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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! July 31, 2005 PerceptionsBy GreyhawkThis story may be worth a chuckle - but it's just one illustration of the huge disconnect between the US military and the American press. That sort of rigid, misinformed belief in stereotypes is just one symptom of a larger disease - other manifestations include outright hostility and contempt. Glenn Reynolds on press negativity about Iraq. Follow the various links and you'll encounter Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau chief, Hannah Allam: "Mr. Yost could have come with me today as I visited one of my own military buddies, who like most officers doesn't leave the protected Green Zone compound except by helicopter or massive convoy. The Army official picked me up in his air-conditioned Explorer, took me to Burger King for lunch and showed me photos of the family he misses so terribly. The official is a great guy, and like so many other soldiers, it's not politics that blind him from seeing the real Iraq.That's an interesting argument - the military officers in the Green Zone have no idea what's going on in Iraq. One would think that with all the balanced press coverage they wouldn't need to venture out from their protective walls to learn about the crushing defeat of the US military there. USA Today, for instance, presents an exhaustive, page-one examination of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment - a group that the author indicates is all but defeated by the Iraqi insurgency. Their "...patriotic fervor now seems spent". They are "angry to be back" in Iraq. "Evidence of victory is scant" "they just want to go home" "Their loved ones suffer with them." Their patrols are "dark and nightmarish" (and are actually compared to a Disneyland ride in the story). As with all such "news reports" from Iraq, there are no direct quotes from any Marine supporting the overall tone of the piece - in fact there are no positive notes whatsoever. We must take the author's word for it: these Marines have been beaten. Badly. They are just barely keeping a tenuous grip on their own humanity. The Marines may have a different perspective - but it doesn't appear here. Meanwhile, the Washington Post, echoing Allam, takes a look at the stinking, festering hell-hole that is Baghdad, and compares it with the view from the military officers in the Green Zone: On the city's streets, the daily reality involves death, random violence and routine deprivations for people who are beyond anger. But a different view has been presented in the Green Zone, the concrete-barricaded headquarters for U.S. troops, diplomats and contractors, and the interim Iraqi government. There, the situation is described as progressing toward a gradual handover from U.S. forces to Iraqi control.Here's a quick look back at some other recent Mudville posts on the emerging themes in curernt press coverage of the military. The mercenary military is increasingly distant from American society. Closing where we began, here's Michael Fumento: Yost was right; media coverage on the war is terribly slanted ? such that it may threaten our ability to win.Of course, that's just his opinion. (Background on the Yost brouhaha here. Must-read if you aren't familiar with the story.) Posted by Greyhawk / July 31, 2005 6:16 PM | Permalink 6 TrackBacks....a disproportionate burden of the casualties in the war on terror. That is what the headlines should read, but... Read More So, it appears the "skeptics" of this war have been right a lot more than the administration. This leads one to be very skeptical of future statements by the administration. With a track record like that, I definitely do not believe the Government prop... Read More I never took a class from Professor Kennedy while at Stanford. Perhaps I'll change that if I ever go back. But for now, to keep my essay writing skilz sharp, I thought I'd edit his recent op-ed piece in the... Read More On the milblog "The Mudville Gazette" (if you don't know what milbogs are, go back to playing with your fingerpaints) Greyhawk looks at the different perceptions of Iraq. While the soldiers seem to think they are making a difference, the... Read More Counter-guerilla cascades; Iraqi unemployment, economic growth; Zakaria on talks with Ba'athists; Talks Does al-Sadr own the Basra police?; Iraq & Syria; Algeria & Algeria; JAG promotion questioned; Strategy review; PA's idiot LtG; Over There underwhel... Read More Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Joel Gaines and Andrew Olmsted are takin... Read More 8 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Unfortunatly you have people repeating over and over and perception is reality when it is not. Reality is reality.
Hillary sucks!
Somehow I just do not buy this argument. All the journalists in the United States got together and decided to lie about Iraq or only report the "bad" things. This does not pass the common sense test.
I would also say that there is a strong media reporting the good things in Iraq. Talk radio is dominated by this and FOX news is fast becoming the most watched news program (if you believe them). Further, even if the news media is completely biased (Of course, it is possible what they are reporting is true) it apparently had little effect on the populace given how the last election went. So, either it is not biased or most of the Country is discounting it so it does not matter anyway.
I would say that the military and the Bush administration have a part to play in this. They are so secretive and refuse to engage the press in meaningful dialogue (i.e., when Bush was asked if he made any mistakes the only one he could come up with is that he made some bad appointments - apparently a reference to Powell). Therefore, the press is left to investigate on their own and come to their own conclusions.
