Page 102 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

92 Chapter 4

"strategically was a mistake."94 In a column labeled "Time to Quit Iraq (Sort
of)," Edward Luttwak urged caution toward an immediate withdrawal, while
also granting that, "The United States is depleting its military strength" by fight-
ing against "Ba'ath regime loyalists, Sunni revanchists, local and foreign
Islamist extremists and the ever-more numerous Shi'ite militia^."^'
As the leader of the mainstream-Left critics, the New York Time's editors
found fault with the ways in which the Bush administration "mismanaged the
war," implying that, if the war effort was running more smoothly the paper
would lend more support.96 New York Times reporting su gested that "stabiliz-
ing Iraq could be more difficult than originally planned,'" while the New Re-
public's Peter Beinart commented that the occupation was "proving harder and
uglier than expected" throughout the mass media.98
The strength of resistance to the occupation-violent and nonviolent-was
unanticipated as a result of what New York Times reporter David E. Sanger
deemed the "administration's failure to anticipate the violence in Iraq and the
obstacles to reconstr~ction."~~ The question of why such resistance was unex-
pected in light of decades of fierce Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation going
back to the time of the European imperial powers was not discussed in the pre-
war period throughout most reporting, although critical scholars did raise the
question.100 Those who felt the war would be a "cakewalk" cast aside the likeli-
hood that resistance against the U.S. would be substantial. In the end, most
mainstream reporters and editors did little to challenge the "cakewalk" assump-
tion before the war began, but made such revelations only after the increase in
attacks on U.S. troops.
In post invasion reporting, papers like the Washington Post conceded that
the occupation has been "unexpectedly diffi~ult."'~' Reporters generally inter-
preted objectivity as prohibiting them from predicting resistance to the U.S. in
the pre-invasion period. To do so, they claimed, would mean that they were put-
ting their own opinions into reporting, rather than simply "reporting the news"
in terms of covering official statements. The nation's most prestigious papers
initially cast aside reservations of potential problems in Iraq before the war be-
gan, while acknowledging, "the overly optimistic visions that Washington pro-
claimed soon after the initial military success."'02 And yet, in the early days of
the war effort, the same media outlets expected the "prospective war with
Iraq.. .to be short, with many predicting that combat operations will last two to
three weeks,"'03 as they speculated over the "Quick collapse of [the] Iraqi mili-
tary" as a "very real likelih~od."'~~
Many media outlets criticizing the war were not willing to go as far as to
argue that it was a strategic blunder though. In a 2005 column in the Washington
Post, William Raspberry identified what he considered a central problem in
leaving Iraq-namely that it "would require a concession. . . that the whole thing
was a rni~take."'~~
Washington Post editors seemed to consent to this perspec-
tive, arguing that "Regardless of whether the war was right, the situation it pro-
duced offers few if any responsible options other than those endorsed by both
candidates [Kerry and ~ush]."'~~ message was clear: responsible politicians
The
did not advocate a withdrawal from Iraq. Such was the prescription in prominent