Groundhog Day

by digby

A US combat commander suggested the United States could lose the war in Iraq if public support for it at home is sapped by negative media coverage.

“My personal opinion is that the only way we will lose this war is if we pull out prematurely,” said Colonel Jeffrey Snow, a brigade commander in Baghdad.

“I would hope we get the time and support we need to finish this mission,” he said in a video conference from Iraq.

Snow, whose own troops have come under stepped-up insurgent attacks this month, criticized media coverage as too focused on insurgent roadside bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.

“Our soldiers may be in the crosshairs every day, but it is the American voter who is a real target, and it is the media that carries the message back each day across the airwaves,” he said.

“So when the news is not balanced and it’s always bad, that clearly leads to negative perceptions back home,” he said.

[…]

He acknowledged insurgent attacks have gone up in his western Baghdad area of operations since the start of a city-wide security crackdown ordered by the new Iraqi government earlier this month.

Increased checkpoints and foot patrols in Baghdad had drawn an increase in insurgent attacks, he said.

“The way I would answer that is that attacks here recently are up in our area. However, the overall effectiveness are down,” he said.

“So you may perceive that as double-speak. I don’t have the precise numbers in front of me,” he added.

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Double-speak? Nah. How could anyone perceive it as double-speak? Completely full of shit is more like it.

I had always read that after Vietnam the officer corps were inculcated with the lessons of Westmorlandian lies. The military was never again going to get caught up in political spin or be used for domestic political purposes. So why is the military allowing itself to be used like this again? They have no obligation to weigh in against the media or discuss the domestic political situation. They could, and should, try to objectively assess the war and if they believe they are being effective, they can certainly say so. But this kind of comment is purely Rovian Republican political spin that does not serve the military as an institution well. At some point the military is going to look back on this and realize that they went ahead and made exactly the same mistakes they had made thirty years earlier.

I swear, my generation is intent upon living out its lifespan like the movie Groundhog Day. We just keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over and over again.

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