Winning the War, Losing the (Propaganda) War

Hot Air has Video: U.S. troops on Kerry, the media, and Iraq. I saw this last night, and it was wonderful. I wish the whole country could hear these guys and read what they’re writing on the milblogs. The public opinion polls would change. The media is winning the propaganda war because the government is not fighting back.

There has never been a concerted effort by the government to get the truth about the war out there. Bloggers, especially milbloggers, have made a huge difference, but they typically only reach people who already don’t trust the media. We need some way to let people like my mother, who watches Katie Couric, reads the front page and the living section of the paper, and considers herself well informed, know the truth about what’s going on in Iraq. The public opinion polls are garbage, because most of those people, much like incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, haven’t got a clue what’s going on.

Oh, they think they know. That’s the problem. They never hear things like only 2,931 troops have died in Iraq so far. Compare that to the 16,885 people in the U.S. who died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes just in 2005. Does that mean the loss of the 2,931 troops is not a tragedy? Of course it is, but let’s keep it in perspective. It’s perfectly normal that soldiers in a war zone are killed. The oddity, and the miracle, is that so few have died. That is an amazing story, should anyone care to report it. The Korean War, which lasted only three years, cost 54,246 service members their lives. We should be celebrating that not even three thousand troops have died. As one soldier writes,

All right, I’ve had enough. I am tired of reading distorted and grossly exaggerated stories from major news organizations about the “failures” in the war in Iraq. “The most trusted name in news” and a long list of others continue to misrepresent the scale of events in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a fraction of the events in Iraq and, more often than not, the events they cover are only negative. The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq. The result is a further erosion of international support for the United States’ efforts there, and a strengthening of the insurgents’ resolve and recruiting efforts while weakening our own. Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy.

It’s a safe bet Reyes, along with the general public, doesn’t know anything about Jamil Hussein, fauxtographs, or the many times the media has been caught pimping enemy propaganda, whether knowingly or unknowingly. But even if it has been unknowingly, there comes a point when the media can no longer claim ignorance of what they’re doing and what the effects are. We are far past that point. If the government – if President Bush – is serious about winning, he’d better include a strategy for dealing with the media. Had he done so before the election, we’d still have a majority. But the cost of letting most of the country continue to drift in ignorance on the war on terror is far beyond the political, and it’s time to deal with it before it’s too late.