Tuesday, November 11, 2003

While We're On That Subject...





Brendan Miniter has the story I've been waiting for, that of our military successes in Iraq since the occupation began. Ever since the drip-drip-drip of daily U.S. casualties began in April, I've wondered why we fold at home aren't getting any info on what our boys are doing in response to the terrorist. Guerrillas depend on a public reputation for invincibility to change public opinion to their favor; they do this by attacking with force at the weakest points of the enemy's forces. As the news has come pouring in, I've begun to wonder whether this wasn't happening to us. Miniter's story suggests an entirely different picture: not just good news in the form of Iraq reconstructing and Iraqis becoming tolerant if not appreciative of American rule, but of our soldiers fighting the bad guys and killing them. Being as how knocking down the American public's confidence in the success of the mission is the Baathist's only hope of victory (just as it was Ho Chi Minh's), one has to wonder why the Pentagon isn't getting stories of our battlefield success out more?


I suspect that part of the problem is the reluctance of the military to start putting out that grim catspaw of the left, Vietnam's infamous "body count." No, we shouldn't exactly be celebrating the deaths of our fellow man, bloodthirsty fascist though he be. But niether should we give to the American public or the world at large the impression that our soldiers do nothing but walk around Fallujah with bulls-eyes on their chests while the guys shooting at them merely slink away into the crowd, laughing. If the nature of guerrilla warfare is partly political, so must be the response to it.

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