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I can't believe I'm finally seeing an outlet reporting on the opening of a civilian airfield -- and I'm gonna complain about it.
That's because they're reporting on the first flights taking off, a nice feel good story.
Maybe they should have mentioned the first flights to land.
As the issue on the Sunday shows is the tragic loss of life in an Israeli strike on a building with many civilians packed in the basement, (via Instapundit) an Australian paper publishes a series of pictures proving that Hezbollah is not just operating amongst civilians, but (to my eye) basically drawing Israeli fire to civilian areas. They ain't winnin' that propaganda war by accident, team: it's easy when you don't care about the lives of civilians on either side.
And notice that the paper is clear that these images had to be smuggled out of Lebanon. This isn't a view of their war plan they want the world to see.
Now: will we see these images on American television? I've been listening all morning, and I haven't heard or seen a peep yet. Seems as if (given that this has been the very heart of the discussion) it might have come up once or twice.
I wish I could remember where I read this, because now I can't properly credit the author, but when I read this very interesting little piece in today's Times about hunger strikes having lost their political punch I was reminded of an argument I found doing research on suicide terrorism when prepping the terrorism class last semester: terrorists have used their own bodies to generate political attention for their causes by making their suicides symbolic statements, but in the past those were "traditional" suicides -- in other words, they were the only ones who died. It certainly left them as more sympathetic figures outside their own constitutencies -- unless you were already totally opposed to their position, Bobby Sands and the others would at least arouse curiousity. (And, no, Bobby Sands was not eating smoothies.)
A well written and touching piece from a Times reporter about the toll violence takes on the average Iraqi, but what I want to point to is the title.
You know, I teach rhetoric and I focus on the military, so it's interesting to me that back during Desert Storm the military was critiqued for using the euphemism "collateral damage" when referring to unintentional civilian deaths resulting from military actions. The euphemism, it was said, deflected us from what we were really talking about, and given what we were really talking about that was inappropriate.
I'm not sure when it happened, but surely by the time of OEF in Afghanistan, the military just dropped the phrase. I've heard it used in reference to physical damage to buildings and such every once in awhile, but when official military spokesreps are talking about civilian casualties they say, well, actually they say that -- "civilian casualties."
Yet critics of the war, the anti-war left, and (when they are being snarky) the press, all continue to use the phrase "collateral damage" to refer to civilian casualties, and because the fact of the euphemism was so widely discussed, everyone knows what they're talking about.
Isn't there some term in football that means you hit the guy after the play was over? (Oh, sue me, I went to Northwestern. How should I know football lingo? But it would be a really good metaphor to stick in here, no?)
Interesting piece in the Times about lessons the Israel-Hezbollah war might pose for future US military action (although I don't know that the headline is accurate.)
However they miss one critical point. From the Times piece:
Hezbollah still possesses the most dangerous aspects of a shadowy terror network. It abides by no laws of war as it attacks civilians indiscriminately. Attacks on its positions carry a high risk of killing innocents.
As clever as the article makes these enemies out, they aren't going to defeat First World enemies on the battlefield. Israel will not be defeated in any kind of traditional way, in any kind of traditional measure. This is strictly a battle of will, a battle of what one public will accept versus what the other will accept. The goal of the defending military is to destroy as much of the terrorist military as possible, in order to destroy its capacity to attack its population. Inevitably that will involve the death of innocents, not only because that's the case with all military force, but more so if the terrorist military has taken steps to ensure it (putting their military and control elements in urban areas, for example.) If, as in this case, the defending population is well protected, the disparity makes it look even worse than it is.
Then the question is introduced: what will the international community accept from the First World, what will they allow? The innocents killed on the side where the terrorists are hiding are just as innocent as those killed by the terrorists, but they seem a little more so, if you see what I mean. And there may be more of them.
That aspect of it is critical in these kinds of wars (conflicts?) and the Times -- perhaps because as a media organization, their role is central, and they can't see it -- misses it entirely.
Everyone said, Israel will sooner or later, inevitably, hit some large civilian target by mistake, and then the worm will turn. This morning may well bear that out.
Let me tell you what I find disturbing here.
A reporter -- for Stars and Stripes no less -- runs into a soldier who tells him that the reason he came to Iraq was to kill Iraqis. In fact he tells him:
"I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing," he went on. "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza.' "
And is his reaction that this is a disburbed kid? No. He thinks:
At the time, the soldier's matter-of-fact manner struck me chiefly as a rare example of honesty. I was on a nine-month assignment as an embedded reporter in Iraq, spending much of my time with grunts like him -- mostly young (and immature) small-town kids who sign up for a job as killers, lured by some gut-level desire for excitement and adventure. This was not the first group I had run into that was full of young men who shared a dark sense of humor and were clearly desensitized to death. I thought this soldier was just one of the exceptions who wasn't afraid to say what he really thought, a frank and reflective kid, a sort of Holden Caulfield in a war zone.
