'The Rest of the Story' in Iraq

[Gav]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

There is a female soldier serving in Iraq who regularly calls into a local radio station. It is interesting to hear her running the bovious gamut between emotions. Some days she seems depressed other days elated. She started a "Kicks for Kids" campaign to send shoes to children in Iraq.
http://www.emrn.com/HTML/addiemessage0.htm

This is a grass roots campaign that was started by a soldier.

Esskreemr - that's very interesting. I wish her well! Hope she gets the shoes she needs. This is the kind of thing that WILL win hearts and minds.

She's pretty as well!

[esskreemr]

Originally Posted by Gav

Esskreemr - that's very interesting. I wish her well! Hope she gets the shoes she needs. This is the kind of thing that WILL win hearts and minds.

She's pretty as well!

Yes, actually, it was interesting to put a face to the voice. I was pleasantly surprised.

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

There is a female soldier serving in Iraq who regularly calls into a local radio station. It is interesting to hear her running the bovious gamut between emotions. Some days she seems depressed other days elated. She started a "Kicks for Kids" campaign to send shoes to children in Iraq.
http://www.emrn.com/HTML/addiemessage0.htm

This is a grass roots campaign that was started by a soldier.

Ess, her work there was interesting and her site was good. I looked Addie up to understand what capacity she was there in - several times she referred to the military as if she was not a part of it - but found that she was a reservist, so her feelings of army connectedness probably wasn't felt as strong. She was very brave to do this project. I probably was a Godsend for her too, kept her focused on something good for her time spent.

I read her Wrap Up note - there was some interesting obsevations from this Army Sargant:

I will never forget that during my tour parents of twelve hundred men and women have answered their front door only to hear they will never see their son or daughter again. Their child is now a war hero, a symbol of freedom for millions of Americans and Iraqis. Their child voluntarily gave up his or her life so others may roam freely as they crouch in a foxhole or in a smothering Humvee; so others may sip their gourmet coffee as they sip polluted water from a canteen; so others may send their sons or daughters to school as they say goodbye to their children for a year or more; so that all of us may enjoy the God given gift of Freedom.

and

I wrote once that I believe this liberation was 'necessary'. Over the course of the year, my opinion has changed either due to my circumstances or because I got out from beneath the humanitarian cloud. I've gone back and forth so much on this issue believing and not believing; feeling angry, then feeling proud; feeling mislead by the administration, then feeling confident in the administration. I can no longer say exactly how I feel about the 'occupation/liberation' because it changes every day. I will always wonder what brought us to Iraq why this country posed such an imminent threat to the United States and why the situation has spiraled out of control under our watch. I don't think I will ever find peace with it.

[mrbiggs]

I'm not sure about this article. It seems to me that it was written by an individual soldier. This means that he has a first hand view of the war, but it also means that he is also limited by his own perspective.

Personally, I think both sides are right. On the one hand, the media is going to make any war into a loss, because that creates more coverage. On the other hand, no matter how much good we do, our soldiers are dying in Iraq, and the beath rate is not slowing down consistantly. There is no sign of a future government successfully coming into power. Only 2 days ago, 2 of the candidates for the Iraqi presidency were killed. How long do you think the new president will last?

So, in other words, both sides are right sometimes, and wrong others.

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by Soldier

Well, that is how one wins a war (so long as the politicians stay out of it).

Ummm.
So wars are won by body bag counts? If we kill everyone on the other side, then we win the war?

Go figure, throughout history and after all these years since time began, all the great men and women who studied, considered, formulated and inscribed, and practiced diplomacy and negiation, and compromise, and treatise to bring an end to wars were sadly mistaken.

Imagine now if Bush had just told the American people Soldier's plan for winning the war. "My Fellow Americans, today we are gonna invade Iraq, but I promise you, no dang politician (you know those people duly elected to represent the positions and view of you Americans citizens) will be meddlin' in this here action. We are gonna win this war, 'cause we are going to kill every last one of them Iraqis over there. The worl's gonna see our greatness when they count the bodies as we are walking tall back to the ranch. Yee-Haw!

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

It's interesting to hear the other side of the story. I would like to see more stories about the successful humanitarian operations in Iraq.

Unfortunately, this articles main premise strikes me as odd. He seems to relate the "good things happening in Iraq" to insurgent body counts. I find it somewhat disturbing.

