Man, Sullivan has got to

Man, Sullivan has got to get out of his defeatist slump.

My own angle: Churchill never failed to remind the Brits
that they were up against it, and he was always candid about failure -
because he knew that falsely-optimistic spin only weakened morale in
the long term. He also made sure to include opposition leaders in his
cabinet, made amends with his union foes, and did everything to keep
the country united as it faced a war for survival. Bush has managed to
divide this country in wartime (with help, of course, from the
Michael-Moore-Terry-McAuliffe left).

Ugh.
Bush is a lot more like Churchill than Andrew would care to realize.
Bush has stuck to his guns, this much is obvious. The real difference
between the two situations is not so much that Churchill "listened" to
his critics, (which I take issue with, because it was pretty obvious
that war was run the way Churchill wanted it run and to hell with all
who thought differently) but that his message was delivered and covered
in a fair way. Bush has had no such opportunity handed to him. The
media of WWII and today's media are highly different creatures. Same
species, different subspecies. I don't think even Churchill could get a
fair shake from today's media. While, of course, you have to take into
account that the media during WWII was highly censored, it's obvious
Churchill didn't always get favorable mentions. That much is true. But
he also wasn't up for election during wartime. Nor did he have to deal
with a media who was oblivious to the real situation on the ground
because they didn't bother to do the work, and aired loads of
speculation in place of honest reporting. This is the situation that we
are dealing with right now. Our media isn't censored, yet in some ways
they're censoring themselves, because of their personal political
biases and what they believe their "mission" to be. They refuse to get
out of the Sunni Triangle and report what is successful in Iraq as much
as they report what isn't, and as such, Bush can't get a fair shake.
Think about Dunkirk for a moment. If all the Brit media had reported
was "quagmire!quagmire!quagmire!shameofretreat!shameofretreat!" instead
of tempering their concerns with reports of the average Joe boatowner
who sailed over to Dunkirk to evacuate the soldiers, then Churchill
would have found himself in much the same situation as Bush finds
himself in nowadays. We don't know what's happening in Iraq inasmuch as
today's media fails to temper the bad with the good. We don't have the
whole story. Neither does the media think they need to give it to us.
Which is of particular concern when our enemies use the media as
masterfully as is possible in such a situation. Andrew may point to Lord Haw-Haw as
an example of enemy media usage during WWII. I believe that to be a
faulty analogy: most people knew Lord Haw-Haw was full of it and
treated him as such. Today, however, when we get a communique from
Al-Zarqawi, we get people and elected officials wondering about what we
can do to appease the terrorists, why we deserve such treatment,
Bush-Halliburton-no-blood-for-oil, etc. People buy the terrorists' line
of reasoning and cry out for a stop to the barbarism, while
simultaneously thinking that dissenting from their government's point
of view isn't going to do any harm to the overall cause of defeating
the terrorists. Then the media latches onto their views and
portrays them as mainstream. The difference between now and then is a
lack of clear understanding about the situation, what is helpful and
what is harmful. The average Brit who lived during WWII knew exactly
what they were up against, particularly because their leaders made sure
they knew. They were also having to run to the neighborhood Tube
station at night because they were being bombed. The situation was
right in front of them and they could divine its meaning for
themselves. They would have been idiotic to think otherwise. We have to
rely on the media for the story. It's not right in front of us. Yet,
knowing all of this, Sully claims Bush is dividing the country with his
failure to admit his mistakes, which he claims is something that
Churchill would never do. I don't think so. When has President
Bush ever failed to let us know what we were up against? Or how much
work would be involved taking these people down? He hasn't. He's
following in Churchill's footsteps and hasn't deviated once inch in
this respect. The difference is that Churchill was given a fair shake
by a media, who while heavily censored, was at least on the same page
as the government and helped Churchill to publicize his message. The
media of our time isn't on the same page. Our media believes that they
must criticize as much as possible, that this is what their job is, and
to do anything else would mean that they're in cahoots with the
government, and that they simply can't have. Where would their credibility be then? How could people trust them?
Churchill was at least able to talk to his people; Bush hasn't had the
same opportunity. This isn't a failure of leadership on Bush's part.
He's doing the same things as Churchill. The media just isn't covering
it. It's obvious in that when Bush does get the opportunity to
speak directly to the people without the media's insertion of the white
noise of speculation and criticism, well, people listen and agree. To
this already unfair situation, we can add the election, which piles on
the criticism. Dissent is thick, is what the media reports, and to hear
Kerry tell it, well, there isn't really a War on Terrorism, there
should be, however, a lecture on the effectiveness of jurisprudence and
a return to the days when we prosecuted terrorists after they murdered
innocents. His current
line (and I say that knowing full well the minute this strategy doesn't
flesh out in the polling data, he'll change his mind) is that, knowing
what he knows now, he wouldn't have gone into Iraq. Well, great.
Let's just throw the benefit of instant hindsight on every decision
ever made and we'll really be getting somewhere. Sullivan believes Bush
needs to admit that he's made mistakes in the War on Terror and in Iraq
to make himself more credible; to make himself more like Churchill.
He's been hammering home on this point for quite some time. Well,
Churchill could probably have gotten away with that sort of thing; Bush
can't. He'll be crucified if he does so, and as a result our enemies
will have gained ground and a big reason for said gains would be the
way the media would cover such an event. It would be momentous, 24/7
coverage until the election. Like it or not, the media is as potent a
weapon in this war as a tank. Hence, it must be used skillfully to
propagate gains. While I find this idea to be abhorrent, that the media
shouldn't be used in such a way, this is the situation we find
ourselves in. The difference between Bush's situation and Churchill's
is that Churchill wouldn't likely find himself on the receiving end of
the tank's gun. Bush is staring it down and has been for quite some
time. Bush's "failure" to admit mistakes is not what is dividing the
country. It's the media's failure to report fairly and honestly about
the faults and successes that is dividing the country. We don't know
what the whole story is in Iraq. We cannot make any reasonable
judgments as to Bush's performance because the media has not reported
it. We hear one thing from the soldiers on the ground when they're able
to talk about it; we hear "quagmire!" from the media. Who's right? I
don't know because I don't have all of the information available and no one is giving it to me. Hence I cannot make the decision to throw a president out of office based on his "poor performance" in Iraq.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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