[Previous entry: "The Libertarian Party"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Carnival of the Canucks #20: Mix and Match"]

05/31/2004 Archived Entry: "The Real Story of Fallujah"

Posted by steve @ 03:09 PM EST [Link]

THE BIGGEST FAILING OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) Is their apparent inability to get their message out. A good example of that is what's happening in Fallujah. As Robert Kaplan points out in today's Wall Street Journal, the city is reasonably calm and the decision not to pound the city into rubble is probably the right one.

But none of the above matters if it is not competently explained to the American public--for the home front is more critical in a counterinsurgency than in any other kind of war. Yet the meticulous planning process undertaken by the Marines at the tactical level for assaulting Fallujah was not augmented with a similarly meticulous process by the Bush administration at the strategic level for counteracting the easily foreseen media fallout from fighting in civilian areas near Muslim religious sites. The public was never made to feel just how much of a military threat the mosques in Fallujah represented, just how far Marines went to avoid damage to them and to civilians, and just how much those same Marine battalions accomplished after departing Fallujah. [...]

[I]...found that there are many different Iraqs and different levels of reality to each of them. Presently, the administration lacks the public relations talent and the organizational structure for conveying even the positive elements of the Iraqi panorama in all their drama and texture.

I'm not blaming the administration alone, I think the media is also playing a role. Stung by the failure to find WMDs in Iraq after they reported their existence, the media is probably now not giving the administration the benefit of the doubt...or for that matter ignoring the administration's point of view unless the evidence is overwhelming that its right. That said, Kaplan is right, the administration is doing a very poor job of telling the world what's going on.

Read on.