Re: Common sense will usually prevail

Post #37,052 by dmarker2 5/1/02 10:12:00 AM Reply	Re: Common sense will usually prevail We can argue what ever we like but I am sure we are both smart enough to realise that put together we are more likely to agree than disagree. Debating these topics in a semi-disconnected thread makes it challenging to see common ground. The biggest disadvantage we have in a such a debate is that we approaching this topic from distinctly different levels of life experience. One such difference is going to be our perspectives on the Vietnam war - your comment "The press does not do any harm in war zones. I keep seeing this claimed, but I recall that Vietnam had press all over the place. That didn't hamper our fighting." But this is the very basis for my statement that the US military got it right in Gulf after a complete press screw up in Vietnam. Having the press there the way they did is historically considered to be the wrong way to allow press into military operations, it was a disaster!!!. The consensus among military people I know is that it was so and only put right by the Gulf war. So your perspective has me wondering how old you were at the time & just what you actually recall. Anyone who sat thru the breakfast news reports on the early to late 1960s (I was in the Airforce at the time), showing bits of US soldiers being blown around the screen knows that the US military regard that early press coverage as the most damning that ever occured in US warfare. It turned a nation against what the US was doing. Now, it is very very easy right at this instant to switch from the issue of press coverage to the morality of the actions of the day & doing so will miss the point about how bad press can win or lose support for an unpalatable action. The vietnam war coverage was what created the US dread of dead US soldiers in other countries !!!. That is now reflected in the US military policy of 'we will never leave you behind' (bring you back dead or alive even if it costs more deaths). The US public was so tramatised by the death & destruction shown on prime time TV that it has to this day not fully recovered. US enemies know & understand this. Somalia TV warfare scenes rubbed everyone's noses in it. Also, that issue of trusting or not trusting a government is a personal issue - you cannot in anyway claim to speak for all Americans any more than I can. So the issue of if you trust the press more than your govt is purely a personal one and will vary a great deal depending on if your name is Timothy McVeigh or Ollie North. What I do believe is that if we were together faced with a real on the spot situation & had to make a choice - we are both smart enough that we could work one out & go with it. Again, these technical debates from the keyboards of our respective computers don't do justice to the realities. Cheers Doug
Post #37,094 by Ashton 5/1/02 4:29:12 PM 5/1/02 4:32:35 PM Reply	Perhaps your points illustrate a larger 'issue', better - the 'bad' press coverage of Vietnam - bad as seen by any military strategist - was the first ever! use of modern technology to bring home starkly a vision of war, counter to the Glory of Males Fighting for just plain Goodness. Simply look at British history, the Knights et al - for the model which was also the American Ideal... prior to Vietnam. And yes - I lived through that-all, as propagandized over the nightly Tee Vee: from the (reported, but never confirmed officially to my knowledge) JFK intention -- after the election, to wind-down our V. involvement. I know he was affected greatly (as well as we 'know' anything "reported" by others) by the Diem assassination. Some conspiracy theorists still believe that his death was Because - he planned for us to leave... Natch there is 0 closure even on JFK's demise. Just as there is not yet 'closure' on the trauma of What We Did in Vietnam -- and (especially) Why - for that-all was spun from before Day 1 and the spin has never ceased. But the bodies were NOT spinnable. (not that Viet. bodies were measured by the same Urgency! Natch. We ARE racists and xenophobes; that doesn't change in mere decades.) So taken altogether, it is no stretch to infer from above that: in the general case - whatever the military wants to do about 'reporting'- grates every time with the cliche (earned by its accuracy) The first casualty in War is Truth. Perhaps you can see why 'military expediency' is a plus or a minus - depending upon one's overview of homo sap and his repeated follies. This is not even about 'Patriotism' / One's Own Side -- but about the general case of our propensity to choose War over all lesser cimes we might have tried. As was mentioned just yesterday on an NPR redux: History never repeats itself. Man always does. Rest case, Ashton Edit: typos. Edited by Missing User 70 May 1, 2002, 04:32:35 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #37,123 by dmarker2 5/1/02 6:56:09 PM 5/1/02 9:07:31 PM Reply	Re: The real point