Benjamin Gray — Conservative Commentary

At War with the Truth

September 25, 2009

Michael Yon encounters the incompetence of British military-media relations:

Media Ops people—who do not leave their base or go on missions—who are spooling out “the message” to the media. They are clueless about the state of the war in Afghanistan. For instance, many of the Media Ops officers will insist that we have enough helicopters in Afghanistan. Those officers are either completely oblivious to the actuality of the situation or lying.

General Petraeus told me straight up that we don’t have enough and that we doubled our helicopters in the last four months and are in the process of fielding “two more fistfuls.” (He did not give specific numbers.) Those BS-filled officers who deny the obvious are, in fact, symptomatic to why we are losing the war.

He offers an insight into the myopic folly of this behaviour:

There is the maxim that a customer can judge the cleanliness of a restaurant’s kitchen by the restroom. After much experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have discovered another: Soldiers always treat correspondents they way they treat the local people. When soldiers treat correspondents badly, they treat local people even worse and are creating enemies. Those troops who brag about how they mistreat or detest correspondents are abusing and resentful of the local population, and they cannot win this sort of war. The people will kill them and the media will bash them and they will blame the people and the media. When a soldier alienates sympathetic correspondents, he has no real chance against mortal enemies such as the Taliban and al Qaeda, and they will defeat him. Yet there is subtlety: for “the people,” in the case of Media Ops, is you.

The Major doesn’t deal with Afghans. Afghans are not his target and it is not correspondents who are being denied access. YOU are being denied access. YOU are resented and deceived, and people like Minister of Defence, Bob Ainsworth, wish to separate realities from readers.

There are some media operations people in the armed forces who understand this, and do a sterling job. I have several media ops contacts who are nothing but candid and helpful. There is, however, an institutional bias towards censorship and spin rather than accuracy within the government. Truth is not just to be the first casualty of the war, but a hostile target to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Servicemen are unduly censored in a way that completely undermines the proper prosecution of the war.

Military-media relations was something I covered in a decent amount of detail as part of my degree. The attitude that a western liberal democracy can hope to censor its way out of an insurgency is utterly ludicrous. It offers no advantage with either the enemy or on the domestic front. Failure to be candid with the public about the failings and pitfalls of the war does far more damage than honesty ever could.

Bad stories cannot be censored because the technology and political culture exists to ensure that they get disseminated. Those who understand this, like US Lieutenant-General Wililiam Caldwell, realise that the question is not about whether or not a story comes out, but how that story is perceived. To do that effectively you have to be the first to “tell the story”. Shutting down authoritative reporting undermines that, and the very act of censorship, itself at odds with a war ostensibly fought in the defence of western values, only compounds the problem. Censorship on matters without a direct effect on operational security is simply counter-productive. Nonetheless it is easy for a risk-averse major who is more interested in brown-nosing than actually standing up for what’s right.

This is not some idealistic flight of fancy; censorship demonstrably damages our ability to win the war in Afghanistan at the political, strategic and operational levels. Operationally it promotes a mentality where difficulties and problems are explained away rather than properly addressed. Take the helicopter shortage: rather than being an operational concern, it is recast as simply a piece of adverse media, to be dealt with like any other piece of hostile fire. The policy response becomes one of deceiving the public about the number, capabilities and necessity of transport helicopters in Afghanistan. Failures simply become a matter of perception, regardless of the fact that they will result in us losing the war. The worrying thing is that if we are defeated, these people will simply shift the blame onto those who got justifiably angry at not resourcing a war properly, rather than those who thought you could fight a war on the cheap. It feeds the delusions of ministers who think they can avoid making hard decisions. Censorship prevents the addressing of operational problems.

On the political level it has an adverse effect on both populations engaged in the conflict. As Michael Yon points out, the Afghans are not the only people NATO needs to convince of its intentions and capabilities. When insurgents want to undermine support for the ISAF mission, they do so with both these audiences in mind. What they do is go for what is termed the “say-do gap”, i.e. the difference between our rhetoric and our actions. If we say we are in Afghanistan to promote democratic values, then acquiesce in ‘Hamid Karzai’s stolen election through political cowardice, then there is a significant gap through which the Taliban may drive a wedge. It undermines Afghan support for ISAF by undermining their claims of democratisation and showing them to be simply backing another set of warlords, and undermines western support by undermining our confidence in the moral case for our mission. This is one example, but there are many others, Abu Ghraib being a particularly prominent one in the fiasco days of Iraq. Censorship beyond that of operational security becomes problematic here in that, with the almost inevitability that the story will get out, it simply smacks of a cover-up. The say-do gap is further widened by our own actions.

