Recall Austin Bay, from “Nervous in Baghdad”:
When will the media figure this out: Al Qaeda and its cohorts are strategic information powers and little else. “The terrorists have yet to win an engagement above the platoon level,” Gen. Abizaid said as we flew from Qatar to Iraq. I mean, a C-17 is loud, but the man said it with exacting clarity. Terrorist bombs are made for TV, and terrorist beheadings are made for the Internet. Here’s a radical thought, politically incorrect, incorrect in terms of TV ratings but still strategically correct and correct in terms of defending liberal values: Winning the global war against Islamist terror ultimately means curbing the terrorists’ strategic combat power, and that means ending the media magnification of their bombs.
Then cut to Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor, who spends the morning criticizing Thomas Sowell for arguing that the mainstream media (and, I’d add, many leftwing websites) are trying to recreate the media milieu of the Vietnam war, where in Sowell’s words “American victories on the battlefield were turned into defeat on the home front by the filtering and spin of the media.” Writes Taylor:
Thomas Sowell is pissed because the fact that Iraq is a giant mess tends to overshadow the fact that people are wallowing around in it, trying to make it not a mess. The prevailing narrative that met the commencement of this war was one of overwhelming ease and success, that we liberated more people faster than anyone in history. The past two years were simply unthinkable and even borderline treasonous to predict, the fevered dreams of leftist America-haters who secretly hoped that we’d fail and flounder in the Middle East as a black eye on our reputation to the world.
Except that the last two years did happen. We are failing in Iraq, and it’s not a failure predicated on the enemy existing, it’s a failure predicated on our complete lack of understand of the enemy and continual effort to reinvigorate support for the war by pretending that our failures don’t exist.
And on what does Jesse Taylor base his understanding of the enemy? On what does he base his characterization of the Iraq war as a “failure”? Why, the very news reports (or, in Bay’s formulation, the terrorist’s “strategic information powers”) that Sowell, Bay, the President, the Pentagon, and the military leadership in country keep insisting do not reflect the facts on the ground. As has been the case over and over with small-scale terrorist insurgencies, the leadership of those terror groups count on the adversarial nature of our mainstream media—and on its market-driven tendency to play-up the horrific and the sensational—to weaken our political will. And it does so further by playing on the vanity of those for whom the greatest virtue is dissent, especially when that dissent has been reduced to nothing more than a structural imperative—a political impulse driven by partisan politics and a desire for control.
Concludes Taylor:
What Sowell and his ilk would have you believe is that in Iraq, the American presence is an unimpeachably positive force that is doing nothing but bringing peace and liberty to the Iraqi people, while simultaneously our presence is being met by a force whose presence we bear no responsibility for. Our actions have consequences, but only good ones. Invasion provokes resistance because the resisters are bad people, but their badness saves us from ever having to consider whether or not opposition is having the desired effect. We’re winning simply by showing up, and anyone who ruins the illusion is likely racist, communist, and perhaps a pedophile, if you’re lucky.
Well, no, not exactly. What they are are useful idiots, sanctimonious dupes who allow made-for-media terrorist slaughters to dictate to them the nodal points and the central motifs of the Iraqi narrative—then turn around and cite that very narrative as unimpeachable proof of US failure. And they do this because they believe dogged skepticism is de facto proof of their determined “realism”—of a willingness to bravely and soberly assess the facts.
Only, when you begin from bad facts, or facts taken out of context—and then refuse to allow correctives into the narrative you’ve spun from those facts—you end up espousing the kind of dubious, faux-sober analysis Taylor offers up.
Or, to put it more plainly: garbage in, garbage out.
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Or, to put it more plainly: garbage in, garbage out.
The left has swallowed and regurgitated so much garbage over the past five years they’re redefining the condition of bulemia.
GIGO.
Sometimes it’s not even bad facts, but bad mindsets. How many people who are convinced that things are objectively awful also subscribe to the philosophy that “violence never solves anything” (or its corollary, “violence only leads to more violence”)?
In those kinds of cases, facts on the ground will be molded to fit the mindset, rather than the unthinkable possibility that maybe the mindset ought to change due to conflicting facts.
I still can’t understand what the expectations of the anti-war crowd are, at least in terms of the actual war part. There seems to be some belief that wars should have clear enemies and obvious objectives and, of course, easy wins.
I’m not sure ANY conflict in the history of humanity could ever be described like that. Maybe the Mongol invasions. They had pretty clear objectives and accomplishments.