I was attemting to make ... Is that to believe in 'truth' from the press misses the political reality that the press is manipulated. Arafat & his advisers have been attempting to manipulate opinion from long before the day the Palestinian youth were encouraged to go throw rocks at Israelis. The Israelis are attemting to manipulate the press as well and one way is to try to stop journalists from attending staged events. So if we were to have a serious debate about the press today we get right back to Chomsky's assertion that today's press is manipulated more than in prior history and is used to manufacture opinion. If we accept his position on the issue it may become clear that intimes of war and conflict there are now (and perhaps always were) two battles, 1) The military battles - fought with warriors & machines 2) The propaganda battles - fought with pens and papers (so to speak) So the position I am taking is that unfettered access to hot war zones is politically unrealistic. Cheers Doug Edit#1 - fixed typos - aaded words 'so to speak' Edited by dmarker2 May 1, 2002, 09:07:31 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #37,167 by Ashton 5/2/02 4:18:55 AM Reply	An insoluble dilemma, that.. (Part of the er "world of duality" ?) No argument that any war will be prosecuted more 'efficiently' if a complete blackout of all news - is achieved. (And as long as your Enigma variant remains unbroken) But these military wishes are always opposed by the concept of, "civilian control of the military" - and control is impossible without facts, not only about the (State's) motives -- but about their actions. Naturally re the latter - of course certain info must be delayed for obvious reasons. Modern techno however, makes this aim even harder to achieve. WE are The State! supposedly.. re 'unfettered access'? Of course not: fettered! (Some might suppose that, given enough information - no population with collective IQs in 3 figures: would want to wage war. I don't assert this (See James F. Burke's, Why Men Love War).) I don't believe there's a pat answer to this conflicting need of the citizens of a State VS the usual wargames requirements: surprise, propaganda, disinformation yada yada (Lao Tzu will do). So we will always have these debates, at least insofar as a State permits debate / succeeds in suppressing it for a time. Techno - brings home the contradictions more immediately and more starkly; I think that's an unstoppable trend. For better or worse. (Now a War on Evil... what can one say to such doggerel ???) Ashton PS - Noam certainly has excellent points re Manufacturing Consent; pity that he will also give 'support' to some fringe (hypothetical) propositions which undermine his credibility overall. {sigh} Statesmanship! not academic tour de force - seems to be what is in short supply. Whatever Statesmanship might mean anymore (?) I don't believe we begin to understand what 'democracy' might mean re 'warfare'.
Post #37,157 by dmarker2 5/2/02 12:35:54 AM Reply	Re: Interesting thought Just imagine if tv cameras & press were there to cover the gory detail of the Sept 11 attack results - the sight of women children & men unsuccesfully attempting to flee the inferno bodies crashing to the pavement people being burned alive the sight of heroic rescuers being crushed under tons of falling debris If this was then shown again and again on Arab TV - would they likely feel that what was happening was wrong ? somehow I kind of doubt it ! - I have awful images of them cheering each incident. Their own news people show all the above regularly but it was (or is) of Muslims being slaughtered in Bosnia, or Chenenya, or Kosovo or Palestine. Showing too much detail can only create trauma and pain and in many people a desire for revenge even if that revenge gets mis-directed to other innocents who will do as proxy targets. Sadly the christians in Indonesia are proving a 'soft' proxy target & and are paying a high price. Doug
Post #37,168 by Ashton 5/2/02 4:32:10 AM Reply	In fact there was such! - a French crew which had been photographing the daily life of a nearby Fire House. While the cameraman eschewed photographing the falling bodies.. closest he came was to describe roughly - what he would not photograph. Pix inside the main lobby of one of the Towers, dust, firefolk running down corridors etc. Sounds of bodies hitting the lobby roof were not so much audible - as evident in the expressions on faces of subjects. Still, this 'documentary' was much about the fortunes of those from that particulare Fire House - near-miraculously IIRC they lost no one! (though they had several hours of uncertainty about a couple of their members). Was shown on US TV 3?ish months ago. But that's not the sort of film you were talking about. No telling what That film's response would be - we have to hope that a humane response is universal; the spin would begin soon after - by those who spin. Ashton

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