Friday, May 04, 2007
Opinion
Harry Reid, the boob tube and war
The al-Qaida-fueled insurgency in Iraq may have beaten you but they haven’t beaten me.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV, right), answers questions at a press conference with fellow Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL, far left) and Charles Schumer (D-NY, left), after calling on President Bush to sign the Iraq war supplemental bill that would require troop pullout from Iraq beginning Oct. 1.
CREDIT: Chris Hondros/Getty Images |
By Eric Von Haessler
Now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has taken off the muzzle, done away with the niceties and declared to the world that “Iraq is lost,” it’s only fitting that I take this time to place my manners in a box long enough to let him and the rest of his constituency know something: The al-Qaida-fueled insurgency in Iraq may have beaten you but they haven’t beaten me. Obviously, if there are more of you than me, America will be defeated and forced to retreat in humiliation, but please speak for yourselves when showing cowardice on the world stage.
Reid, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and perhaps most of those reading this column have fallen for a brilliant strategy currently being employed by our enemies in Baghdad and elsewhere. The first tenet of the strategy holds that, since the American military can never be defeated on the battlefield, it must be defeated elsewhere. The second tenet is that the America psyche cannot handle long, drawn-out military campaigns and, therefore, U.S. forces are always susceptible to death by a thousand cuts.
This country’s manner of withdrawal from Vietnam and Somalia have provided a guidebook for any enemy we’ll face in the near future. It’s ironic that the most effective means available to the wildly non-democratic foes we face is the greatest guarantor of freedom in the free world: the free press. The Western press is set up to cover events and happenings. The radical elements we face have noticed that fire and mayhem attracts cameras and they’ve effectively supplied a steady stream of gruesome imagery to be dutifully covered by the roving reporters on scene.
The lesson of Vietnam has taught our enemies that the most important war is the war that plays out on television back in the United States. Given recent history, it is obvious that once the mainstream press turns against a war the American public comes around soon after. It is in the interests of our enemies to concentrate their energies almost solely on the television war while taking daily losses because they know they’re playing a waiting game—you can’t defeat our soldiers, but you can wait out the American people until their politicians call the troops home.
It really is a masterful strategy. If you can’t beat an army, just convince them to stop fighting and leave. Brilliant!
If the enemy is beating us it is because, up to now, its strategy has been better than ours. America won the war on the ground within a month and began losing the television war within 48 hours of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in central Baghdad.
Before there was an insurgency, there was immediate looting and other scenes of criminality beaming into American living rooms, inducing the first pangs of buyer’s remorse. Toss in a few beheading videos and prison scandals, and the TV pump was primed for serial imagery coming out of Iraq, imagery that has been programmed by the enemy all along.
It’s not that the media is traitorous or non-patriotic—it is simply being exploited. Indulge me while I lean against an example I’ve mentioned before: Let’s consider the local news phenomenon known as the “apartment complex fire.”
An apartment complex on fire will always lead the local newscast even though it will in no way affect the lives of 99.99 percent of the viewers who live in the same city. Only those who live in the complex ablaze or know someone who does will be affected. Yet it leads the program as the most important story simply because an apartment complex on fire makes for great video. It gets noticed and helps the station get ratings. Our enemies’ winning strategy is to provide a couple of events each week that are analogous to apartment complex fires to win the war on television.
Admittedly, it’s working, but that doesn’t mean we’re losing the real war—just that we’re losing the TV war. Unfortunately, that may end up meaning exactly the same thing.
Eric Von Haessler, formerly of the Regular Guys, is a frequent radio commentator in Atlanta.