Posted on 10/16/2001 11:30:17 PM PDT by MadIvan
WE are losing the propaganda war. That is the smart thing to say at the moment. While we are sending bombers and missiles to Afghanistan, the Taliban are broadcasting pictures of injured children and conducting journalists around bomb sites that were once (it is claimed) poor villages - and they are winning on points.
Our Government has been so concerned with the business of war abroad that it has failed to keep up the verbal fight for understanding at home. As a result, so they say, the public is losing confidence in what this action is supposed to be about.
Really? Does our lack of self-belief go as deep as this? Was it unforgivably slipshod of the Prime Minister and his famously competent media managers to take their eye off the ball and allow us, in that brief moment of radio silence, to go wobbly?
Perhaps it is true that Tony Blair was too enamoured of his starring role on the world stage to remember that the audience at home needed to be nursed through its confusions. Maybe. But then again, he might just have assumed that it went without saying that the murder of some 5,500 innocent civilians required reciprocal action.
He may have thought (apparently wrongly, according to the new wisdom) that - whatever the complexities of the project - the justification for a military response to this outrage was self-evident. If so, he seems to have underestimated our capacity for moral equivocation and our immediate inclination to distrust our own leaders.
I suppose this is largely the fault of my generation. Ever since the 1960s, the default mode for educated Western people has been contempt for their own political institutions, particularly when they become involved in any military intervention. Every generation wants its own Vietnam.
But let me tell you, as one of the undergraduate cohort at Berkeley who invented the student revolution and spent much of her youth protesting against American action in southeast Asia: the war against Taliban terror is no Vietnam. And not only because the Vietcong never flew planes into American buildings. One of the reasons that compelled many of us to march against the Vietnam war was that the regime that America was propping up in South Vietnam had reneged on its promise to hold democratic elections (because it feared that the Communists would win).
It was the belief that America was being hypocritical in its supposed commitment to democracy that fuelled a great deal of the outrage among idealistic young protesters, long before the use of napalm made the war seem utterly grotesque. We thought we knew what America was supposed to stand for: democratic freedom, even if that meant that people made political choices of which it did not approve.
Islamic fundamentalism itself - let alone Osama bin Laden's maniacal version of it - holds no brief for democracy. It is oppressive, not in the glib contemporary sense, but in the strict technical meaning of the word. It is opposed to virtually every single human liberty that people who profess to be liberals believe in.
Of course, it is disturbing to see a large, rich country attacking a small, poor one. But it is the poor country (or those whom it protects) that has declared war, and done it in the most iniquitous way it is possible to imagine. There can be no confusion about who the good guys are in this. It is a war, as much as the one against fascism was, between open and closed societies, between freedom and totalitarianism, between enlightenment and enforced ignorance. If we cannot keep hold of that fundamental principle, then we are truly lost.
But self-loathing has become a reflex: a fist that automatically punches the body to which it is attached unless it is firmly held down. And holding it down requires constant reiteration of the basic truths that Mr Blair seemed to think he could take for granted.
First, bin Laden and his psychopathic outfit are evil figures of comic book proportions. They have been compared to the nihilistic enemy of James Bond, but they are more like the incredible, diabolical characters in a Superman adventure who threaten to destroy the planet if they cannot achieve their ends. Second, they have made it clear that they will not be stopped or deterred by anything short of their own destruction - undermining Western support for Israel being only the first small objective in their war to the death with the infidel.
What of the practical difficulties? Who are we fighting and how do we find them? Does raining down fire from the sky accomplish anything but the degradation of an already suffering population? It is bewildering and unconventional. Yes, all that is true. But if you say that fighting isn't a solution, all that I can reply is: "Fine. What do you suggest?" Negotiation? What shall we negotiate? Our support for Israel, which is the only democracy in the Middle East and thus throws up some awkward governments whose policies we may not like but whose democratic legitimacy we must recognise (see above moral lecture)?
If bombing is not the answer, what's the question? Destabilising a government that harbours terrorists who commit mass murder seems like a perfectly comprehensible war aim to me, especially if that government is replaced by a democratic system of even the most fledgling kind. If those who are now tormented with doubt about this action and its consequences really want to see an end to the horrors of warfare, then they must support the spread of those forms of political organisation that make people least inclined to go to war: liberal democracy and free market economics.
Having a voice in government and a stake in the future through the right to own private property (with the dignity which that imparts) is what the West has to offer, and what it must consistently defend. So long as our governments are doing that, their case should stand transparently on its merits.
My point is that if you weren't there, you have no right to ridicule it, or second guess it.
"Either they were liars, or they got hooked on heroin after a dishonerable discharge."That is the most despicable thing that I have ever heard on FreeRepublic.
goolies n. The colloquialism for testicles least likely to offend a grandparent.
You get no argument from me on that one.
My friend you never cease to amaze me...I like this cut of Mr. Churchill you posted. Now, is there any comprehensive book about Mr.Churchill's life and times? I have read "Mein Kampf" and I would like something to counteract Hitler's point of view and I know the only one can make a case against him is Churchill.
Your input will be greatly apreciated, since you seem to be a pretty knowledgeable fellow, not to mention smart! :)
Have my Best Regards
danmar
Our government doesn't have the stomach to win this war. They are still too afraid to arouse the primal rage of Americans.
If you need to see blood and guts to get up for a battle, then you need to look at your self, actually you might want someone else to take a look at you.
Don't take me wrong, but I don't need to see the body parts to know they are there. What I need to see, among other things is the pride and respect the men and women on the ground are showing. When a body is pulled from the wreckage, they will stop and to a man remove their hats. In many cases they will know what firehouse or precinct the deceased is from and they will give them a call to let them carry the body out.
Each time they do that, it steels my resolve. I don't need to see a firemans bloody corpse to arouse my primal rage. Believe me it is already aroused.
If you need blood and guts, get a movie. I'll take the beauty of human dignity to keep me motivated.
All gave some, some gave all, god blessed them all.
Pro~Libertate!
Oh, man! Glad I missed that one (though somehow, vb, I think I'll never forget it now either, the imagery is so clear).
Here's my point: every time they show a dead Afghan civilian, it weakens our overall resolve to see the war through to a successful conclusion. After months or longer of the "drip drip drip" of seeing the latest "American atrocity", we will be saying, "oh the horror! it's not worth it!" This was fatal to our will in Viet Nam.
There is an antidote to this lessoing of resolve, it is to counter the reaction to the images of dead Afghans with our own images. We need to win on the psychological front, or we will lose the resolve to win on any other front. Just replay the Viet Nam war, which was (as was correctly claimed by the North Vietnamese) lost on the American television. We know that the VC slaughtered entire villages routinely for showing the slightest leaning toward the RVN or USA. Yet all we remembered was the little girl running burned after a US bombing raid.
Images matter, if you don't see that you are naive.
It's clear (at least to me): They are, as usual, playing their un-American role . . . They are traitors, pure and simple; what is in America's interest is not in theirs.
Yes those of us that have an attention span of more than 15 minutes do not need sensory re-enforcement. But we are talking about the American public here. The shock is wearing off and the left is quickly coming out of their stupor. Do you really feel that the 90% approval for this war will hold? I predict it will be no more than 60% by Thanksgiving and anti-war protests will be a nightly news lead-off.
It is also creating conservatives. "What is a conservative? A liberal, who has been mugged." America was mugged.
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