According to the right, we lost in Vietnam because the media didn’t cover-up the My Lai murders. Clearly, the press doing their job - reporting on things happening - is clearly contributing to Iraq’s slide into a debacle. The lack of war planning on the behalf of the Commander-In-Chief (not to mention the stupid justification for the war itself) clearly are not as fault. Clearly Dan Rather’s hand of fury is at play here.
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Maybe, just maybe, Mai Lai (and Haditha) should be reported on in context, that the US has 2 significant instances of military misconduct (w/ Abu Gharib) in 3 years while our opponents can’t go 3 hours without committing a Geneva Convention violation.
That is true on a technical level.
But SaveFarris, why do you set the bar so low?
This is America. Ideally there should be NO instances like Haditha.
America: Not As Bad As Terrorists just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
Find me a counterinsurgency campaign, anywhere, that doesn’t end up committing atrocities. It’s the nature of the beast. We can try to follow the rules, and we almost always do, but the amorality of guerrilla warfare can suck in even the most disciplined soldier. Spend some time in the villages of Anbar and it’s likely you would see the entire civilian population as the enemy. Only massive clearances and deportations will clean up Anbar. I’m thinking of Order Number 11 in the US Civil War, or the concentration camps in Cuba during the 1895-98 war. Counterinsurgency is brutal. I’m not advocating these solutions because I’m not sure it’s morally worthwhile to “win” Anbar, considering the costs. But if we are “serious” about “winning in Iraq,” then we need much more drastic solutions. And those will involve wholesale displacement of the civilian population.
We lost Vietnam because the Viet Cong were clever enough to do their dirty work away from American TV cameras. The VC committed Mai Lai-scale atrocities weekly, but they did it under cover of darkness and used random murders to scare civilians into cooperating with them.
On the other hand, whenever the South Vietnamese and Americans went looking for Viet Cong and clumsily raided a village or mistakenly attacked civilians, American TV cameras were there to record it all.
And when the networks in New York got the footage, it was given its own sensationalized context: “My God! All we’re doing over there is burning homes and attacking civilians!!”
We completely failed to effectively communicate the savagery of the VC. Even visual imagery didn’t help, because film of American troops mowing down the jungle with machine gun fire made much better television than pictures of the dead bodies that the VC left behind.
I believe that this sort of journalism is still alive today. Compare the reluctance of the mainstream networks to show video from 9/11 or to air videos of terrorists sawing people’s heads off, with the eagerness of those same networks to show the Abu Graib photos or air allegations of abuse at Gitmo.
It’s not about propaganda or “cover-ups.” It’s about telling both sides of the story fairly.
ideally children shouldn’t die of starvation, puppies should never get run over, and there should be tree that just grows money….
Yea, as long as there are republicans in office, the “bar” is officially set for “Perfection”……
This is why no one serious listens to leftists…
SaveFarris-
You’re right. I’ll bet anyone right now that during the sensationalizing of these trials (during election season no less!) we will see next to nothing about the dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of Marines and soldiers who have been wounded in Iraq because they were left vulnerable to terrorists after being ordered to hold their fire because civilians were present.
Sundown-
Unfortunately Marines are human beings, not ideals. And human beings snap under stress and do otherwise unthinkable things.
Terrorists like Al Qaeda prey on civilians and use them for cover specifically to entice our troops to fire on civilians. They know that if we kill civilians (even accidentally), every good thing accomplished by our military will be forgotten. And they know that we are the only party that the media will hold accountable to the standards of the Geneva Conventions. The Viet Cong parlayed this into a winning strategy thirty-odd years ago, and Al Qaeda have been good students.
Until we find a way to make ourselves superhuman, there will always be someone who fails under pressure. Google “un peacekeeper child prostitution” for a prime example.
“Yea, as long as there are republicans in office, the bar is officially set for Perfection & & ”
When US marines kill a pregnant woman at a check point that is a regrettable accident. When we learn that US marines may have killed 24 innocent civilians as retribution, is it too much to ask that we accept a zero tolerance level for murder? Apparently it is for idiots like pedro.