I agree with Ess. This "other side" article was good - though the other side it presented, was a personal side "other side", not an objective "other side" to a reported news account. But these personal stories are what make up the lore of history and are every bit as important as the presumed objective reporting done by the press.

I did find it dismaying to hear that this man's complaint was that the traditional press wasn't focusing in on the kills made by the Americans. Hey, we lost seven, but we got fifty of them! So Yea! I think I understand how he feels about the way the media sensationalizes and why he would feel the need to justify their actions that way. It just set an eerie tone to his personal diatribe.

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by Gav

[sigh]

You seem to have taken that quite personally.

Neither you nor I know that that article is anything other than propaganda. Or for that matter anything other than the truth. What I was trying to point out to you was that your assertion that propaganda was new was wrong and, that the idea that the army doesn'y 'do' propaganda is also incorrect.

What I will say about that article is that it is clearly biased (very biased in fact). It has also come from a biased source and that makes me automatically suspicous.

No need to send me personal accounts. Mergs blog is enough for me. If I need accounts of any of the horrors that have gone in Iraq all I need to do is speak to the serving British soldiers that I know.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough.

I wasn't taking that personally; I understand completely what you mean about the bias - it's an officer speaking on the record to a source with a bias we've already seen. That's why I said I would go with personal accounts - people who don't have a bias, who aren't speaking to a news agency.

You may well have enough sources to satisfy yourself; I mean to find more of "the rest of the story" to present, not just to you.

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

There is a female soldier serving in Iraq who regularly calls into a local radio station. It is interesting to hear her running the bovious gamut between emotions. Some days she seems depressed other days elated. She started a "Kicks for Kids" campaign to send shoes to children in Iraq.
http://www.emrn.com/HTML/addiemessage0.htm

This is a grass roots campaign that was started by a soldier.

..."bivious", being two-sided/two ways, or "obvious"? I tried to look up "bovious", but there was no such word; either of the other two would seem to fit. In any case, I like the word bivious. Sorry, just a random aside.

And yes, there are many such campaigns being run both by those deployed, and several stateside groups. It's great to hear about.

Nice signature, by the way.

[Gav]

Originally Posted by Soldier

Sorry I wasn't clear enough.

I wasn't taking that personally; I understand completely what you mean about the bias - it's an officer speaking on the record to a source with a bias we've already seen. That's why I said I would go with personal accounts - people who don't have a bias, who aren't speaking to a news agency.

You may well have enough sources to satisfy yourself; I mean to find more of "the rest of the story" to present, not just to you.

Ahh point taken. That's all cleared up nicely then.

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by Maeve_Mari

Ummm.
So wars are won by body bag counts? If we kill everyone on the other side, then we win the war?

Go figure, throughout history and after all these years since time began, all the great men and women who studied, considered, formulated and inscribed, and practiced diplomacy and negiation, and compromise, and treatise to bring an end to wars were sadly mistaken.

Imagine now if Bush had just told the American people Soldier's plan for winning the war. "My Fellow Americans, today we are gonna invade Iraq, but I promise you, no dang politician (you know those people duly elected to represent the positions and view of you Americans citizens) will be meddlin' in this here action. We are gonna win this war, 'cause we are going to kill every last one of them Iraqis over there. The worl's gonna see our greatness when they count the bodies as we are walking tall back to the ranch. Yee-Haw!

Ai...

No, that is not what I meant. No, it is not by any means an all-inclusive statement.

First, compromise and treatise may be able to solve some world problems - or end wars - but they will never win wars.

Second, being ahead on body bags does not necessarily mean victory. Nor is it the path to victory. But it certainly does help when the guys trying to kill you...are dying.

The comment about the politicians was a caveat concerning Vietnam - where we won every single battle, never lost ground (gave it back, but never lost it), and were ahead in the body count...yet lost the war.

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by Maeve_Mari

I agree with Ess. This "other side" article was good - though the other side it presented, was a personal side "other side", not an objective "other side" to a reported news account. But these personal stories are what make up the lore of history and are every bit as important as the presumed objective reporting done by the press.