That's right, he views the soldiers he meets as "small town kids who sign up for a job as killers," so when this particular soldier says I came here to kill he just thinks -- ah ha, I finally found an honest soldier.
Frankly, I'm disgusted.
And, whaddya know, the "honest" soldier turns out to be Steven Green, discharged for mental problems, then charged with rape and murder. (Notice that the reporter points out Green's "troubled background" but doesn't point out that he was sent packing by the military. Doesn't fit his narrative of the Army as a collection of hired killers, I guess.)
Instead he goes on and on and on about the stress Green's unit had been under, the finishes with a quick backpedal:
In the end, I never included Green's comments in any of the handful of stories I wrote from Mahmudiyah for Stars and Stripes. When he said he was inured to death and killing, it seemed to me -- in that place and at that time -- a reasonable thing to say. While in Iraq, I also saw people bleed and die. And there was something unspeakably underwhelming about it. It's not a Hollywood action movie -- there are no rapid edits, no adrenaline-pumping soundtracks, no logical narratives that help make sense of it. Bits of lead fly through the air, put holes in people and their bodily fluids leak out and they die. Those who knew them mourn and move on.
But no level of combat stress is an excuse for the kind of brutal acts Green allegedly committed. I suppose I will always look back on our conversations in Mahmudiyah and wonder: Just what did he mean?
I wonder what the reporter means.
There are few people who can explain the nature of the war we're engaged in better than Tony Blair.
Most of the networks pulled a soundbite from the same answer he gave yesterday, because it was so powerful, but it really is worth taking a moment to read what he said in full: it's long for an answer to a question at a press conference, but it isn't that long in absolute terms.
Just the same, I won't use italics:
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: I don't think, actually, it's anything to do with a loss of American influence at all. I think -- we've got to go back and ask what changed policy, because policy has changed in the past few years. And what changed policy was September the 11th. That changed policy, but actually, before September the 11th this global movement with a global ideology was already in being. September the 11th was the culmination of what they wanted to do. But, actually -- and this is probably where the policymakers, such as myself, were truly in error -- is that even before September the 11th, this was happening in all sorts of different ways in different countries.
I mean, in Algeria, for example, tens and tens of thousands of people lost their lives. This movement has grown, it is there, it will latch on to any cause that it possibly can and give it a dimension of terrorism and hatred. You can see this. You can see it in Kashmir, for example. You can see it in Chechnya. You can see it in Palestine.
Now, what is its purpose? Its purpose is to promote its ideology based upon the perversion of Islam, and to use any methods at all, but particularly terrorism, to do that, because they know that the value of terrorism to them is -- as I was saying a moment or two ago, it's not simply the act of terror, it's the chain reaction that terror brings with it. Terrorism brings the reprisal; the reprisal brings the additional hatred; the additional hatred breeds the additional terrorism, and so on. But in a small way, we lived through that in Northern Ireland over many, many decades.
Now, what happened after September the 11th -- and this explains, I think, the President's policy, but also the reason why I have taken the view, and still take the view that Britain and America should remain strong allies, shoulder-to-shoulder in fighting this battle, is that we are never going to succeed unless we understand they are going to fight hard. The reason why they are doing what they're doing in Iraq at the moment -- and, yes, it's really tough as a result of it -- is because they know that if, right in the center of the Middle East, in an Arab, Muslim country, you've got a non-sectarian democracy, in other words people weren't governed either by religious fanatics or secular dictators, you've got a genuine democracy of the people, how does their ideology flourish in such circumstances?
So they have imported the terrorism into that country, preyed on whatever reactionary elements there are to boost it. And that's why we have the issue there; that's why the Taliban are trying to come back in Afghanistan. That is why, the moment it looked as if you could get progress in Israel and Palestine, it had to be stopped. That's the moment when, as they saw there was a problem in Gaza, so they realized, well, there's a possibility now we can set Lebanon against Israel.
Now, it's a global movement, it's a global ideology. And if there's any mistake that's ever made in these circumstances, it's if people are surprised that it's tough to fight, because you're up against an ideology that's prepared to use any means at all, including killing any number of wholly innocent people.
And I don't dispute part of the implication of your question at all, in the sense that you look at what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening in Iraq and Lebanon and Palestine, and, of course, there's a sense of shock and frustration and anger at what is happening, and grief at the loss of innocent lives. But it is not a reason for walking away. It's a reason for staying the course, and staying it no matter how tough it is, because the alternative is actually letting this ideology grip a larger and larger number of people.