Faced with this situation, we are in fact fighting with our hands tied behind our backs. The Taliban lie, exaggerate and manipulate the media. So do we. The Taliban, however, are better at the game than we are; it plays to their strengths as a supposedly-indigenous insurgency. We should not be fighting on their terms, but opt for those that play to our strengths. In other words, we should be fighting in a manner compatible with both our values and technology. We can beat the Taliban in both openness and speed of publication if we relax a degree of the hierarchical control of the media that the British military is used to. Our aim has to be to get our story out first, and make sure that we are more candid than our opponents are. That will, naturally, present difficulties, but they must be honestly addressed if we are to succeed. Truth must be our weapon, not theirs.

Competent senior officers are aware that this is not an effective way of fighting. Admiral Michael Mullen, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently wrote a paper lambasting the view of some in “strategic communications” that media management can simply be used like a conventional weapon, sending out the PR men to clear up after any mess. Although his article owes a decent amount to DoD politics in the US, his criticisms do hold true for those in British defence media operations who think that they can simply spin away bad publicity.

If we want to succeed, we have to be honest. We cannot hope to win a two-front war against both the Taliban and the truth. We should co-opt the latter to our side before we even think about talking to the former.

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Quote of the Day

September 23, 2009

in Law, Politics

In my view the facts of the case do not matter. It is the principle which counts, particularly at a time when the publics’ trust of Whitehall is uncertain to say the least.
We have to be seen to be accountable.

Stephen Hesford MP, PPS to the Solicitor General

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Pseudo-Criminality

September 23, 2009

in Law, Politics

In her own Marie Antoinette moment Baroness Scotland insists that what she did in breaking her own law is not particularly different to failing to pay the congestion charge. In one regard, however, she is right.

Were you to break the congestion charge rules, no matter how innocuously or inadvertently, you too could expect to be treated like a criminal and presumed guilty, with an excessive fine imposed. In fact, Lady Scotland’s violation would be treated like a whole raft of other actions that nowadays result in a jobsworth with an over-inflated sense of their own importance treating you as guilty unless proven otherwise, with little in the way of accountability or understanding, and no inclination to consider the personal circumstances of those involved. Her government has introduced a raft of overly intrusive, intolerant, bureaucratic and unnecessary measures with no scope for discretion.

That is why, as Melanie Reid correctly asserts, she deserves no sympathy.

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Why Baroness Scotland Must Go

September 22, 2009

in Law, Politics

What sympathy one may have for Baroness Scotland’s predicament is dashed by the fact that it is one of her own making. She created the ludicrous law under which she was caught, and should therefore be prosecuted to its full extent. Anything less would demonstrate insincerity as a legislator and chief law officer. This is a political grave entirely of her own excavation.

As ConservativeHome outlines:

Partisan politics aside, I can’t help but think this is anything other than a terribly sad and frustrating situation for both Baroness Scotland and the seemingly hard-working Loloahi Tapui to find themselves in.

As much as it pains me to say it, they’re both victims here.

We need to look again at this country’s immigration laws; making it easier for those who want to work here legally and pay taxes (something Tapui clearly wished to do) and much harder for visa-overstayers and unscrupulous employers (which Baroness Scotland was clearly not) to make a mockery of the law.

As this saga has so clearly proved, our immigration system isn’t fit for purpose.

That, however, is Baroness Scotland’s fault. She must resign.

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Glenn Beck on Healthcare

September 21, 2009

in Humour, Politics, United States

I’ll let the video speak for itself:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Glenn Beck’s Operation

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Hat-tip: Harry’s Place.

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What’s Wrong with the Right

September 20, 2009

in Culture, Politics, United States

Sam Tanenhaus discusses his book The Death of Conservatism, dissecting the problems of the contemporary American Right. Essential viewing HERE.

Hat-tip: Little Green Footballs.

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Winning the Battle, Losing the War against the Far-Right

September 19, 2009

in Politics

Harry’s Place offers a good critique of the three-way street violence between the English Defence League, Islamists and self-styled “anti-Fascists”:

Choudhary’s video rather gives the game away – they all need each other. The EDL is a fantastic gift to SWP-UAF as they can put aside their total inability to deal with the rise of the BNP and pretend it is the 1970’s again and they are the ANL fighting the NF. The EDL is exactly what Choudhary’s ‘Sharia Roadshow’ is designed to provoke and of course the sight of Trots and Islamists shouting violently on the streets is what the EDL wanted.

It’s all rather silly isn’t it? Except of course that when you take politics on to the street, especially highly-charged racial/religious politics, with football yobs on one side and nutballs yelling about ‘kuffar’ on the other – there is always the chance that it really does spill over into violence – and high-profile violence captured by the tv cameras as well. That of course runs the risk of increasing tension in areas with significant Muslim populations. Which is, I suspect what the EDL’s masterminds, the SWP and Anjam Choudhary would all like.

All extremist organisations know that their best chance of growing comes in situations of polarisation and tension – for the far right it is their ‘race war’ fantasy, for Choudhary and co it is the impending clash between “Muslim v Kafir’ and for the SWP it is the ever-so exciting state of ‘resistance’ or rebellion.

Sensible people should avoid assisting them in their fantasy role-playing.

