Man, Sullivan has got to get out of his defeatist slump.
My own angle: Churchill never failed to remind the Brits that they were up against it, and he was always candid about failure - because he knew that falsely-optimistic spin only weakened morale in the long term. He also made sure to include opposition leaders in his cabinet, made amends with his union foes, and did everything to keep the country united as it faced a war for survival. Bush has managed to divide this country in wartime (with help, of course, from the Michael-Moore-Terry-McAuliffe left).Ugh. Bush is a lot more like Churchill than Andrew would care to realize. Bush has stuck to his guns, this much is obvious. The real difference between the two situations is not so much that Churchill "listened" to his critics, (which I take issue with, because it was pretty obvious that war was run the way Churchill wanted it run and to hell with all who thought differently) but that his message was delivered and covered in a fair way. Bush has had no such opportunity handed to him. The media of WWII and today's media are highly different creatures. Same species, different subspecies. I don't think even Churchill could get a fair shake from today's media. While, of course, you have to take into account that the media during WWII was highly censored, it's obvious Churchill didn't always get favorable mentions. That much is true. But he also wasn't up for election during wartime. Nor did he have to deal with a media who was oblivious to the real situation on the ground because they didn't bother to do the work, and aired loads of speculation in place of honest reporting. This is the situation that we are dealing with right now. Our media isn't censored, yet in some ways they're censoring themselves, because of their personal political biases and what they believe their "mission" to be. They refuse to get out of the Sunni Triangle and report what is successful in Iraq as much as they report what isn't, and as such, Bush can't get a fair shake. Think about Dunkirk for a moment. If all the Brit media had reported was "quagmire!quagmire!quagmire!shameofretreat!shameofretreat!" instead of tempering their concerns with reports of the average Joe boatowner who sailed over to Dunkirk to evacuate the soldiers, then Churchill would have found himself in much the same situation as Bush finds himself in nowadays. We don't know what's happening in Iraq inasmuch as today's media fails to temper the bad with the good. We don't have the whole story. Neither does the media think they need to give it to us. Which is of particular concern when our enemies use the media as masterfully as is possible in such a situation. Andrew may point to Lord Haw-Haw as an example of enemy media usage during WWII. I believe that to be a faulty analogy: most people knew Lord Haw-Haw was full of it and treated him as such. Today, however, when we get a communique from Al-Zarqawi, we get people and elected officials wondering about what we can do to appease the terrorists, why we deserve such treatment, Bush-Halliburton-no-blood-for-oil, etc. People buy the terrorists' line of reasoning and cry out for a stop to the barbarism, while simultaneously thinking that dissenting from their government's point of view isn't going to do any harm to the overall cause of defeating the terrorists. Then the media latches onto their views and portrays them as mainstream. The difference between now and then is a lack of clear understanding about the situation, what is helpful and what is harmful. The average Brit who lived during WWII knew exactly what they were up against, particularly because their leaders made sure they knew. They were also having to run to the neighborhood Tube station at night because they were being bombed. The situation was right in front of them and they could divine its meaning for themselves. They would have been idiotic to think otherwise. We have to rely on the media for the story. It's not right in front of us. Yet, knowing all of this, Sully claims Bush is dividing the country with his failure to admit his mistakes, which he claims is something that Churchill would never do. I don't think so. When has President Bush ever failed to let us know what we were up against? Or how much work would be involved taking these people down? He hasn't. He's following in Churchill's footsteps and hasn't deviated once inch in this respect. The difference is that Churchill was given a fair shake by a media, who while heavily censored, was at least on the same page as the government and helped Churchill to publicize his message. The media of our time isn't on the same page. Our media believes that they must criticize as much as possible, that this is what their job is, and to do anything else would mean that they're in cahoots with the government, and that they simply can't have. Where would their credibility be then? How could people trust them? Churchill was at least able to talk to his people; Bush hasn't had the same opportunity. This isn't a failure of leadership on Bush's part. He's doing the same things as Churchill. The media just isn't covering it. It's obvious in that when Bush does get the opportunity to speak directly to the people without the media's insertion of the white noise of speculation and criticism, well, people listen and agree. To this already unfair situation, we can add the election, which piles on the criticism. Dissent is thick, is what the media reports, and to hear Kerry tell it, well, there isn't really a War on Terrorism, there should be, however, a lecture on the effectiveness of jurisprudence and a return to the days when we prosecuted terrorists after they murdered innocents. His current line (and I say that knowing full well the minute this strategy doesn't flesh out in the polling data, he'll change his mind) is that, knowing what he knows now, he wouldn't have gone into Iraq. Well, great. Let's just throw the benefit of instant hindsight on every decision ever made and we'll really be getting somewhere. Sullivan believes Bush needs to admit that he's made mistakes in the War on Terror and in Iraq to make himself more credible; to make himself more like Churchill. He's been hammering home on this point for quite some time. Well, Churchill could probably have gotten away with that sort of thing; Bush can't. He'll be crucified if he does so, and as a result our enemies will have gained ground and a big reason for said gains would be the way the media would cover such an event. It would be momentous, 24/7 coverage until the election. Like it or not, the media is as potent a weapon in this war as a tank. Hence, it must be used skillfully to propagate gains. While I find this idea to be abhorrent, that the media shouldn't be used in such a way, this is the situation we find ourselves in. The difference between Bush's situation and Churchill's is that Churchill wouldn't likely find himself on the receiving end of the tank's gun. Bush is staring it down and has been for quite some time. Bush's "failure" to admit mistakes is not what is dividing the country. It's the media's failure to report fairly and honestly about the faults and successes that is dividing the country. We don't know what the whole story is in Iraq. We cannot make any reasonable judgments as to Bush's performance because the media has not reported it. We hear one thing from the soldiers on the ground when they're able to talk about it; we hear "quagmire!" from the media. Who's right? I don't know because I don't have all of the information available and no one is giving it to me. Hence I cannot make the decision to throw a president out of office based on his "poor performance" in Iraq. Posted by Kathy at September 1, 2004 11:49 AM | TrackBack