leejo

I think there's a line between propaganda and and expressing one's position in a favorable light. It's the press's duty to expose lies from all sides in a conflict. If the press does its job well, we're not having this discussion.

I don't think the press has done its job well. Some of you may believe that the press isn't doing a good job exposing the military's lies. I believe the press is doing a poor job focusing on the other side's lies. In any case, I agree that the military MUST consider its adversaries' efforts to sway US public opinion and they must come up with a strategy to counter those efforts, or from now on we will lose here every war we send them off to fight and die for.

The NYT's sense of moral outrage is charming, but these men in the military are better motivated, since their actual asses are on the line. I suspect we'll find a way for the military to convey their version of events without it necessarily being "propaganda". Maybe if they CG "Liar" on every defense analyst's forehead...Sorry, every republican defense analyst's forehead.

Steeler

If the texture map fits...

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Elwenil

That wouldn't be fair considering that "Out Of Touch With Reality" won't fit on the forehead of the democrats.

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|TG|Elwenil

AMosely

Except that this isn't about adversarial efforts, unless you are talking about Americans who are against the war - in which case I'd point out that your fellow citizens should never be considered adversaries. Further, these analysts are not men in the military. They were men in the military, and now have their business on the line instead of their ass. A very, very different point of view.

This media problem isn't even about the military - it's about control. Control of the message, control of 'facts,' control of the media, control of opinion. While I certainly can't blame the White House for their efforts in this (PR is a fact of life in many things), I do blame their methods. By using such heavy and wide blankets to control dissent in the government, the military and the public, they've ended up making mistakes that took years to account for. As an example, one of the primary and most damaging mistakes had to do with troop levels, which were low from the start and were drawn down instead of reinforced because the White House and the Defense Department (under Rumsfeld at the time) refused to believe an escalation was needed. While claiming to listen to 'commanders in the field,' they were in reality only listening to those who supported their pre-established view of things in the field. This same approach was taken to the handling of intelligence during the lead-up to the war. Because of this pattern of pre-supposition and denial, it took five years for an escalation to occur. I pointed this out earlier but will post an excerpt from the article here:

This was in 2003. Five years later we all know that Bremer was correct - at least more correct than the White House's opinion. The fact that Bremer was wrong in other areas and therefore wasn't particularly favored by the White House may have diminished his credit. None the less, the failure to secure post-Saddam Iraq is one of the biggest mistakes of this war, not only costing American lives but hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. The timeline, and possibly the outcome of this war would have been different had this propaganda machine not been so harshly effective.

I want to point out that it's fairly obvious why Bush's team would do this - there is clearly a logical (and quite methodical) framework. I don't see anything illegal here, nor do I think it a major conspiracy. What I see is a piece of the underpinnings of the failed strategy in Iraq, and therefore wish that there are some lessons learned from this and other to-be-uncovered aspects of the administration. People speak of supporting the troops - ensuring that their civilian leadership (the executive) is solid is critical, if not essential to military command and operation. In this case, their leadership failed them.

As an aside, I think it is curious that an administration that claims to not care about public opinion during a war has gone to such great measures in an attempt control it.

leejo

AMosely, are you saying that you do not believe that there is an active and aggressive PR campaign being waged by A.Q. and its allies in the war against the US and that the only "enemy" the military with which the Military needs to concern itself are US Citizens who disagree with the current policies?

Also, I don't understand how you say on the one hand "PROPAGANDA" and on the other hand suggest that this has nothing to do with the military pumping out false information so much as private businessmen pumping out false information? Maybe it's just me, but if a private businessman lies, I don't call that propaganda.

With regard to your statement that "the media problem isn't about the military, it's about control" I think you have got that nailed. The media is losing control of the information we receive and it pisses them off. The military lost control of the same information during Vietnam, and it pissed them off too. Public opinion is key terrain in any war against a democracy, and we would have to be fighting a hoard of fools if no-one on the other side recognized that the easiest way to beat the U.S. is to avoid its military as much as possible and target US voters' opinions as much as possible. How would you rather fight the US, you know?

AMosely

No not at all. A.Q. is definitely waging a PR campaign, and even more importantly Arab 'news' agencies are quite propagandistic in their support for Hezbollah, Hamas and the like. This thead and the Times artcile are not about this, though. Are you saying that the "enemy" has a hand in American media, though? I seriously doubt that - the messages from Iraqi insurgent and terrorist groups has always been 'bring it on' - they don't support peace under any circumstance.

It's contextual. If a businessman lies in the context of his own business, that's one thing. If he lies in the context of his business to public investors, that's another. If he lies about his business while claiming to be an industry analyst (and not a businessman), that's morally shady, but it still might not be propagandistic. The White House and DoD custom-building these briefings for dissemination to the public (through public media) by private analysts who have hidden, vested interests is a new kind of propaganda creation and delivery system, and I think a dangerous one during and surrounding a war.

