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Best laid plans
Media and warfare
By: David K. Every
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2003-03-28
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 his war demonstrates what's wrong with our media. Not that they are malicious; just incompetent and arrogant. So they often run around pretending like they know what they are talking about, then demonstrating the opposite.
The best example of this is the whole "this war isn't going as planned" thread, along with the whole race to Baghdad stuff, or probably most of what we've been getting.
Here's the facts; our Military hates surprises. Surprises mean death, and they don't like that much, so the military plans. The military makes best case plans, middle case plans and worst case plans. They try to think out every possibility, and have contingency plans. They never want to say, "we didn't expect that", or "that was never in our plans".
They probably expect something towards the middle of all their plans; but when they start conflict they may spin the better case options (not wanting to demoralize or scare the troops or public unnecessarily). Still, they are generally pretty conservative, and don't go too optimistic. So just about everything is in their plans, and they are often fairly realistic (and can be pessimistic). They expect everything.
What kind of story do you get out of "things are going according to plans"? That's not very interesting copy. So our media tends to exaggerate every victory and setback. This kind of chicken-littlism, gets readers attention; and so they commercialize the news. "We decimate them in XXX", or "Tragedy and defeat at YYYY" make good headlines; the truth is probably far less dramatic. But the media is a clique, and once one agency starts a "scoop", the others flock to follow and not be left behind. So started the story about things "not going as well as planned", and so follow the bleating sheep.
The media predicted the first Iraq war would be a blood bath that would take years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. It lasted 45 days, and cost us more after the war than during, and fewer Soldiers than would have been lost in a holiday weekend at home. Last war had different objectives and thus used different means. So this war starts and the media predicts the ground war should last the few days that it did in the last time; based on their vast knowledge of military tactics, and despite the army taking more land, and securing more assets in a week than took a year of WWII, they are predicting this is not going according to plans.
Remember, the plans included many plans. Who expected the war to be ultra-short? The media and maybe the public because of the last war. (They forgot to count for a month of bombing before the ground war started). Who didn't? Probably the military.
The Military may not have dissuaded those beliefs, because you just don't know; and because the Iraqi's actually might have been smart and saved themselves and their people. We couldn't gauge how strong a control the evil regime had until we got in. Turns out there were more fanatic dead-enders (those so vested in the current regime that they're willing to go down with it), than the media or public thought, or military might have hoped.
So the war isn't going according to the media's plans, but that's not the same as the military plans. The military has demonstrated that their plans were to do everything that was unexpected. They've demonstrated that as our enemy, you can't predict what we will do. Ground war first, then air. Move in fast and leapfrog cities, then wait (and reload/rest). Bomb so accurately that they couldn't exploit lots of collateral damage and PR. Leave the people mostly alone and save as many lives as possible. Take Saddam out at his home first. Seize assets quickly and safely (like oil fields and air-bases). Sit outside a city and taunt the immature and unprofessional enemy into counter-attacking and exposing themselves. And so on.
War is complex, and plans have to adapt; but that's what our military does. But so far there are few true surprises, and most of the surprise is how stupid the enemy is, and how willing to die for such a lame cause. This works to our advantages, in that it helps us, and Darwin, weed the dumb, insane, and fanatical, out even quicker. So the average intelligence and compassion in humanity is going up slightly, each time one of these idiots gets himself killed. Maybe the peaceniks will go over there and use themselves as human shields, and the average intelligence of humanity will go up even quicker. Each death brings us closer to freeing the ones that are left. That's exactly according to plan.
We couldn't open the northern battle quickly because of Turkey and fly-over rights, etc., so we steamed the army around, and now they're coming up from the south anyways. While that wasn't "planned" (or best case plan), it was certainly an alternate plan or an adapted plan and something that was probably discussed long before the war started. So who's surprised? Probably not our military as much as the media, and our adaptability and flexibility is a surprise to the enemy and the world.
When there is good weather (no sandstorms), we use it to our advantage. When there are sandstorms or bad weather, we use that to our advantage. The Iraqi's figured we'd use major roads and go through cities, so we went around them and through the desert.
When they wait for us to attack, we get in position and annihilate them. When they "ambush" us, we act like professionals and systematically annihilate them. When they taunt us to attack, we may not. When they expect to rest, we make raids on various headquarters and take them out and capture them. This doesn't seem horribly off the chart with the military objectives, or timelines to me. This seems like exactly what the military does best.
Oh, we missed with a missile or two; who didn't expect that? Certainly the Military did. But the plan was to have demonstrate that we're going to extreme's not to cause collateral damage, which we've done, so that when there are misses, the people that whine look like the fools and hypocrites they are. Saddam and his troops are intentionally trying to get more civilians killed and assaulting the public, and we're intentionally not, and you're going to blame us? You can do that, but only at the cost of your own credibility.
Everything is leading to the same inevitable conclusion. The fanatics get to meet Allah quicker, and either Allah is on our side and supporting the 200:1 or 400:1 kill and capture ratio, or we are more mighty than Allah. Now I don't say that to mock their religion, or God; I'm serious. If you believe in God, and this is happening, then maybe it is happening for a reason. Something like maybe God/Allah doesn't like seeing people tortured by a corrupt and evil regime? That seems not only according to our Military's plan, but God's plan.
       
The media can do one of two things; it can either educate, or play to people's ignorance's. The former is much more difficult, costly and takes time. The latter is much easier and more profitable. I feel the media too often caters to the latter.
There are many complex issues going on. But you don't discuss complex issues in sound-bites or by furthering your left leaning agendas. You don't educate people by sensationalizing every event, or spinning things to be a good story. You don't do it by feeding on public fears, "this war could go on longer than expected".
I've watched the Arab media. I've watched the U.S. media. And I've watched in many mediums. I've also watched the press briefings and filtered through what information is really coming out. what we have is an Arab media that is using disinformation to foment hatred mixed with misinformation to their public; and our media which is following the same pattern, but patting itself on the back because it is slightly less biased than the Arab media. Oh yeah, big victory there. Sure our media is doing it for ratings, but so is theirs. What's the difference?
We are winning in that we are achieving our objectives; you don't get enough of that information anywhere. They say the first casualty of war is the truth; but I think that war is being fought by the media, and has been going on for quite some time.
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