War and Media

Articles

Jonathan Robbins

War and Media
July 10, 2003

Morale is crucial for success. It is critical on the frontlines and on the homefront. Media coverage of war changed dramatically during Vietnam. Daily casualty reports became the norm. Footage from battle was broadcast regularly on the evening news. The horrors of war went straight from the battlefield to nearly every American living room. Morale on the homefront suffered enormously, which led to morale on the frontlines to suffer as well. Aside from bullets, blood, and heartache, few comparisons can be drawn between World War 2 and Vietnam, about as many as can be drawn between Vietnam and Gulf War 2.

War is hell. This is no secret, nor, I suspect, has it ever been. During World War 2 people would flood to the cinemas to see the weekly updates put together by the government. They didn't show the blood, guts, and horrors that our troops were facing. Instead, they told of our progress, accompanied by film of our boys proudly marching through the most recently conquered towns and cities. Deep down though, people surely had an idea of what their fathers, sons, and brothers were facing. Accounts from the Great War left little ignorance about the horrors of war. Propaganda? Maybe. Harmful? Quite the contrary. People left those cinemas feeling good about our troops and the beating they were dealing out to Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan. Feeling good is hard to do in times of war, especially for the troops in those films.

Gulf War 2 was undoubtedly the greatest display of military domination the world has ever seen. When the raw footage of the war makes its way into documentaries, jaws will drop. While World War 2 coverage, at the time, may not have been exactly accurate, neither is the 24-hour cablenews coverage that we have today. Pausing for sandstorms, securing supply lines, and scattered raids on those supply lines caused terms like "quagmire" and "bogged down" to arise within hours...HOURS! Even now, in the aftermath, daily attacks on troops have the "doom and gloom" crowd calling this "another Vietnam" and, you guessed it, quagmire.

Biased reporting doesn't help matters either. Reports state that there is an average of 13 attacks a day on our troops. They seem to leave out the fact that there are over 500 patrols, daily. They also leave out the fact that only a small part of central Iraq is where virtually every attack, except for the attack on the Brits last week, takes place. In the rest of the country, utilities and civil services are close to, and in some cases exceed, prewar status. In many places Iraqi town and city councils are working hand-in-hand with coalition forces. I guess good news doesn't sell huh? Propaganda? Arguably yes. Harmful? Absolutely.

Morale is crucial for success, on the frontlines and at home. Our troops face an extremely difficult job in rebuilding Iraq and establishing a functional democracy. We will continue to lose some fine soldiers and great Americans in Iraq until the job is done. It is imperative that we maintain our optimism of the future, our determination, and our will. Impatience will be our undoing, pulling out too soon will destroy everything we bled for in Iraq. Americans were being attacked by nazi holdouts in Germany as late as 1953, 8 years after the end of the war. Iraq won't take 8 years to rebuild, but it will take longer than 2 months. The President and his administration repeatedly said, before the war, that it would take a long time to create a new Iraq. If we leave now, everything we fought for will be lost, and our sons and daughters will have died for nothing.

"These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women." -Thomas Paine

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