"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on." - Winston Churchill
I suspect for most of us, the default position in relation to other people is to take what they say at "face value" until and unless proven otherwise. This leaves us at a terrible disadvantage when our opponents are unethical, unscrupulous, and extremely sophisticated. It is why we would be considered foolishly naive to sign a contract without having a professional review it first. Unfortunately, until fairly recently we did not know that we had any reason to question events as depicted by those who claimed authority in reporting such matters, and had no real reason to question the veracity of the news, including images and stories which set the standard for the facts as reported.
The blogosphere has done an extremely important job in illuminating some of the most egregious examples of poor reporting (compare the news headlines to the actual content of MSM stories about WMD programs in Iraq), misreporting (rapes and murders in the Superdome after Katrina), and overtly false reporting (the forged Texas Air National Guard memos meant to impugn Bush), but we are still left with a very significant problem.
The Second Intifada was triggered by a Blood libel. Israeli soldiers brutally murdered 12 year old Muhamed al Durah, who died in his father's arms; video of the incident was played over and over again, courtesy of the French TV crew which filmed it. This singular tragedy did much to legitimize the use of suicide bombers as a Palestinian (and later al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgency) weapon. Yet a serious and thorough investigation by The Second Draft, complete with raw footage from the original video, suggests that the entire incident was staged by the Palestinians, perhaps taking a page out of the Nazi archives.
It is troubling that the French were complicit in this propaganda triumph and a source of great concern that it took so much time and effort for the intrepid reporters at The Second Draft to refute the lies. Sadly, their refutation has been seen by only a fraction of those around the world who have seen the "atrocity" through the years. This is a lie that has surely done its work well.
The problem is that despite such incidents, Western governments, news media, and information consumers, have a tendency to treat breaking "news" as if it is accurate and deserves investigation until proven otherwise; perhaps in normal times this would be an admirable trait, but in war time, where the most important front in the war is the Information War-front, this puts us at a terrible disadvantage.
Even among the Conservative blogosphere, which many of us now rely on to ferret out the actual news from the propagandized news, there is a tendency to treat breaking news as if it is real news.
There are several stories which all share a common denominator that are in the news; all these stories fit a narrative that is in opposition to the ability of the West to protect itself and all serve to delegitimize important military tools to use against our enemies; furthermore, all tend to demoralize the Western public's resolve to carry the war through to a successful conclusion.
Two key examples:
The Haditha Massacre: The story of Marines massacring civilians in Haditha seems to be breaking down. Even if evidence emerges to suggest that a few Marines committed atrocities in Haditha, the rush to judgment by the press and left side of the blogosphere has already given the anti-American forces of terror a major victory (though with the truth starting to leak out, it does seem that the military and the blogs may be closer to getting inside the enemy's Information war cycle.) Sweetness and Light has been on this story almost from the beginning of its break-out into the news cycle. Greyhawk has an exceptional post summarizing what we know and don't know about the incident, which should be read in full to understand what we are dealing with. Today the Washington Post finally has more on the story from the Marines' point of view, which had been conspicuously missing up until now.
The Gaza Massacre: When the Palestinians accused the Israelis of murdering civilians on the beach in Gaza, the initial Israeli reaction was to apologize, suspend all artillery shelling (an important weapon that the Israelis use to respond to Qassam rocket attacks form the Palestinian territories), and to launch an investigation. Judith Apter Klinghoffer first raised questions about the incident and has since updated her remarks. Not surprisingly, the Palestinians have refused to cooperate with the Israeli investigation of the incident, hardly the behavior of those who might want to determine the exact parameters of the incident. The Augean Stables makes the connection explicit: Pallywood on a Gaza Beach? Pamela has some links that suggest the actual cause of the explosion may have been an off-target Palestinian Qassam rocket; these rockets are notoriously inaccurate (the Palestinians who fire them do not care who they kill; the more Israelis they can murder, the better, as far as they are concerned, so targeting is not terribly important) so this is not at all unlikely.
These two stories are the most obvious and immediate, but the protocol seems to be well established. An "eye witness" steps forward whose reliability is never questioned by the various news outlets that disseminate the story, and almost before the last scandal quiets down a new one emerges. Charges that Zarqawi was beaten, nonsensical on their face, and from a most unreliable source, are printed despite the lack of elementary caveats.
Dinocrat and AJ Strata both offer an excellent take on the recent events at issue.
Unfortunately, all these excellent bloggers, reporters, military and government spokesmen are, of necessity, playing defense. In any battle, our military prefers to take the offensive and take the battle to the enemy. On the Information front, we were able to do that with the "Blooper out-takes" from Zarqawi's last film.
Our enemies use women and children as human shields, and as propaganda tools in their war against the West. Early in the fighting in Iraq our soldiers were entirely too respectful of the Mosque as sanctuary; when our soldiers began to fire on insurgents who hid within the walls of Mosques, denying them safe havens, there was no uprising from the mythical Arab street; the terrorists lost one of their most powerful weapons. Until we start treating every report of an American or Israeli "atrocity" as if it is propaganda, rather than news, they will continue to use this weapon.
This does not mean we should not investigate incidents, but the knee-jerk response that "if there was an atrocity we will investigate and punish the guilty", needs to be replaced by a different reaction. When our spokesmen respond that "our enemies routinely invent accusations of atrocities and are not beyond creating atrocities to blame on us", and we repeat this on every occasion, in answer to every reporter's question, followed with the obligatory remarks that every accusation is fully investigated, we will have gone far in removing this weapon from our enemy's armamentarium. It is far past time to place the burden of proof on the reporters and on our enemies when such accusations are made.
Addendum: Just so there is no misunderstanding, we and the Israelis must investigate every possible atrocity, and I suspect we have done so and will continue to do so; however, we must also re-assert the principle that our military are innocent until proven guilty and the presumption must be that the stories are fraudulent propaganda until proven otherwise.
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