Third, there is the problem of new global communications — another advantage for insurgents who want to exhaust the West. It is often said that had the weeks in the hedgerows after D-Day (June to late July 1944) or the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944 to January 1945) been televised each hour on CNN or Fox — with real-time email and cell phone communications with beleaguered soldiers in the field — we would never have won either battle. Both victories saw horrific casualties as a result of intelligence failures and sheer incompetence, but our culpable generals counted on enough of a window of public ignorance to rectify their mistakes and continue the battle.
None of these developments means that we won’t win in Iraq, stabilize the nascent democracy there, and help bring prosperity to the heart of the Middle East. But we should accept that in a world of increasing Western material comfort, it is becoming far harder for postmodern societies like the United States and Europe to fight ever more premodern foes.
Perhaps.
But remember that today's media has not prevented us from fighting the Iraq War 4-1/2 years after the invasion. I am shocked at our persistence, quite honestly. The 3-year rule of Americans getting impatient for victory certainly hasn't led us to retreat from Iraq or even scale back.
And remember that the technology that brought Vietnam into our homes and undermined our morale consisted of taped footage on the evening news and color photos in the afternoon paper! That was far from our 24/7 news machines that push information at us. Yet our country is holding up better than the America of late 1969.
How can this be? Well, we endured the first 24/7 news environment in 1991. But luckily, Desert Storm was over quickly. With our rapid victory, we were made giddy with the flood of news coverage about high tech gadgets rather than demoralized by endless car bombs. The Internet today adds to the deluge, but not to the same degree that 24/7 news in 1991 was a leap over nightly news and afternoon papers in 1968.
I think that the first war in any new generation of news is the most vulnerable to being undermined by the new sensations and speed unleashed by that generation's technology. But then we get used to it. By the next war we are familiar with the style and pace of news. Would much of our political class and home front be increasingly overwhelmed by Iraq car bombs if our exposure was limited to the Vietnam era's news coverage of five minutes during the evening news once per day and a few color photos in the daily paper? I dare say, no. But at the time, it was deadly for home morale.
I wrote over a year ago about the impact of the telegraph on the Crimean War:
This article on the Crimean War of 150 years ago notes, rightly:
For the first time, improved technology allowed news to reach home very quickly, and the telegraph reports sent by William Russell, war correspondent of the Times of London enraged British public opinion to the exten[t] that the government of Lord Aberdeen fell, the first time the condition of the fighting men had aroused such emotions.
Fascinating. And that was real incompetence and poor equipment unlike the ridiculous charges aired today about the best trained, equipped, and led force in the history of our country.
The first wired war. Add photographs for the American Civil War. Add sensationalism with heavy competition for newspaper readers and profits for the Spanish-American War. Add silent film for World War I. Add talking movies for World War II [UPDATE: and radio]. Add taped television for Vietnam. Add 24-hour cable news for Desert Storm. Add the Internet for Kosovo. Add blogs for Afghanistan and Iraq. Each step up overwhelmed the sensory inputs of a public used to the prior modes of communication. And each provided new challenges for coping with public perceptions.
As the public gets used to each step up in speed and impact, the impact will wear off. And then when the next leap occurs, we will long for the good old days when the Internet allowed us to leisurely analyze the events of war and draw reasoned conclusions.
There is little new under the sun.
My only question is what comes next? Will the home front participate in the war and not just observe it 24/7 and report on it, too?
Our military is adopting "reach back" processes that allow units in the field to access services being provided by units at home when once those units had to deploy with the unit itself to provide the service. Will this ability translate into a more direct impact on the war by our civilians? Will bloggers shadow units in battle, ready to call up data or satellite photos for the unit? Will these observers instantly defend the unit against charges of war crimes by calling up pictures and images of "their" unit? Will friends and allies at home FedEx needed supplies directly to their family member or adopted unit?
Even as fewer and fewer military personnel go into battle because of our technological advances, perhaps our technology will recreate the nation in arms without mobilizing the population for direct support of the war effort.
Of course, it will require a government willing and able to rally the home front behind such a war effort. That has been lacking in this administration for this war. Which makes the continued sufficient support for the Iraq campaign all the more amazing.
