War On All Fronts: What else is new? (The stupidity and prejudices of journalists covering the war)

Join me, if you will, on a brief tour through the brain of the standard-issue mainstream American journalist, surveying the war in Iraq: "The battle plan is flawed. There are civilian casualties. There are military casualties. The generals briefing reporters in Qatar aren't saying enough.

"The commanders on the ground are angry at the Pentagon. The Pentagon is lying when it says the war is going well. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't let the armed forces bring in enough troops.

"There aren't enough Iraqis cheering American and British troops, which means Iraqis hate American and British troops, which means they are actively working to help Saddam perpetuate his regime. Which means there will be bloody fighting in the streets of Baghdad.

"Somebody named Kenneth Adelman, who supported the war, said a few weeks before the outbreak of hostilities that it would be a 'cakewalk.' That means President Bush thought it would be a cakewalk.

"That means President Bush misunderstood the nature of war. And the nature of Iraq. And the nature of the Arab world. And the nature of hostility to America. And the nature of nationalism.

"The soldiers are brave and unfortunate - unless they kill civilians who drive through checkpoints without stopping, in which case they are tools of a war that seems increasingly controversial."

This is the thought process that underlies almost every question asked at every briefing here in the United States and over in the Persian Gulf.

It's a mental landscape pitted with landmines. The purpose of these landmines is to make American officials and generals trip and blow themselves up by admitting that the war isn't going well, that it isn't going according to plan, that it's going to take much longer and be much bloodier and more difficult and more nightmarish than they thought.

The fact that politicians and generals aren't stupid enough to trip over these landmines is driving journalists crazy. They know, they just know, the pols and generals are lying. They know it because, well, they just know it.

Other reporters have gotten mysterious off-the-record sources to issue these complaints in the pages of major newspapers, so they've just got to be true.

HERE'S WHAT'S true. It's unquestionably true that some people who supported the idea of war in the months leading up to it offered vulgar and ignorant scenarios according to which there simply would be no war.

We'd drive into Iraq and suffering Iraqis would run out, put flowers in the gun turrets of our Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and sing "God Bless America," while our boys and girls in uniform said, "Aw, shucks" as they handed out candy bars and were taught how to ululate and do belly-dancing by a grateful and liberated people.

It hasn't happened that way. But only the very naive thought it would, and those who made predictions in public and private about how the war would be over in four days are now living to regret their overconfident foolishness.

There's no reason to believe the Pentagon ever thought it would happen that way. The only evidence that the administration was overly confident came from a television interview given by Vice President Cheney, who said he thought the war would be over in a "matter of weeks." The vice president might be proved wrong. But we certainly don't yet know, 15 days into this conflict, if he was.

The president of the United States, who is the key actor in this conflict, has never said or done anything to indicate he believed this was an easy call - or that toppling a dug-in totalitarian regime possessing weapons of mass destruction would be anything but dangerous and horrible.

The assumption that the Bush administration would only take on this task because they believed it would be easy is part and parcel of the constant, tiring and increasingly idiotic underestimation of the president and his team. For more than a year, Bush said that if Saddam Hussein did not disarm, the United States would lead a coalition to disarm him.

He stuck to this position through thick and thin. Through the natterings of the Blixes and the flusterings of the Annans, through the treacheries of the Chiracs and the Schroeders, through the moral compromises of the Putins and the Mubaraks, Bush said he would do what he believed must be done for the safety of the United States and the world.

This is a profoundly serious man. The journalistic mindset that seeks to find division and falsity in his profoundly serious approach to this profoundly serious war is the opposite. It is the state of consciousness that Milan Kundera called "the unbearable lightness of being."

The unbearable lightness of being is the condition in which people can make themselves comfortable with the existence of evil by refusing to look at it and see it for what it truly is. The unbearably light want to skate breezily past the horrors and vent their anger on those who won't let them just skate by.

The unbearable lightness of being cannot take the measure of Bush and his battle plan because it refuses to conceive of a reality in which there are only hard choices. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are reconciled to this reality. Most of the journalists covering them are not.

That is why the leaders are important, and the unbearably light journalists who misunderstand and belittle them are not.

These people were wrong about Afghanistan. They were wrong about the military phase of Iraqi Freedom. They are now shifting their focus and nay-saying about the post-war effort to establish a new Iraqi government. They will be proved wrong about this too. They have never been right about anything. And yet they drone on and on...

They have never been right about anything. And yet they drone on and on...

You, on the other hand are correct. It is up to us to find some website, or some documentation that chronicals the very recent, and embarrassingly incorrect analysis of the big media's analysis of wars post 9/11. Perhaps we can rely on talk radio to do this, but if not we need to find these lists, or even compile them ourselves and spread the word to anyone that cites the media as a source.

They are implying that if Bush had second thoughts, he should have realized that the Iraqis would have put up greater resistance and it would be much harder and costlier to us.

What they do not realize is that it should have been Saddam who should have had second thoughts and he should have accepted Bush's 48 hour offer and Bush's first thoughts would have been best for everyone.

I had the same thought last week. I hope someone is keeping track (taking names), so we can throw this back in the faces of these self-important mediots. I read Bill Sammon's book, FIGHTING BACK, about Bush's response to 9/11. The most valuable portions of the book are the three chapters that record the general media paranoia and miscalculations about the battle in Afghanistan. I would have thought that these bozos would lay low, considering how wrong they were about Afghanistan, but no...They continue their naysaying to this very day, and no one holds them accountable.

the leaders are important, and the unbearably light journalists who misunderstand and belittle them are not.

Journalism, as this piece suggests, is ineluctably superficial. The "fog of war" is simply a special case of the fog of breaking news. It is agonizing for the warrior because life-and-death decisions must be made quickly on the basis of incomplete and conflicting information.
In battle the warrior is stuck in that environment; others may be well advised to chill out and let the dust settle. But journalism exists permanently in that fog of breaking news, and with its PR power vigorously resists public recognition of the value of the test of time.
We-the-people have to learn to reject the siren song of the desire to know the as-yet-unknowable, and discount breaking news--all news, actually--and wait until we actually need to make a decision. That would lead to an electorate which voted for character and serious qualifications rather than for glibness. An electorate which wouldn't vote for a Clinton on a bet . . .

They have never been right about anything."

The root of their problem is that they insist on holding delusional views in the face of all reality.

This apparently can do permanent damage, or perhaps, creates an addictive need for a fantasy world.

In any event, they liked Stalin(until dead), Mao(until dead), Pol Pot(until deposed), Castro, and the new hopes, Chavez and Lula. Surprisingly, they still like Ho Chi Minh, even though he's dead. Perhaps because the regime hasn't disavowed him.

They do tend to believe anything they're told by socialist luminaries. Pathetic, really, like Robert Fisk.

War On All Fronts: What else is new? (The stupidity and prejudices of journalists covering the war)

I believe the title of this article is unfair. Are journalists prejudiced? Of course--they are human beings.

Are some more prone to distort and mislead than others? Of course, they are human beings.

As free people we need to recognize the vital importance of the press, even though they may irritate and annoy us.

The recent deaths of David Bloom, Michael Kelly, and other journalists in this war is a reminder to us of how a free press serves to enable liberty to thrive, in a way that the soldier's bayonet cannot. The soldier can free us from tyrants, but the journalist gives voice to that freedom.

Remember the journalists who have died for free speech, especially those who have died while in the battlefield.

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