Media & War by Proxy

The best way for America to wage war on terror in our media saturated modern age is by proxy - to get somebody else to do our fighting for us.
Whenever regular American forces go into battle they are subject to constant media coverage which limits their effectiveness. A prime example of this was the first battle of Falujah a couple of years back. Falujah is a small town in Iraq in 2003 a convey of American military contractors was ambushed there and four Americans were dragged from their vehicles, hanged and tortured to death by a lynch mob.
US Forces attacked the town in retaliation and were winning the battle. They were forced to withdraw because of media coverage mainly by Al Jarzeerah. American politicians back home feared the political repercussions that news footage of Americans destroying an Arab town would bring. A bunch of thugs were able to get away with the brutal murder of Americans because of the media spotlight.
We’ve seen this pattern before first in Vietnam where media coverage convinced the world that the US was waging war against a defenseless people and in Somalia where TV footage of American bodies being dragged through the streets convinced Bill Clinton to end an American military adventure.
Recent history proves that it is impossible for a democracy like the United States to wage war in the traditional way with large military forces because of media coverage. Everything the US military in the war zone does is put on camera which means soldiers are unable to get on with the dirty business of war. Anything that is the least bit offensive and most battlefield activities horrify a sane person, must not be allowed because it will have political repercussions.
The media’s coverage of the military is two faced, on hand it portrays the military as victims, Christ like heroes martyred on the cross of American foreign policy. On the other it shows them as bad guys, mindlessly focusing on every crime and misdeed they perpetuate often blowing them all out of proportion. Politicians back home live in fear of what will appear on the nation’s TV screens either American boys and girls dying horribly or American boys and girls doing something terrible to foreigners.
The only way the US can wage war under such circumstances is to find somebody other than the US military to fight its battles. The same media that mindlessly focuses on the activities of American forces completely ignores the behavior of foreign forces.
One problem is that the US military’s operations are played out before the TV cameras while the bad guys operate in the shadows. During the Vietnam War news about the Mai Lai Massacre was flashed around the world while the far more numerous atrocities of the Communists occurred out in the jungle far from the TV camera. In the present conflict in Iraq there are no embedded reporters with the insurgents but plenty of embedded journalists with the US military.
A prime example of this is the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, at Abu Ghraib American military personnel abused and humiliated Iraqi prisoners but didn’t actually hurt or killed them. Offensive pictures of this abuse led to a media frenzy, courts martials and the closing of Abu Ghraib.
So what happens to Iraqi prisoners taken by US forces since Abu Ghraib? Simple they are now turned over to the Iraqi government and placed in prisons operated by men who learned their trade under Saddam Hussein. Instead of being merely humiliated these prisoners are now regularly tortured, abused and probably murdered by the Iraqi government. We see no coverage of this in the international media because reporters don’t care what Iraqis do to each other.
A similar dynamic is at play at Guantanmo Bay the humans rights lobby and its cheerleaders in the media demand that the Git-Mo facility be shut down and the prisoners released. This would mean the prisoners would be returned to their own countries where they would doubtless be tortured and killed by their governments.
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prove that the media doesn’t care what happens to America’s enemies as long as the people doing it to them aren’t Americans or at least the US military. This means that the best way for America to wage war on terror is to use forces other than the US military because the media ignores their activities.
A similar dynamic was at play in the Cold War, in Vietnam US forces were unable to stop the advance of Communism largely because of excessive media coverage. In several other places including El Salvador, America was able to crush Communism by relying on local forces. These allies did the fighting and the dirty work and took the heat off the US military.
The usual collection of self proclaimed “peace” and “human rights” activists raised a few concerns about human rights abuses but their rantings and ravings made page three of the newspapers. Congress couldn’t be bothered to hold hearings or investigations, after all no voters kids were dying over there.
There are alternatives to the military including special operations forces, the CIA, local military and paramilitary forces, the forces of allied countries. and military contractors (mercenaries organized along corporate lines. This unfortunately involves creativity and out of the box thinking, things that our political leaders seem to be incapable of.
The US has to learn to fight wars using forces other than our military in the age of the media spotlight. Unfortunately the officers at the Pentagon and their allies in Congress need to justify huge military expenditures. To do this they have to send huge numbers of troops overseas and engage in massive military operations that make no sense. Massive military operations that attract huge amounts of media attention that makes it impossible for us to fight or win the war.