July 11, 2007
How Goes the War? Posted by John Steele Gordon at 12:10 PM EST Alexander Burns, in his post on political realignment (to which I hope to respond soon), writes, “As the war in Iraq continues to fail . . .” Is that the case as of today, July 11, 2007, or have things begun to change for the better in Iraq at long last? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid certainly thinks it’s the case, and so does the New York Times editorial board, which last Sunday published one of the most morally and politically shameful editorials I have ever read. It called for immediate and total American withdrawal regardless of the political consequences for this country or the flesh-and-blood consequences for the Iraqi people. “There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide,” the Times admits without a trace of concern for the people who will die in that genocide. The Times columnist Tom Friedman agrees, writing today (behind a subscription wall) that “it will be one of the most morally ugly scenes you can imagine—no less than Darfur.” But is the war effort still failing, and is American defeat inevitable? There are a large number of people on the left who sincerely hope so, some of them running major newspapers and other media. But even The New York Times—perhaps through an editing error—has reported improvement in the situation on the ground, now that the “surge” has reached full strength and the new tactics devised by General David Petraeus are just now being fully implemented. Since I have zero respect for the New York Times editorial page, I actually wonder if the Times is trying to force defeat before the possibility of victory can be clearly demonstrated. Consider this: on Sunday, the Times editorial wrote, “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit. . . . Milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. . . . Whatever [President’s Bush’s] cause was, it is lost. . . . Keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse.” On the very same day, on the front page, the Times reported, “Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and American commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda. . . . The deal has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of the war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page today reports considerable progress now that the surge is up to full strength. I am hardly in a position to evaluate it, of course, but I recommend reading it, if only as an antidote to the mainstream media’s relentless see-no-American-successes-speak-no-American-successes drumbeat. That drumbeat, it seems to me, is Al Qaeda’s greatest success in this war. It has failed in all its on-the-ground objectives, but it has had great success manipulating the American media in ways designed to produce American defeat. A very interesting article on this exact subject can be found here. It is worth your time, and I would hope Fredric Smoler, far more of an expert on such matters than I, would comment on it. The Vietnam War was lost not on the ground but in the American media. The Tet Offensive was a military debacle for the Viet Cong on the ground but a huge success for it on CBS and the pages of The New York Times. The American military and government, it seems, has yet to learn the real lesson of Vietnam, which is that it is not enough to win the battle on the ground; it must be won in the media as well, or the war will be lost regardless. Our enemies, perhaps because they are so much weaker in conventional measures of military power, understand that. When will we?
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