Michael Novak has a fascinating article in The Weekly Standard which looks at what an Islamic terrorist would say he has learned about defeating the United States from his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Novak writes, the key battlefield in today’s wars is not on the ground, but in the minds of the people. And the minds of the people are affected by the media. If the media turns against you, or if the picture presented by the media is unwaveringly negative, it is very difficult to lose the battle.
Today, in any battle fought in the minds of the American people, the United States seems to start with two disadvantages. First, the picture presented by the American media will focus on failure and malfeasance (at least if the war or battle is under a Republican President). In Iraq the stories in the media have been consistently negative. Shortly before Albert R. Hunt retired from The Wall Street Journal, he predicted support for the Iraq war would be bolstered by discoveries of the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein (The Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2003). But instead of reporting those stories, the media has focused on the misdeeds of a few American soldiers.
Even today, instead of reporting how hard it is to stop a small number of fanatic terrorists from committing their daily acts of highly visible terrorism, the media focuses on these acts of terrorism as proof, or at least evidence, that Iraq is ungovernable and our mission is a failure. While it would be fair to report both sides, the media only reports the latter.
Similarly, instead of reporting that it takes years, not just months, to train and develop army officers, the media focuses on the problems of the Iraqi army. Soldiers can be trained in a relatively short time, but officers cannot. The media, however, does not tell us that.
But it is not just the media. Our second disadvantage is that so many people, especially upper middle class ("UMC") liberals who live on the coasts (or think like those who do), do not believe in the United States any more. Just as the media claims that they must be objective reporters before they are Americans, the coastal UMC liberals seem to view themselves as citizens of the world before they are citizens of the United States.
Their daily newspaper is The New York Times. Their governing body seems more the United Nations than the House and Senate. Kofi Annan is trusted ahead of George Bush, and the International Court in the Hague beats the Supreme Court (or at least Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas). And in our schools, the history books have no heroes, just varying degrees of self-interested hypocrites.
This world view of the coastal UMC liberals, combined with the negative reporting in a media which is itself largely composed of coastal UMC liberals, results in a battlefield tilted against the United States. Sometimes the other side does things so obviously bad (such as the attacks on September 11) that, for a time, the coastal UMC liberals support the United States, but with time the horror fades and the natural view of things returns.
Defeating our enemies on this battlefield is not easy, but knowing our enemy and the battlefield upon which we must fight, provides some guidelines. First, perception is important. This means that, while things such as Guantanamo and certain interrogation techniques might be right and legal, the perception problems they cause must be taken into consideration in deciding what we should do about them.
Second, even though the media may seem to be (and may actually be) unfair, they cannot be ignored. Even though it is unfair to have to do so, and even though it makes the task harder, we must go the extra mile in terms of public relations to get our story out. We must bend over backwards to help the media do its job. And when they do not do it right, we just have to try harder.
Third, we have to constantly restate our case and reaffirm the rightness of what we are doing. In doing so, we must speak in a language that appeals not only to those who are on our side, but also to those who are not. While we may not be able to convince them, we must continue to try. (Tony Blair does this as well as it can be done, which shows how very hard it is.)
Finally, even though many people will not be convinced and will not support what must be done, no matter how right we are or how hard we try to convince them, we must continue to do what is right.
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