In 2002, when Rumsfeld opened the "Office of Strategic Influence" in the Pentagon, you're talking about propaganda - maybe aimed abroad, maybe aimed within. But when the Pentagon uses terms like "re-energizing surrogates" and "message-force multipliers" in reference to public information about the war, you're talking about a propaganda campaign aimed at your own people.

While this isn't quite what I was getting at, it's still another serious angle that warrants discussion. How much, or how badly does a country, or a government, or a military need the media to be on its side during a time of war? Does everyone have a right to the truth? How important is it for the media to have access to impartial information as opposed to pre-filtered information? Should impartiality in the media be declared - because recently, you'll notice that many media outlets now proclaim the hidden partnerships behind the scenes - for example, a Universal Studios movie being promoted on the 'Today' show - Matt Lauer will now say that this is a product of NBC's parent company. That didn't used to happen. Does this semi-transparency need to be broadened to cover government sources - because in the case of these analysts, there is much more at stake than movie ticket sales.

While on the surface it would seem helpful to indirectly control public media in order to prevent the dissemination of rumors (and, at an extreme, 'enemy' propaganda), on the other hand it has been proven to ultimately hurt the war effort when the public is kept in the dark. There is a fine, and even debatable line between 'information' and 'propaganda,' but in a time of war it becomes desparately important to mind that line and even expose it. Such was, I believe, the purpose of this article, and a lesson worth learning for this country as we are fighting yet another long and difficult war abroad.

leejo

While I do not think that the US media (and I include non-US entities like Reuters in this group, since many US media take their feeds from these wire services) are beholden to A.Q. and other insurgent groups, I believe STRONGLY that information flowing out of those groups is treated with much less skepticism by our media than information flowing out of, for example, the Pentagon and the White House. This may simply be a practical matter - it's much easier and safer to confirm or refute statements our institutions make but very difficult and dangerous to investigate many of the enemies' claims.

Nonetheless, it's not an even playing field if one side's statements are fact-checked and the other side's less so. I do think this is happening.

I'm not sure where the problem became morally shady. I've never considered an industry analyst to be working for charity. If you are suddenly surprised that "military analysts" who use their experience and connections are being paid for that experience and those connections, I can't help you. If you're saying something else, I don't understand.

I think this is a fair concern of all media. They all have vested interests in keeping their connections and information flow in good stead, and sometimes their willingness to report what they're told without personally fact checking harms their reputations and our understanding of the true nature of things. Viva la internet revolution!

I don't necessarily see this as such an ominous thing as you seem to. The military is well-within its rights to tell the truth about its side of the story using all sorts of surrogates and force multipliers as far as I'm concerned. It's when they fail to be truthful that they bring shame to themselves and our media earns its living.

I disagree. It has not been proven to hurt the war effort when the public is kept in the dark. WWII was fought and won with a stranglehold on information, and look at all the posters from that war. I don't know what you call them other than propaganda. Yet somehow we all survived and prospered. Except for the soldiers who died, that is.

I think there is a delicate balance to be struck between feeding information to the People during a war with maintaining the ability to achieve operational and strategic surprise. I don't think this administration has found that balance, but I don't think our, IMO hysterical, media is the arbiter either. Obviously this is the sort of thing that we vote about.

Try a thought-experiment. Assume for a moment that A.Q. is releasing false information that our media is picking up and basically reporting as truth. Assume that current thought in the military leadership, who all survived Vietnam and who all have, hopefully, learned a few things from their experience there, is that it is not enough to win the battles with bullets and steel if the public's will to wage war evaporates. Such a person might be very interested in winning THAT battle THIS time. How might you proceed? What sorts of programs might you develop in order to help gain control of that part of the battle space?

I think if you think about this from that perspective, and give the military a LITTLE bit of slack since all of this is new and pretty unexplored territory, you may come away thinking that it's at least possible that "The Office of Strategic Influence" is more a bad name for a good idea that wasn't executed quite right.

AMosely

All relevant comments except that, again, I am not talking about the military with regard to the Times article and the spreading of cherry-picked and/or mis-informed information. The military had no part in this beyond being an extension of the Department of Defense. Rumsfeld did a horrible job during his tenure, and was allowed to do it for far too long simply because he was a close and long-time ally of Dick Cheney. None of that has anything to do with the people who actually work in the military in the same way that 99.9% of Enron's employees weren't cheats and liars. This matter is examining the practices of the White House, the Department of Defense (civilian military, but not troops and commanders on the ground), and the retired or otherwise private 'military analysts' simultaneously employed by the government and major news outlets - no more and no less.