Why do you hate America?
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!
Spitting on troops a close second, though.
Cindy Sheehan for President!
GIGO
Abso-fucking-lutely. If it bleeds it leads, and to hell with responsible journalism. Leftism uber alles! War is harmful to children and cute fuzzy puppies! Patriotism is the last refuge, etc etc.
Sedition takes many forms. This is one of them.
Jeff,
Excellent take-down of the craven, inverted morality mindset.
Cordially…
You, sir, are an arch-polemicist.
HOW DARE YOU CALL TAYLOR UNPATRIOTIC?
Nicely done, Jeff. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Except I will add this bit: I’m perfectly willing to consider that the Left works up their rhetoric because they are patriotically opposing the work of crooks and liars and are trying to make this country stronger through internal criticism. I’ll listen to their cover story for their unrelenting pessimism and moral self-righteousness. But I will say this: if they were trying to weaken our political will enough to cause us defeat and embolden our enemies, would their efforts look any different?
It would be nice to see someone on the other side say, “Gee, I know my motives are good, but if people can so easily confuse me with someone who wants us all dead, maybe there’s something wrong with the way I’m communicating here. Maybe it’s not all Bush and the Right’s fault after all.”
Nah. Never happen. Sigh.
A momentary pause for self-reflection?
Take a second to examine the impact of their rhetoric?
Hold off and see if the stories in the media are the sum total of the narrative they are pushing?
Bah! How dare you question their patriotism?
Slarrow:
If I were you, I’d quit trying to figure out the thought processes of the anti-war left, or right, for that matter.
Those folks never even squeeked an objection when Clinton bombed Serbia and Kosovo, and then they play some Goose and Gander story about how both sides do the same thing when a few Republican politicians raise an eye brow and ask a few questions about such a military commitment.
The self-reinforcing reasoning that Jeff points out merely proves that it’s the politics of convenience, and not one’s moral principles, that results in the narrative that the anti-war folks construct. When your starting point–seeing as a big, bad Republican is in the WH–is that American motives must be wrong, then naturally you’re against anything the WH proposes.
Even as that means putting demands for international human rights on hold while finding common cause with isolationists that could care less if women are raped, children starved, villages pillaged, and the environment despoiled. Because they’re anti-Bush.
Even if it’s the same Bush, who campaigned in 2000 questioning the idea of “nation-building”, who changes his policy perspective in the face of the reality of Islamic terrorism and the Middle East in 2001. Because they’re anti-Bush.
I went over and visited Taylor’s joint and, wow, it’s a pretty angry place, alright. Kinda like trying to have a conversation with a bunch of angry drunks. My hat’s off to you, Jeff, for entering those fever-ridden swamps.
They don’t want a conversation, Salt Lick. They claim that’s what they want, sure—indeed, Taylor’s post today bemoans that we’re not even allowed to have a conversation—but then when somebody on the right tries to engage them, they quickly call him or her all sorts of nasty names, trot out just about every logical fallacy you can think of, and finally, after waiting a few days, simply re-write the same argument yet again as if no one ever corrected their mistakes the first time.
It’s all pretty sad.
And Jesse himself being a mean little prick, his commenters take their cues from him, resulting in a site that is a consistent pit of hate.
That’s the thing: they glom onto any sliver of news of a bomb or a killing and say, see, I’m so sad (and so moral) about all these deaths! See them on TV! God, I loved those people!
And you don’t.
And then accuse the rest of the country of being gung ho warmongers…
AFter 30 years of failed diplomacy.
AFter Jimmy Carter’s surrender in 1979.
After 9/11.
After revelations of a minority-hating, woman-hating and gay-hating ideology.
WELL SAID…KEEP IT UP!
Unimpeachable? I don’t think that is his position, nor must it be. It is Taylor setting up straw men and flailing ineffectively in their general direction.
Jesse Taylor and strawmen?!? Not in your lifetime, pal. He went to a university called Swat-something.
JEFF I think “JESSE” is a “GIRL” I’ve visited HER site a few times. Her friends post at feministing.com check it out…….I might be wrong.
Jim
Great job Jeff.
Our political will to stay the course is under savage attack by left and their lackeys in the traditional mainstream media. I just hope that the new alternative media venues such as this forum are able to inform enough of the public of just what is at stake.