Having spent a decent amount of time around the UAF crowd at university, what always struck me was the lack of any strategic vision. Street violence and trouble-making are elevated to the highest form of political activity in an orgy of self-validation. It doesn’t matter that every brick, egg, hammer and punch thrown boosts the BNP’s vote-share; what matters is that one participated in a public act of revolt. The onanistic nature of such counter-productive activity need not be stated.

John Denham is right to refer to the 1930s when he talks about the English Defence League, but it’s worth looking at what he actually said: the EDL seek to provoke a response in a manner virtually identical to that of the Islamist. Providing that response in the knee-jerk manner of UAF simply adds fuel to the fire.

One should also remember that the Nazis’ rise to power was not as simple as the Brownshirts marching around unchallenged; in the final democratic elections of the Weimar Republic, German society was massively polarised along ideologically extremist lines. The SA was seen as much as a response to the actions of Communist militias as it was a threat in its own right. Although one could argue that at that time there was little choice but to meet the threat with violence as a matter of basic self-defence, modern British society is fundamentally different from that of inter-war Germany, with an establishment, particularly within the police, army and judiciary, that harbours no sympathy for the far-right in any form. In that scenario extrajudicial violence has no justification whatsoever, and is simply counter-productive.

Unfortunately, so long as the self-gratifying tactics of “resistance” are venerated above hard strategic and political thinking about how to actually defeat the far right, no progress is going to be made.

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Political Irony, no. 94

September 18, 2009

in Humour, Politics

How strange it is that this week has seen abortion restriction campaigner Nadine Dorries MP defend a woman’s right to shoes.

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Jimmy Carter is Right

September 18, 2009

in Politics, United States

Jimmy Carter may well have overstated his case about the racial undertones of those criticising the President, but that doesn’t mean his argument has no merit. Yes, a lot of those who object to Obama’s politics do so from reasonable grounds, even if you happen to disagree with them. But there is a significant constituency who are opposed to the President for the simple reason that he is black. Carter’s criticism has relevance because those leading the populist opposition to Obama, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, have done virtually nothing to limit, contain or denounce this sinister fringe. To make matters worse, Rush Limbaugh is seen to be fanning these flames to pander to the racist constituency.

now we have Rush Limbaugh blaming Obama for black kids beating up a white kid on a school bus. This is what happens in “Obama’s America,” he said today on his radio show.

How low will these people go? Look, I think it’s important to talk about black male violence, or at least as important as it is to talk about any other important social trend. I don’t think we should be squeamish about discussing it in a responsible and fair-minded way, despite what the politically correct say. But good grief, Limbaugh is up to something wicked. He’s plainly trying to rally white conservatives into thinking that now that we have a black president, blacks are rising up to attack white kids! Christ have mercy, what is wrong with these people?

I won’t have anything to do with it, not even tangentially, which is why I took down the post. I can’t see this as anything other than Limbaugh deliberately trying to whip up racial fear and loathing of the president. This goes far, far beyond tough criticism of Obama. Does that man Limbaugh have any idea what rough beast he’s calling forth?

Have I suddenly become left-wing in saying this? No, just consistent. Earlier this year I made a pretty similar argument about the same thing happening on the left about Israel: an anti-semitic fringe exists that is either explained away or pandered to, but rarely denounced or distanced. This is pretty much the same argument, but applied to the American Right. In both cases, the majority of critics are not racist, but they invite such an accusation when they fail to get their own house in order and deal with the sinister underbelly of their movements. Those who do take them to task are also, unfortunately, not in the mainstream either.

Hat-Tip: Andrew Sullivan

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The Surreal Machinery of Death

September 17, 2009

in Law, Politics, United States

My opposition to the death penalty has always been a practical one, as I see no need in opposing something in principle if it is unworkable in practice. The reality of he death penalty is one largely divorced from the fantasies proponents entertain of it. This scene, from the recent botched execution of an Ohio murderer, neatly demonstrates the surreal an perverse reality of a judicial execution (emphasis my own):

After the team spent nearly an hour trying to find a workable vein, Broom [the inmate] tried to help them bring him a quicker death. He turned over on his left side, slid rubber tubing designed to clarify his veins up his left arm, then began moving the arm up and down while flexing and closing and opening his fingers. The execution team was able to access a vein, but it collapsed when technicians tried to insert saline fluid.

Broom then became visibly distressed, turning over on his back and covering his face with both hands. His torso heaved up and down and his feet shook, as he appeared to be crying. He wiped his eyes and was handed a roll of toilet paper, which he used to wipe his brow.

He sat up at the end of the bed and talked with his execution team.

The team had been asking Broom whether he wanted a break, but he chose to push ahead, as did the execution staff, prisons director Terry Collins said. Collins then insisted on a break and contacted the governor to let him know about the difficulties.

If this sort of situation doesn’t highlight the inherent absurdity of civilised societies trying to administer the death penalty in accordance with their values, I don’t know what does.