This is interesting to me because it is essentially the rationale under which the White House and DoD undertook their 'strategic intelligence' operations, which included this hand-picked group of analysts to feed to the media. It's rational enough, and I agree that the historical record of war depends on this type of control to a degree. The problem is that Bush's administration took it too far, and with far too much hubris (a typical pattern in his office) - instead of just filtering what the 'enemy' was putting out, they filtered much of what their own people - before the war it was Generals like Shinseki and Newbold. Ricardo Sanchez (as underqualified as he was) complained of both dwindling reinforcements and equipment in 2003. Ambassador Bremer directly complained of troop numbers in 2003 and 2004. In every case, the comments were dismissed by the administration (employing this media machine), and soon after the individual was dismissed as well. Examples of press coverage from these incidents show that the statements, when they appeared at all, were almost always buffered by a White House, DoD or 'senior official' (aka 'analyst') rebuttal.

I certainly agree that the relationship between the military and the media is a conflicted one - it has been throughout the 20th century and many scholars have spent careers analyzing it. But this case isn't about that. To me, this is about an administration clamping down so hard on the communication between the military, government and press/public that they practically severed every channel and cut themselves off from reality. My argument, again, is that this has ended up hurting the war effort immensely, and for all involved (military, government, media, public).

leejo

Neglecting my objections to your narrative of who complained and how and when, I think there's plenty of blame to go around AMosely. If we're going to dog on the Bush administration for being paranoid and not sharing enough information, then I think we also have to look at the Democrats in office who did everything possible to paint the most damning picture of this conflict from the beginning and entities such as the NYT who developed a fondness for releasing state secrets during a war.

I most certainly am not comparing GWB to Lincoln, but I do think it's fair to point out that Lincoln burned through several CINCs, several years, and a few hundred thousand soldiers' lives before finding the right combination of people and strategies to win that war. I think your standards may be set just a tad high. It seems almost as if the Bush administration did eventually make certain changes - changes McCain demanded for a long time - and Gen. Petreaus is getting the job done. Unless we as a nation elect some complete fool to office who pulls us out precipitously, the Iraq War is won.

Despite the NY Times best efforts.

So anyway, I think we're basically agreed on the matter at hand - that of course the military and any administration waging war must find an effective way to combat enemy propaganda without becoming guilty of disseminating propaganda themselves. One problem may be that "propaganda" is too vague. Kinda like "torture". Without better clarity, each term becomes a political football in the shifting sands of the tides of war. 3 metaphors in 1 sentence. Beat that.

El_Gringo_Grande

Propaganda is kinda vague, especially in our capitalistic culture saturated by advertising. We come to expect that there is nobody you can trust. A price that we seem to pay happily.

Of course if those people trying to propagate a certain idea or story would just come out and admit it I wouldn't be so negative.

But torture is vague? Is our culture that morally deficient?

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leejo

"Torture" is vague, yes. No, I don't think our culture's morality has anything to do with it. Have you not noticed the debate that's been going on for years with regard to "torture"?

One side of the debate seems to think that ANY coercive technique is torture - loud music, inadequate furniture, lack of a dimmer, the thermostat set to a level slightly above my grandfather's. The other side seems to think that if someone can walk away without mangled limbs they haven't been "tortured".

So personally I think we need to find more clarity around the term. It's not a moral issue it's a practical issue. Imagine if you got a speeding ticket for going "too fast". You just can't administer that.

The moral questions are things like "would you torture a guy in order to find a nuke in 10 minutes?" The assumption is that we're talking about full-blown torture there, and there's no need for more clarity.

The question at hand, though, is more along the lines of "gee, I have this guy, and it's my job to get information out of him. What techniques are permitted and what techniques are prohibited?"

That's where "torture" is too vague.

Zebra

I think international treaties, US Code and the UCMJ answered that question a long time ago.

leejo

Well, I agree. Many on the left disagree though, and none of this has been litigated anywhere other than the military courts, and the military judges aren't talking.

Zebra

It might also be fair to point out that Lincoln let his generals run the war, then held them accountable when their strategies failed. On the other hand, this administration told their generals how to run the war from before day one, then got rid of anybody who disagreed. There is a big difference.

Well, this is certainly wonderful news. If the war is won, then why is it precipitous to pull out? Don't the troops usually come home after the victory?

leejo

I think your description on how this administration has behaved flies in the face of a lot of evidence. John Abizaid laid out a strategy that is consistent with the doctrine described in "Military Operations In Low-Intensity Conflict" and that strategy failed. Lord knows the President gave him a lot of time and a few thousand lives to work with before recalling him and putting Gen. Petraeus in place.

I know you disagree with me and so I don't think we'll get very far with this line of discussion.