy so much attention in the Pentagon and Congress. Expensive new weapons systems that can be compromised by some minor flaw makes it difficult to get the votes, and billions of dollars, to justify these projects. But asymmetric warfare is all about taking advantage of the status quo, and hoping the other guys doesn't wise up before you beat him to death.

"Using the media as an asymmetric warfare weapon is pretty common, and sometimes it works. It worked in Somalia. It worked several times in the Balkans during the 1990s. Islamic fundamentalists use the media as one of their more potent weapons. The use of imbedded reporters during the Iraq war is seen by the Department of Defense as a use of asymmetric warfare against potentially dangerous media. Indeed, many media pundits have said as much, and darkly warn that the media cannot tolerate more such "defeats" in the future. "

sound about right to me...

The NVA Colonel formerly in charge of the communist press corps during the Vietnam War, who was an adjutant to General Giap and who was also present at the South Vietnamese surrender, eventually fled Vietnam for France because he'd become so disillusioned with the communist regime. There've been hundreds of communists just like him in fact; people who've fled to France, the US, or elsewhere.

He wrote a piece in a Paris newspaper last year that was widely circulated on the Ranger web ring, stating that during the great Tet Offensive bloodbath of 1968, America essentially wiped out nearly every NVA and Viet Cong infantry unit, while suffering over 4000 KIA themselves in this great 3 1/2 month battle. Some 70,000 NVA and VC, 20,000 ARVN, and possibly as many as 160,000 civilians died in this nationwide affair, with the heaviest fighting by far taking place in I Corps.

He stated that had the US stepped up their bombing after Tet and invaded the NVA's Laotian sanctuaries, the communists were ready to sue for peace -even surrender, because they'd been so terribly mauled mainly by B52s, the 101st Airborne Division, and the 1st Marine Division in I Corps during Tet. In short, they'd been beaten and were ready to quit. Yet so effective were US Marxists in manipulating the campus antiwar movement and the US media, that this colonel gave much credit for the communist victory in Southeast Asia to the US media, to television especially.

As to Somalia, the Ranger community only regards it a defeat insofar as the Commander in Chief at the time was a gutless jellyfish who was too timid to act in sending relief forces without the sanction of UN approval. In other places and times such people as he, would have been shot for cowardice.

American soldiers are dying in Iraq because of the hope Islamofascists have that "the referee" (as Goldwater styled journalism after the 1964 election) might award them victory on style points.

The truth is that journalism was politics when Jefferson and Hamilton sponsored competing journals in which to wage their partisan battles--and that journalism has never--all pious protestations to the contrary notwithstanding--stopped being politics. All campaign regulation, and all government licensing of the broadcasting of politics, is illegitimate under the First Amendment.

And eventually someone is going to haul the FCC into court and ask it to justify giving certain people monopoly speech rights in the form of broadcast licenses which empower the likes of CBS or indeed PBS to propagandise opposition to Republican governance in general and deadly opposition the U.S. military in particular. I would think a class-action lawsuit by Americans in harm's way in Iraq--or their relatives at home--would lie.

Note that this would not threaten freedom of the (literal) press, nor should it threaten the Internet. Only the Establishment which is the FCC and its licensees is called into question.

Why Broadcast Journalism
is Unnecessary and Illegitimate

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.