The Christian Science Monitor discovers Bill Roggio:
In recent months, the gruesome images and stories emanating from Iraq have hardened the public’s perception about the conflict there. The war is increasingly viewed as a grim, chaotic mess…
But for those who troll the blogosphere for news, there is a distinctly different view of the Iraq war available. In this version, the United States is “winning the war on the battlefield, albeit with difficulties in some areas,” but “losing the information war.”
This is the war as seen and posted by Bill Roggio, a former active duty soldier (in the early 1990s) and current blogger embedded with marines in Iraq. His site is http://www.billroggio.com/. Mr. Roggio is no small-time Web scribe. He has written for The Weekly Standard, National Review, and the New York Post. And his posts, such as his recent ones filed from Fallujah, have created a buzz among conservative bloggers.
Roggio’s view on the conflict in Iraq is decidedly personal and naturally one-sided, but it is engaging. When he’s embedded with troops, as he is now, Roggio offers something not often seen in the media – stories about soldiers on the job in dangerous places.
What could be more compelling? And who could object to that? Why, the CSM themselves might, a bit:
The problem, one all too common in the blogosphere, is that Roggio has become less a reporter than a validator of the pro-war viewpoint to many. He has become a phenomenon among war supporters, most of whom, judging from reader comments, read him largely because they agree with his views.
And that’s too bad for the war’s supporters and its detractors as well. Bloggers such as Roggio can create a fuller picture of the conflict in Iraq. But if only one side of the political spectrum reads him – or one side reads him and only him – both sides will be missing some important perspective.
But this is a false dichotomy, this one-the-one-hand-on-the-other spectrification: Those who support the war can’t help but be inundated by a news media whose sacred responsibility to act as a watchdog on all government they have allowed to morph into reflexive pessimism upon everything this government has tried to do before finally degrading into inveterate personal hostility and race-you-to-the-exits defeatism.
Which is a problem, because quite frankly, that’s where most people get their news, which in turn informs public opinion which is the strategic center of gravity for any democratic government as well as the soldiers they field.
People who read Bill Roggio are getting a much fuller perspective on what’s happening in Iraq than those who would would only on the CSM, just for one example. Or the Washington Post, for another. Because as Michael Fumento recently pointed out, it’s not exactly like they’re got a lock on Teh Truth:
“The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq [Al Anbar Province] or counter al Qaeda’s rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report,” began a front-page article in yesterday’s Washington Post by Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks. It concerned the so-called “Devlin Report,” a five-page document allegedly filled with gloom and doom. It contrasts completely with my article Return to Ramadi, in the Nov. 27 Weekly Standard, in which I write that the largest city in the province is slowly being reclaimed from al Qaeda. By coincidence, the day my article hit the stands the Times of London published an extensive article coming to the same conclusion as mine. But for the timing, you’d practically think one of us had plagiarized the other.
Why such different conclusions between our articles and the Post’s and whom to believe?
Would it surprise you to find that one possible source of the discrepancy was that, like Roggio, both Fumento and the London Times writer filed from their reports from Ramadi itself? Or that not only had Linzer or “Fiasco” Ricks never been to Ramadi, but that they had instead filed their report from Washington?
No. No, it probably wouldn’t surprise you. You read milblogs.
Wish the whole world read the Milblogs! I’ve found that we have an entirely different outlook on Iraq, Afghanistan, and our Military men and women. We actually know something about them, unlike the majority of Americans. Part of the difference is we CARE to know about what’s going on. I have finally learned to keep my office door closed at work. Makes my neck bulge, so I have to hush before I take that final step up on the soapbox…
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“The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq [Al Anbar Province]“. I notice with all these type of assessments that no qualifier regarding our rules of engagement is included.If we ran our railroad they way they run their’s…
“according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report,” and would that be leaked from our favorite USMC congressmen?
Of course when you’re told the big lie so many times, pretty soon you start to believe it.Just pisses me off!
“The problem, one all too common in the blogosphere, is that Roggio has become less a reporter than a validator of the pro-war viewpoint to many.” Oh really! You mean like this: The problem, one all to common in the MSM, is that they have become less like reporters and more like shills of anti-war, anti-Bush, or anti-Amercan propaganda.
Mark – now that’s what I call perspective
Does not matter how much anyone tries to sugar coat it, as long as the headlines read the same every day folks are going to continue to harden their opinions. Real nations with useful populations do not blow up a car or two and kill 100 people a day. Regardless of the spin put pro or con, the central fact remains the same. These guys have had 4 years to get beyond that and they have proven themselves incapable of it.
That’s the central problem of the information war and one the administration does not control. And people do not see a solution to it.
America is a strong nation, but war weariness is a real phenomenon and the nations patience has been exhausted.