I did find it dismaying to hear that this man's complaint was that the traditional press wasn't focusing in on the kills made by the Americans. Hey, we lost seven, but we got fifty of them! So Yea! I think I understand how he feels about the way the media sensationalizes and why he would feel the need to justify their actions that way. It just set an eerie tone to his personal diatribe.

Welcome to our world.

[Insipiens]

propaganda is more about use than content: good (i.e. successful) propaganda will always be based on truthful content - just usually one-sided content.

I find that the media focus in the UK is definitely one-sided, although probably from mixed motives - it makes "better" news as well as supporting the essential liberal leftish urbanised view of the world that most of our news reporting on TV and Radio (newspapers are different ) thrive on and have done particularly in relation to Iraq.

[scrapinpeg]

Originally Posted by Gav

Cheers Scrapningpeg! It's been a while since I read much military philosophy - it was an interest of mine in my early twenties.

One of my favorites is B.H. Liddell Hart.

[Larrison]

Two comments --

Propaganda, or its use in war, has traditionally been lumped under "psychological warfare", which is an established branch of warfare. Most recently I've seen it included under "Information Operations" or "InfoOps" which is a more inclusive branch of direct military operations, but includes the control of information used by your opponent.

For example, its been published that the US military used the media in their operations going into Fallujah. They gave a press conference and the briefing officer let it slip, they were going in in about 24 hours. Needless to say, the press published this everywhere. However, the military had put a lot of reconn assets in place figuring the bad guys in the town were going to set up a lot of booby traps and car bombs to take out troops as they went down the streets. So they watched and tracked all the cars in Fallujah. After waiting for 3 days (not the 24 hours!), they figured any car that hadn't moved in that time was a good probability it was a booby trap, and marked them to be taken out before anyone got near them. The story says that around 80-90 % of the cars they hit and marked exploded with large secondary explosions -- they were boobytrapped. This was a successful use of InfoOps, although the press was irate they were used in such.

Second point is regarding the press. The free press is one of the key bastions of a free democracy I think -- and we have to deal with it for good or bad. What I don't like is the reduction of the myraid of independent voices into a few "corporatized" news channels, where we don't get independent reporting and analysis, but instead get what the corporations think is important and the "Party line" as determined by a small group of editors and writers and producers instead of independent voices. Which is why I try to seek out alternative voices for information and analysis, even if I don't agree with their politics or biases -- since they usually give me a new way to look at something. The information content is there, but the signal to noise ratio is less.

[Welted 24/7]

One of my problems with this war is that we really aren't fighting an army. They keep calling them "insurgents", who are pretty much people pissed off at America. That kind of force can just replenish itself every time they lose someone. So every time the US forces "strike a major blow", as he put it, it can be repaired without having to conduct a draft. These are people who want us to get the hell out of their country, and they won't stop until they're all dead or until we leave. Since the latter obviously is not happening anytime soon...

[achilleus]

Our Tortured Language of War
by Michael Keane, Michael Keane is the author of the Dictionary of Modern Strategy and Tactics, which will be published by the Naval Institute Press. He lectures at USC's Marshall School of Business.

Words go to war as surely as soldiers do. They can be used to inspire troops, strike fear into the heart of the enemy or persuade neutral parties. "You know what words can do to soldiers," Napoleon once wrote to one of his generals. And since 9/11, language has been a central battlefield in the global war on terrorism.

The recent confirmation hearings for Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush's attorney general nominee, highlighted the uses and abuses of words in war. Gonzales was asked to explain a Justice Department memo, addressed to him, which said torture "covers only extreme acts" involving pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." Before any prisoners were abused at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, the definition of torture had to be contorted.

Immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Department of Defense designated the military response as "Operation Infinite Justice." Muslim groups protested, saying that Islam teaches that Allah alone can provide "infinite justice." The military campaign was quickly renamed "Operation Enduring Freedom." Similarly, when Bush described the war on terrorism as "a crusade," he came under criticism because of the evocation of medieval wars between Christendom and the Islamic world. He dropped the term.

And there are the changing names for the enemy in Iraq. U.S. military spokesmen first referred to them as "dead-enders" or "Baathist holdouts." When the insurgency turned out to be undeniably widespread and well organized, its members were "former regime loyalists." Then, when it was pointed out that "loyalty" generally has a positive connotation, the term mutated to "former regime elements."

