War and Jive

We lost the Vietnam War for two connected reasons. First, there was no adequate occasion for our involvement: no threat to our shores or our people, and no serious strategic stake. And second, our government was cowardly in its dishonesty. Put these factors together, and you have a formula for the loss of popular support and national resolve. We deserved to lose.

The current struggle is richly warranted by its occasion. We have every reason to destroy the people who flew planes into our buildings; in fact we have an obligation to do so. But the clampdown on information risks vitiating our effort in the long run.

On 9.11, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer claimed that the reason the president didn't return immediately to Washington was that there was reason to believe that Air Force 1 had been targeted. That was false. Now Bush didn't need an excuse: his actions were completely reasonable: the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska was the right place for him to be. Fleischer's jive was just an embarrassment.

Pentagon reporters are increasingly frustrated by the lack of information coming from official sources. But one has to expect secrecy from the armed forces, and occasionally such secrecy is legitimate: where publicity could compromise an ongoing operation. It's frustrating to be a Pentagon reporter, but at least you're getting what you expect.

But when Condeleezza Rice called the television networks to ask them not to put al Qaeda spokesmen on the air, the request, though understandable, was wrong. And when the networks agreed, it was the most direct possible abnegation of their duty. The network news operations evidently do not understand their jobs. They are a free press, not the frigging Ministry of Propaganda.

Essentially, the occasion for the radical expansion of our involvement in Vietnam was a manufactured incident in which, supposedly, North Vietnamese PT boats fired on one of our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Thus the war began in lies, and it was prosecuted in atmosphere of secrecy and the dishonesty nurtured by that secrecy. The Pentagon, and in particular Robert McNamara, tried to boost our morale by feeding the media a steady stream of lies concerning damage reports, casualty figures, and the nature and success of our missions. The press was too slavish and too credulous for too long, but the strategy eventually destroyed itself. By that time, 50,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese were dead, and many Americans had lost faith in their government.

In a situation where, for damage reports and casualty figures, we must rely almost exclusively on the Pentagon's public information offices, we must hear the spokesman for the Taliban and al Qaeda give their accounts. Not because these accounts are likely to be true, but because we have got to try to sort out for ourselves what we're going to believe.

As the days pass, a variety of conflicting reports have emerged that Taliban and al Qaeda commanders have defected or turned on their former allies. Now I ask you: will you believe such reports if they originate in the CIA or the DOD, or might it occur to you that this is just the sort of lie they might tell in order to demoralize the enemy and manipulate public opinion? If you want to form any sort of informed view, you had better listen to what the Taliban and al Qaeda have to say. To take what our government says about such matters at face values is, putting it mildly, naive.

The idea that al Qaeda is signaling its operatives through secret codes passed on through the network news is ridiculous. There is no way for them to control the scheduling or editing of the tapes they release. And unfortunately it is evident that they have better communications strategies than this. No planning can take place by exchange of videos on CNN. Signaling through news coverage is better left for presidential assignations, as in "If I wear the blue tie, I'm thinking of you."

And the idea that bin Laden presents a propaganda threat within the US is also ridiculous, especially as any appearance is hedged around by all kinds of US government interpretations.

Though about 90% of Americans seem to favor limiting the broadcast of such tapes, they also want to see the enemy. It was important to hear bin Laden on the first day of bombing, and it is important to keep hear him now: not so we'll believe him, but so we'll know who we're fighting.

Governments rely on secrecy and lies: probably the first Pharaoh was the first liar to govern a nation. But when we get to the point where the press enthusiastically participates in deluding or misinforming the public, or taking away from us sources of information we need to generate reasonable opinions, then it's time to get a new press.

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