One other point. Simply lumping all media together is the view of a lazy person in my opinion. There are plenty of divergent reports out there and what is frustrating to me is that the milblog community seems to ignore that fact and simply shoot the messenger withoug reading the message.
Phrased another way, “just watching Fox news is no way to go through life, son.”
I try to get my friends and co-workers to expand their news sources beyond Fox or CNN, to achieve as much of a balanced perspective as you can in a war-weary (Skippy-san is right on the mark there) world. Some respond well, some don’t. And it doesn’t fall across “party lines” either – some just don’t care enough to get balance, right or left of the issue.
I’m fortunate that I don’t have Miss Birdlegs problems at work – my boss and I think alike on the war issue – and politics in general, thank goodness. So it does make general day-to-day conversations easier to tolerate.
But I’m with Phil & Mark on the whole media issue – the MSM really only feeds one line, and since sadly most people in this country are merely sheep…they accept what they hear as gospel.
Kris,
Skippy’s ‘war-weary’ is a good way to describe it, yet it seems to be more of a public exasperation with a channel that refuses to change. They keep hitting the TV remote to switch to the next daytime soap or infomercial, but the ugly world keeps coming back. Their brains aren’t so tired as much as their thumbs are. Denial isn’t working so well any more, but the habit of ignoring nasty reality is still hard to break. Especially when you don’t really have a better idea. So it’s bad, or it’s worse–choose.
Yes, our enemies and their medial enablers are masters of the information war –for now. The general public still hasn’t caught on that attention and awareness are the high ground in this confict. It’s like the bystanders haven’t yet discovered they are the prize. MSM is rightly afraid of what happens to their monopoly when the bystanders eventually do.
Although it may take a desperate appeal for blood donors by local zip code on the bottom of the Fox News or CNN crawl to get the bystanders’ full attention.
Mass casualty events have a remorseless way of changing lifestyle priorities overnight.
Has?Ǭ
Has anyone ever mentioned to you, Skip, that your evident and repeated presumption that anyone who disagrees with your take on this topic has been fed on a restricted diet of Faux News Zoloft with a Rush Limbaugh chaser is a bit, ah: Condescending? Preening? Sand-poundingly narcisistic?
It’s a strawman argument against a point not made. The point made in the post was that the CSM is warning it’s readers to take Roggio with a grain of salt because he’s, you know: Optimistic. When everyone knows that pessimism is the only right frame of mind.
People are war-weary because they’ve been lulled – mostly for political purposes, but also because they want to believe – into thinking that we have a real choice on whether or not to fight. They’ve been told what they want to hear, that we can bring the troops home and all the killing will stop. Or at least the killing of people we care about.
Pity about those poor, benighted wogs, lied to again, disappointed again, left to be slaughtered again. But they ought to have been used to it by now, wot?
Not to worry though. Once enough of them have been murdered, the most brutal killers – and we already know who they are, which takes some of the drama out of it – will rise to the top of the 21st century Golgotha that we have left behind for them to craft.
Having consolidated their power – with the help of some friends to the east – they will next turn their attention to the south, and find a fat land of impoverished millions ruled by thousands of indolent princes. Should be a pushover.
Just wogs though, again. Nothing to do with us.
Except that one quarter of the world’s population has been taught, as an article of faith, that their religion is final and perfect and they themselves given domination over the world. And yet, maddeningly, it has proven not to be so – the rest of the world marches on impressively, as they stew in corruption and inefficiency and oppression.
They are faced with two options: Either their faith is not final and perfect, or they themselves are imperfectly faithful.
Down one path lies reason and peaceful co-existence, down the other the conquering sword of jihad – not for the first time.
We should strive to encourage the first option. Our enemies in Iraq and elsewhere are busily promoting the second. If we abandon the Iraqi field of battle to them, one billion people will observe our failure and know which is the strong horse, and which the weak. And they will do it empowered by a stranglehold on the major reserves of the lifeblood of global commerce.
These aren’t children’s games we’re playing.
I think, too, it’s interesting to point out the paragraph preceding the second yellow text box above,
“That’s the positive side of what an independent blogger such as Roggio can do for Iraq coverage. He is unafraid to go into dangerous places and he offers a very different perspective. For that reason, he is a worthwhile read on Iraq, so long as he is not the only read on the subject. He shows what one blogger in a war zone can do.”
Yes, it is difficult in today’s world to sift through seemingly endless stream of information. But people need to make the effort to seek out balanced coverage, it’s out there. Don’t just listen to the MSM, or just what the President/Tony Snow says, or just Malkin or Huffington say.
But will they? Jury’s still out on that one.
Little hard on Skippysan there Capt, but otherwise a mighty fine summation of what we, as a nation face.