Finally, the biggest issue is that Bush led the Country into a set of expectations that at every pass have been wrong. Therefore, the press is naturally skeptical... thank God. The WMDs were not there, Rumsfeld said the war would take 8 months, Wolfowitz said they would need "100,000 troops tops", Rumsfeld said we would be "welcome as liberators", all of which has turned out to be wrong.
So, it appears the "skeptics" of this war have been right a lot more than the administration. I side with the proven winners... the skeptics.
If you want to find the last bastion of prejudice, stereotyping, and close-mindedness in the USA, take a look at the news media. It isn't just the military that's been subjected to their bias, but also ethnic minorities, women, the mentally ill, people over 40, and middle-class & rich Republicans (not rich Democrats, as long as they contribute generously to the party).
Considering the amount of dishonest quoting I've seen by the "skeptical" media, I'd like to see links to transcripts of the entire interview where Rumsfeld said the war would last 8 months, including the questions being posed (since your Command TOC link didn't have that) and that we'd be greeted as liberators. (Oh, and you might want to make up your mind as to who said that: Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld.)
For one thing, the invasion lasted barely two months and the cleanup/rebuilding process has been happening since. I guess it's easier to redefine that as the entire war so you can gleefully claim Rumsfeld was wrong or lying or whatever.
For another: I distinctly recall our troops being welcomed by some of the Iraqis as liberators. Oops, guess someone's trying to redefine that claim as ALL Iraqis so they can again jump up and down in glee and proclaim defeat. Because you support the troops! (As poor downtrodden victims of the evil Shrub's machinations... but you support them!)
Quick, throw out more labels like "conservative" and "right-wing" or "neocon" and so on. It might scare people to your side. Oh, yeah. Skeptics always win: when they're wrong, they get all quiet and get incredibly loud when they can claim they're right.
It would be nice to put together a list of sites that have "decent" reporting of what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For instance, I absolutely LOVE the writing of Michael Yon at www.michaelyon.blogspot.com
Got any other favorite sites that you know of that is blogging on Ira1 and Afghanistan?
Fumento writes that he nearly lost his life in an ambush and came back from Iraq with a colostomy bag, and noted that civilians could only travel from the airport into Baghdad "in a vehicle that's so heavily armored it would take a nuclear improvised explosive to stop it" -- this in a column about how the press is ignoring the good news. The disconnect makes my head spin.
Oh yeah, the situation in Iraq is so "good" that every time any politician makes a visit it is always a "surprise visit" arriving before dawn and almost always staying within the Green Zone and have to take a helicopter from the Green Zone to the airport because the airport road is closed due to the military being unable to control it! It's so "good" in Baghdad raw sewage is flowing in the streets (and I don't mean the American "soldiers"). It's so "stable" average Iraqis are afraid to go out at night. They are doing so "well" the puppet government has had to institute gas rationing. Think about that for a moment: the world's second-largest oil producer and it has miles-long lines of cars every day waiting to get gas??!! When Iraq's consumption is but a very tiny fraction of it's production and they can't even get that amount easily? The situation in Iraq is so "good" that they have yet to show in any news medium a map showing which areas are solidly under Rebel control, which are heavily contested and which are under U.S. "control". They DO however admit occasionally that certain towns like Ramadi and Haditha they know are brimming with Rebels and yet the occupier has too little strength to be able to assult those two towns. Notice how they make almost daily pinprick "operations" that accomplish little or nothing save bucking up the morale of the average walnut-size-brained American at home. Operation "Dagger", Operation "Lightning", Operation "Thunder", Operation "Ivy Cyclone", ad nauseum. What has any of this accomplished in military terms? Nothing. Every day the Rebel forces get stronger. Notice THEY aren't suffering from a recruitment problem. Every day the tired, worn-out, gunshy occupying forces get weaker. For every Rebel they kill, five more are inspired to join to avenge him; for every American that the Rebels kill, probably an equal number of Americans decide to not join the military. Every door the occupier kicks down he alienates more Iraqis and is that much further from winning. As it is, the average Iraqi realizes he has a puppet "government" that does not speak for him and also loathes the occupier, wanting them to leave AND knows Iraq is being raped of its resources daily by said occupier. The reason why it "appears that no end is in sight" is because there ISN'T any end in sight except the occupier withdrawing with his tail between his legs like in Vietnam or Beirut or Somalia... The truth is the situation in Iraq (from the standpoint of the occupier) is rapidly deteriorating. Funny how most Americans were in favor of this war when it was being sold to them as cheap and easy and bloodless (for the U.S.) but once it becomes a REAL fight the big bad bully America starts to whimper and whine about the other side fighting back, suddenly not wanting any part of a TWO-sided bloodletting.