And it is going to be difficult. Look, we've got a problem even in our own Muslim communities in Europe, who will half-buy into some of the propaganda that's pushed at it -- the purpose of America is to suppress Islam, Britain has joined with America in the suppression of Islam. And one of the things we've got to stop doing is stop apologizing for our own positions. Muslims in America, as far as I'm aware of, are free to worship; Muslims in Britain are free to worship. We are plural societies.
It's nonsense, the propaganda is nonsense. And we're not going to defeat this ideology until we in the West go out with sufficient confidence in our own position and say, this is wrong. It's not just wrong in its methods, it's wrong in its ideas, it's wrong in its ideology, it's wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it. And it will be a long struggle, I'm afraid. But there's no alternative but to stay the course with it. And we will.
Q Can I ask you both how soon realistically you think there could be an end to the violence, given there's no signs at the moment of 1559 being met? I mean, do you think we're looking at more weeks, months, or can it be achieved sooner than that? And also, will the multinational force potentially be used to effect a cease-fire, or simply to police an agreement once we eventually get to that?
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, the answer to the first point is, as soon as possible. And if we can get the U.N. resolution agreed next week and acted upon, then it can happen, and it can happen then. We want to see it happen as quickly as possible, but the conditions have got to be in place to allow it to happen.
And in relation to the multinational force, what will be -- it's not going to be the opportunity to fight -- to fight their way in. But the very way that you posed that question underlines this basic point, which is, this can only work if Hezbollah are prepared to allow it to work. And we've got to make sure, therefore, that we have the force go in as part of an agreement that the government of Lebanon has bound itself to, the government of Israel has bound itself to, the international community has bound itself to. And Hezbollah have got to appreciate that if they stand out against that, then it's not really that they will be doing a huge disservice to the people of Lebanon, but they will also, again, face the fact that action will have to be taken against them.
Michael O'Hanlon here reviews Thomas Ricks' new book on the Iraq war, "Fiasco."
I'm about 150 pages in, and here's my take: I bought the book because he does cover 2003-06, so it is a bit frustrating that he takes so much time covering the run up to war, which is ground so well covered before. (On the other hand, he does have a relatively fresh take on that material.)
I think this is going to be a very important book, for this reason. I can already tell (and you can tell just from following Ricks' coverage in the Post) that O'Hanlon's review rings true: that although he's working off anecdotal evidence -- although a massive amount of it -- Ricks' tends always to read through a negative lens. Nonetheless, he is one of the best informed reporters on this beat. Just as one critical example, I often point to the fact that reporters stopped covering the military after Vietnam and then picked up again, and so they miss the fact that this just isn't the same institution, miss everything that the military went through trying to come back from Vietnam.
Ricks' to the contrary writes at length about precisely that. And he goes on to make an argument about the way the experience of coming back from Vietnam has shaped especially the Army ever since. It's a fairly compelling argument, and it's light years from the cookie-cutter "Iraq = Vietnam" stuff we usually see.
As I say, I haven't gotten to the heart of the book, but the entire book is an argument about the way decisions made early contributed to the development of the insurgency. While many of the arguments ("there was no plan for the post-war," "inter-agency bickering had an enormous impact") have been seen before, he makes them with new material and new twists.
The only big flaw so far is that in discussing the run up to war he talks about containment and sanctions in a vacumn, so he never mentions the fact that whether they were holding or not depended in part on whether other countries were willing to continue supporting them in the UN.
Just the same, there's important material in here that's well worth a look.
As is often the case, a clearer, tighter, explanation from columnist David Ignatius than you'll find in many straight news articles.
I don't know how to get a url for this, but yesterday one of the Fox reporter's went back to Fallujah and the video is here, and he makes the interesting point that on earlier trips the Iraqi troops there had run from the fighting, now they're running to the fighting.
Putting this together it seems to me reinforces two things we've heard before: first, the focus now is on the police. The army really is doing very well (or, at least, well enough.) And, second, while it's clear the primary problem now is the sectarian violence, that suggests the battle against the jihadists may be going relatively well. The center of gravity has shifted. That doesn't necessarily mean the battle is about to get easier, it means the battle against one enemy has gone relatively well.
Sorry this is a few days old, but Bill Roggio passed this on, and I've been slow this week, but I think it's important enough that I wanted to make a point of posting it even if some of you may have already seen it.
I'm not a big Anderson Cooper fan, but I think he deserves huge points for going into detail about what it means for the press to travel in Hezbollah-controlled areas. I've seen a number of reporters mention that they're on "Hezbollah press tours," or say, (with some surprise) that the Hezbollah have press officers, but that doesn't get it.
Cooper, to his credit, lays out exactly what happens on a "Hezbollah press tour."
I can understand why reporters have to be very couched in what they say during live reports, but once they're out of Hezbollah control, they need to be very precise about this kind of thing. If that means they risk further access, so be it. To go along to get along is simply to participate in passing along misinformation in order to gain access to additional misinformation. (Not like anyone'd ever do anything like that.)
