Vietnam lessons and the press

Kevin Anderson, writing for BBC News Online in Washington, claims US media grapples with Iraq horrors in this article.

April was the deadliest month for the US in Iraq. And on the home front, the battle is also heating up over coverage of the war and whether showing the horrors of battle undermines the war effort.

Since Vietnam first sent the horrors of conflict into the living rooms of America, the US government and military has tried to carefully manage the media during times of war.

The US military learned it's lessons well from Vietnam; training, equipment and tactics all vastly improved. The speed coupled with the reduction in loss of life on both sides, with which the Iraq war was won attest to this. Still war is a horrible endeavor and as I have said many times, rightly so. For it is the horror that stops us practicing it at the drop of a hat.

US politicians learned their lessons as well from Vietnam and let the military run the war in Iraq. Which no doubt contributed to the success of the war.

Some of the press have learned some lessons as well. The news coverage of the Iraq war was far different than the coverage of Vietnam.

Vietnam was the first "televised" war; Iraq had the first "embedded" reporters. The difference was astounding. Both pro and anti administration news organizations were able to travel with and report on military actions without censorship. The press were limited to not reporting on exact locations or tactics so as not to endanger the troops.

This enabled the public to see for themselves who was telling the truth and who was lying. The BBC's disgraced reporter, Andrew Gilligan, in a live video report countering US claims that they had taken Baghdad airport, stated he had been to the airport and the US military was nowhere near it. He later confessed he was nowhere near the airport, having been kept back some 5 miles by the fighting. In contrast, some US news channels showed crowds of Iraqis cheering and waving as US troops rolled in.

What the press haven't fully learned is how much they can aid the enemy and betray the people the US is trying to help.

The following relates to the Tet offensive in Vietnam on Jan 31 1968.

Gen. Giap had thrown some 70,000 troops into a strategic gamble that was also designed to overwhelm 13 of the 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. But Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Viet Cong troops in South Vietnam. Yet that was not the way it was reported in U.S. and other media around the world.

As Arnaud de Borchgrave, writing in Newsmax relates:

Viet Cong units not only did not reach a single one of their objectives - except when they arrived by taxi at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, blew their way through the wall into the compound and, guns blazing, made it into the lobby before they were wiped out by U.S. Marines. But they lost some 50,000 killed and at least as many wounded.

The same is true of Falluja today and to some extent, Iraq as a whole. Iraq has a population of roughly 25 million and Falluja approximately 250,000. Compared to the overall situation in Iraq, Falluja is more like an LA riot, except the weapons are more deadly. The press would have you believe Falluja is the whole Iraq war all over again. Falluja has been Iran and Syria's Tet offensive; and it has failed. There are reports of local citizens battling the insurgents and providing intelligence to the US troops. And where is the insurgent's "Gen. Giap", Al-Sadr? He fled to Najaf where he is holed up and losing support both from his own people and Tehran. See earlier post here.

Mr. Anderson illustrates how the BBC press have not learned their lessons despite the Gilliagan debacle that forced the two top men at the BBC out.

As the violence and chaos increases, supporters of the war and of the administration fear that coverage could turn public opinion not only against the war but also against President George W Bush.

By using such phrases as "as the violence and chaos increases", Mr. Anderson tries to portray the whole of Iraq in such a state when the exact opposite is true. Except for the Sunni triangle the rest of Iraq is on the rebuilding path.

Mr. Anderson, they don't fear the coverage as you put it, they "understand" it; they learned their lessons from Vietnam.

Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army said:

America lost the war, "because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."

Mr. Anderson, it would behoove you and the BBC to learn these lessons on behalf of the Iraqi people.