Harvard Smarty-Pants Economists: Media's Anti-War Propaganda Does Indeed Embolden Jihadists and Cost Human Lives

The media lied, people died.

Great story, and Allah supplies some good nuance (no quotes -- fo' real, yo):

If the propriety of anti-war rhetoric turns on whether it makes the mission in the field harder, then arguably the same is true of Geert Wilders’s film. The Secretary General of NATO has said that explicitly, in fact, as has one of the U.S. military’s joint task forces in Afghanistan. If an economist can prove that criticism of Islam increases attacks (which shouldn’t be hard), you want to roll that back too?

He wonders if there is an "optimal level" of war criticism, economically.

I don't know. But I would suggest that there is a cost in human (and American, particularly) life to over-the-top, dishonest anti-war agenda journalism, and reporters can avoid all such moral quandries by simply reporting the truth accurately.

Will the truth always reduce human death? Well, no, but it does have the virtue of being the truth. If people and particularly Americans are to die due to reportage, can we at least insist they die for a noble principle like the truth, rather than some unhinged partisan distortion?

I would think that American soldiers and Iraqi cops and civilians would be rather heartened to know that, while reportage always may encourage jihadists, at least their fellow Americans are not increasing their risk of death by deliberately reporting lies and refusing to report on American/Iraqi victories.

No one wishes to die, but if death is inevitable, it is better to die for the truth than a lie.

As the left said during Vietnam:

Who wants to be the last soldier to die for a lie?

The MSM ought to consider that.

In Related News... NBC famously and fatuously decreed Iraq to be in a state of civil war a year or so ago.

That pronouncement still stands. They have not retracted it.

So tell me, NBC: If it was gosh-darn important to officially declare Iraq to be in a state of civil war -- if it was so mind-bogglingly critical that NBCNews authoritatively declare the current civil-war-ish-ness of Iraq -- why is it so unimportant now to authoritatively declare Iraq to NOT be in a state off civil war?

NBCNews took the position that its official, duly considered institutional opinion was of Great National Import when that position was implicitly anti-war.

Now that Iraq is clearly not in a civil war, NBCNews has decided it's not quite as important to go around declaring which countries may, or may not be, "officially" in a state of civil war.

According to NBCNews' last official pronouncement, Iraq is in civil war.

Either they do not make corrections or bother retracting reportage that has become stale, or they are simply delusional.

Either way, no one should be getting their news from such an outfit.

posted by Ace at 02:31 PM

| Access Comments