Kagan: The Surge Is Working, But The Media Has No Back-Up Plan

This aggression cannot stand:

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.

Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.

Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.

Jules Crittendon previously rapped the media for its childish petulance over the Americans turning the tide of war when they'd already pre-ordained them to lose. Damn the US military for forcing them to rewrite their metanarrative.

"Forcing them?" How silly of me. They won't rewrite, they'll just keep on with the same metanarrative as long as is plausible, and then some. The American media is now slightly less objective about the war than Baghdad Bob.

That's not quite fair, I suppose. Even Brian Williams isn't so stupid as to not notice the change, and even Ted Koppel is now oddly concerned about the implications of an American defeat, the consumation so devoutly to be wished by most his colleagues.

In case you haven't seen it, UPI's Pamela Hess almost breaks into tears trying to convey the justness and importance of the mission. But then, she's the Bush shill who previously noted that almost the entirety of the media denigrates those wo dare to ponder the consequences of defeat as "carrying the Bush Administration's water.

It seems Pam Hess has done what reporters aren't supposed to do -- she's "gone native," and assumed the beliefs and customs of the culture she's reporting on as her own.

Of course, most reporters do "go native," but when they do, they adopt the POV of America's enemies. Pam Hess has done the truly unforgivable -- she's gone native by adopting the POV of America's troops, the one strangely-customed group of exotic foreigners the media has no interest in probing the mindset of.

posted by Ace at 02:41 PM

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