Abu Gharib, Gitmo, Downing Street, PlameGate, Sheehan, and on and on and on. Non-stop 24/7 whine at the speed of light.
And there are times, usually a three o’clock in the morning when the red pills are starting to wear off, when I think, “Well, Hell. Let’s give ‘em what they want. Or what they say they want.”
As a churchgoing Christian I’ll be fine—I’m a People of the Book, eligible for dhimmitude; keep my head down and pay the tax, and I’ll get by. But most of the leftists, well, I’ve forgotten who pointed out how ridiculous it is for women to bare their breasts in support of people who cut women’s tongues out for showing their ankles.
No, I’m not seriously promoting the idea. Like I said, it’s an aftereffect of the red pills, or maybe of the dust they invariably collect behind the couch (what’s in that stuff?) But face it, folks. Isn’t Modo in a burkha with her tongue cut out a perversely attractive notion?
Regards,
Ric
“Structural imperative,” that’s very good.
Very very good.
Why is it that people are always so surprised that the enemy shoots back during a war? What did some of these people expect?
Austin Bay wrote:
“Winning the global war against Islamist terror ultimately means curbing the terrorists’ strategic combat power, and that means ending the media magnification of their bombs…”
In a perfect world, the global media conglomerates would gather and decide:
“In the interest of world peace, we shall smother global terrorism with silence. No video statements from Al-Qaeda will be broadcast on our networks. The rants of extremists and apologists will be ignored. Gruesome footage of executed hostages will never be aired.”
That, of course, will never happen… because violence, threats, shock value and general outrageousness sells. It is good for the sponsors.
Or at least, that’s the “common wisdom”: If you show mayhem and death on TV—even if you’re in effect showing a *terrorist infomercial*—people can’t avert their eyes. Like a traffic accident, you don’t want to watch but you can’t look away.
Consider this: someone PROFITS from terrorism. There’s gold in them thar broadcasts.
They don’t want a conversation, Salt Lick. They claim that’s what they want, sureâ€â€indeed, Taylor’s post today bemoans that we’re not even allowed to have a conversationâ€â€but then when somebody on the right tries to engage them, they quickly call him or her all sorts of nasty names, trot out just about every logical fallacy you can think of…
This is your idea of trying to engage them in a conversation?
Anyone who claims they would respond by “engaging in conversation” to a comment like that is either high or lying through their teeth. I imagine neither applies to you; it’s just that as far as you’re concerned, your snark and meanness is completely justified, probably even mild compared to what those America-hating liberals actually deserve. But I beg you to humor my seditious, intellectually flaccid liberal brain for just a minute, and consider your usual response to even the mildest of sarcasm in comments here on your site: dismissal and/or disproportionate reciprocation of snark. And your comment to Jesse was positively dripping with sneering insinuation and straw men. If that’s your usual M.O. on liberal blogs – and I have no reason to believe it isn’t – then again I ask, what the hell do you expect them to do? Throw flowers and hail you as a liberator?
This is your idea of trying to engage them in a conversation?
Uh, no. I’ve long ago given up on trying to engage Jesse in a conversation. Though I did try early on. Search their site if you don’t believe me.
Or don’t. I don’t care.
But I’ll tell you this: anyone who reads how Pandagon knows how “dissenters” are treated. And I’ll be damned if I’m cordial to such little twats. I engaged in a “conversation” by virtue of my post, in which I fairly represented Jesse’s argument in order to dispute it.
So stuff your faux outrage. Really. Christ, are you tiresome.
CITIZEN JOURNALIST says :
This is your idea of trying to engage them in a conversation?
He’s right, jeff. You’ve got to be respectful and nice to Jesse Taylor, in order to start a real CONVERSATION. because he’s ALL ABOUT DIALOGUE.
PS – while you’re at it, try to french kiss a strange pit bull, so we can compare reactions.
Cindy Sheehan for President!
Why she’d be able to mutter to herself all the fever swamp memes all day long. “It’s all for oil.”
If her son had been captured and not killed, would she be carrying on like this?
If her actions had been shown to her hypothetically captured son, how does she think he would take it?
I think there is a real problem with the media.
A Moral Hazard of a Free Press.
Jay Rosen’s Press Think covers some of this, there was quote (John Cole): “What do you want, a PR for Bush?”
What I want is balanced. What we have seems to be PR for Bush-hate, for terrorists.
PR for Bush minimizes US casualties; PR against Bush maximizes them.