It’s fair to say that the relationship between the military and the news media is at times an awkward one.
Those of us that grew up as cold warriors had for mentors people that fought, and lost, the war in Vietnam. From their perspective, they had never lost a significant battle tactically, but had lost the war strategically because they had somehow lost the battle for public opinion.
We fought Vietnam as a war of attrition , something at which the US military, with it’s access to a relatively large manpower pool and virtually unlimited materiel resources, had been very good at, at least since the Civil War. It served us very well there, as well as in both World Wars. One might argue that it served us less well in Korea – in my opinion it worked very well indeed, especially once MacArthur opened up a second front in the North Korean rear at Inchon . When UN forces approached the Yalu River, bringing about a massive response from Chinese “volunteers,” the strategic risks elevated enormously, as did the cost of victory. Attrition warfare is a Clausewitzian grinding of armies against one another, a test of will as much as anything else. How much destruction of an opposing force can your enemy endure, before his will collapses? How much can you endure?
Our enemies in Vietnam fought a war of maneuver warfare – they therefore fought asymetrically . (For a brief summary of the differences between wars of maneuver and attrition, click here .) One of the key features of maneuver warfare is identifying centers of gravity at all levels, strategic, operational and tactical. Our center of gravity in Vietnam was public opinion. Most people realize that the Tet Offensive in Vietnam was a crushing operational and tactical defeat for the NVA. At home, it was played as a turning point, in our inevitable slide towards defeat. While it is not my goal to venture into the still boiling waters of public discourse on the war in Vietnam, it’s conduct, means or even whether it was a “Just War ,” I do want to point out that this shading of the news (today we might call it “spin”) subsequent to Tet was felt by many in the military as a betrayal.
Public opinion of course, is shaped at least partially by the news media. To the military, this means that certain conditions of victory are not entirely in their own hands. Which is why we have Public Affairs Officers to try to help shape the message. While most of us who concern ourselves with kinetic effects find this requirement distasteful, we understand the importance – in warfare, victory is everything.
So we are predisposed through received knowledge from our elders, and personal experience. Some reporters can be downright snarky, I’ve discovered – one NYT reporter that interviewed me during Operation Iraqi Freedom turned downright nasty when it became clear to him that I wouldn’t reveal any classified information. We learned that the press can be dangerous to us, and to the accomplishment of our mission – we tend to be suspicious of their motives.
The press on the other hand, has a job to do, they need us for our stories, are convinced of their own rectitude, but suspect of our intentions. Fully aware that the PAO’s are there to help shape the message, they treat us as though we were dissembling (we cannot) and withholding (we might). Since the concept of honor is by no means an anachronistic one to military members, this in turn serves to amplify the power lines of tension.
As a junior officer, I by no means took as gospel my seniors’ distaste for the press. But one day, while watching a TV show by press people about themselves (instructive public navel-gazing), I heard one of the mediators ask this question: “If you were in the field with a guerrilla force set to ambush US soldiers, and you could safely warn the soldiers, would you do so?”
The answers were also instructive – in essence, “no.” They were there to report events, not to shape them. (I believe the person answering was either Bernie Shaw or Dan Rather, but cannot remember, and could not find a link.)
At that moment, a switch was thrown in my head. I understood – these were also the enemy, but we had to treat them as though they were not.
Since then, my thinking has matured a bit, but I still view the press somewhat differently than I think they view themselves. They are a body of people with a job to do, whose interests do not always coincide with mine.
Which is a long, and rather strange introduction to this story. NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof went to Cambodia and liberated a pair of young girls from sexual slavery, returning them to their homes. Read it, come back, and tell me what you think.
At first I didn’t know quite what to make of it, operating under my own set of cognitive lenses. It turns out that I’m self-trained to look for motivation from the press, as though motivation was more important than effect. One asks why would he do that? How many girls were left enslaved? Did he get reimbursed for his costs? Did he make money off the story?
And then I realized that I had conditioned myself, when dealing with the press, to use the thinking that inspires Type M arguments , which I abhor in others.
Because at its most elemental, what Kristof has done is an absolutely and fundamentally decent thing to do – two people has been liberated from an unspeakably horrible existence. That good which we are capable of doing, we ought to do. And the fact that you can’t save everyone does not mean we should not save anyone. (Tyler Cowen, of the Volokh Conspiracy, has a somewhat more mechanistic take.)
The fact that Kristof has done so, speaks volumes to his character: “(H)e who saves one life, it is as though he has saved the universe.” Perhaps by publishing his story, he can help many others.
Just another side trip, on my voyage of self-discovery. Thanks for coming along.
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