Official Pentagon news releases continue to avoid the more neutral "guerrilla" or "militant" in favor of "terrorist" and "anti-Iraq forces." Last summer, when the Pentagon insisted that its quick victory over Iraq's conventional forces was not deteriorating into a guerrilla war, a reporter confronted Donald Rumsfeld with the Defense Department's own definition of the term — "Military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces."

Rumsfeld stubbornly insisted that "guerrilla war" was not an appropriate description. He would later rush to a dictionary to defend his own use of the word "slog" in a memo on Iraq. He cited the obscure meaning "to hit or strike hard" rather than the more accepted "hard, dogged march or tramp."

The careful selection of words in war is almost always a calculated attempt to manipulate perceptions. Whether an act of violence is called a "suicide bombing" or a "homicide bombing" depends more on the politics of the speaker than on any sincere attempt to describe objective reality. Even when the language of war is mechanical or colorless it may be deliberate, an attempt to shield both civilians and soldiers from the horrors of modern conflict.

"Battles are won through the ability of men to express concrete ideas in clear and unmistakable language," concluded Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall, who studied soldiers in combat in World War II. Before the coalition's recent attack on enemy forces in Fallouja, the American commander there changed the rules of engagement from "capture or kill" to "kill or capture." He sought to communicate to his troops that they were shifting to the offensive and to instill the aggressive posture needed for success in combat.

Every conflict spawns its own vocabulary. World War I produced "tank," "dog tag" and "doughboy." The Cold War could have filled a dictionary with terms such as "mutually assured destruction." The purported New World Order following the demise of the Soviet Union yielded "hyperpower," "military operations other than war" and "ethnic cleansing."

Like a verbal Rorschach inkblot, words come to be inescapably associated with a particular conflict: "Body count," "quagmire" and "search and destroy" immediately evoke the Vietnam War. The war in Iraq has long since entered the language, with "shock and awe," "IEDs" and "weapons of mass destruction."

Our military commanders and political leaders must be careful that in using language to deceive the enemy, to propagandize or to persuade, they do not obscure their own thinking. That is what appears to have happened with the Justice Department's twisting of the definition of torture.

Language is a powerful weapon, but like friendly fire, it can lead to self-inflicted wounds. As the French playwright Jean Anouilh warned, "Propaganda is a soft weapon: Hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way."

[Rogue]

Originally Posted by esskreemr

(snip) He seems to relate the "good things happening in Iraq" to insurgent body counts. I find it somewhat disturbing.

I think his point was that the western press made a big deal about the 7 (I think) casualties but ignored the enemy losses. Reporting both side’s losses IMO, would put the battle in perspective. Just focusing on our losses alone can only leave the impression that we are losing.

Originally Posted by Gav

What I will say about that article is that it is clearly biased (very biased in fact). It has also come from a biased source and that makes me automatically suspicous.

Shall we give less credence to your link because it is the “New Yorker,” a liberal publication?

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

I'm not sure about this article. It seems to me that it was written by an individual soldier. This means that he has a first hand view of the war, but it also means that he is also limited by his own perspective.

Personally, I think both sides are right. On the one hand, the media is going to make any war into a loss, because that creates more coverage. On the other hand, no matter how much good we do, our soldiers are dying in Iraq, and the beath rate is not slowing down consistantly. There is no sign of a future government successfully coming into power. Only 2 days ago, 2 of the candidates for the Iraqi presidency were killed. How long do you think the new president will last?

So, in other words, both sides are right sometimes, and wrong others.

This soldier is a Lieutenant Colonel not an enlisted man. He has a bit larger view of the big picture.

I also think his point was that to be properly informed we should hear the good with the bad. Not just the bad.


It’s interesting that some of you who generally/specifically appose the war in other post began referring to this article as propaganda or biased.
When you here the reports of how terrible things are going, the deaths we are suffering, etc., etc., with out hearing anything good, do you use the same amount of skepticism while filtering that data? Or, since bad news reinforces, in some degree, your opinion, do you accept it without question as “objective?”

[L.O.A.S.]

Originally Posted by achilleus

[size=4]
Language is a powerful weapon, but like friendly fire, it can lead to self-inflicted wounds. As the French playwright Jean Anouilh warned, "Propaganda is a soft weapon: Hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way."

Someone please explain the above statement to me.