MEDIA BAFFLED BY 'WESTERN WAY OF WAR'

Univ of Dayton ^ | April 8, 2003 | Prof. Larry Schweikart

[Varmint Al]

MAINSTREAM MEDIA BAFFLED BY 'WESTERN WAY OF WAR'
By Prof. Larry Schweikart
Any student would be fortunate to have professor Schweikart as an instructor.

[Varmint Al]

This quote by Thomas Sowell does not apply here.

"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive." -- Thomas Sowell

[LS]

Hahah. Thanks for re-posting Al. Sometimes, when I'm grading 100 essay exams, I think I'm underpaid. But then, when I have weekends, evenings, and parts of the summer off, I think I'm way overpaid.

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[dvan]

"replace network anchors", fantastic idea!!!

[Tealc]

You owe me a keyboard, pal. :)

[Cordova Belle]

This is a wonderful article, and it deserves a BTTT.

A must-read for every FReeeper!

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

baffled

[cgbg]

The media's quagmire deepened when it failed to understand the straightforward explanations patiently delivered by Generals Vincent Brooks and Tommy Franks. The follow-up questions at the CENTCOM briefings indicated that either the journalists deliberately ignored the information they were handed, or worse, utterly failed to understand it.

We have seen this over and over again:

--A refusal to engage in a serious investigation of the death of Vince Foster and deliberately ignoring evidence which contradicted the media's "it must have been suicide" views.

--Ditto for the Oklahoma City bombing's Middle Eastern connection

--Ditto for all the witness testimony on TWA 800

We are dealing with a media which decides on its agenda and then culls out information which is in conflict with that agenda.

This is a deep and insidious form of bias which has made the major media useless for those who wish to be truly informed.

My message to the media is very simple--I don't like your agenda, I don't want to hear about your agenda. If you can't play it straight then just shut up.

[kitkat]

Thanks for this repeat. It was definitely worth the read.

[Varmint Al]

Sorry about the duplicate. I did a search, but didn't find it. The op-ed had been pasted into a long thread and it is so well stated that I thought it needed its own thread.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[Clara Lou]

If this was posted before, I never saw it. What a great piece! I'm glad you reposted it.

[Gamecock]

This deserves to be posted, not just linked. What happens if they take it down?

April 8, 2003

Op-Ed: MAINSTREAM MEDIA BAFFLED BY 'WESTERN WAY OF WAR'
By Larry Schweikart

(Op-Ed pieces are the opinion of the author and do not reflect an official University of Dayton position.)

We are witnessing the most recent iteration of the "Western way of war," a term developed by Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor at California State University, Fresno, about a distinct style of combat used by Western armies over time. Hanson identifies a culture of combat in which predominantly free individuals, possessing private property rights and civil rights, engage in a fighting style that depends heavily on both unit discipline and individual initiative; which simultaneously seeks close combat yet employs standoff weapons; which has unprecedented lethality; and which pursues unconditional surrender by the enemy.

It also involves a paradox in which Western societies, with their value on the individual and human life, fight with unparalleled ferocity and willingly take high short-term casualties to effect a long-term result. They also risk the lives of many to rescue the one -- a characteristic not seen in non-Western combat (one only has to watch Black Hawk Down to appreciate the differences in styles).

Finally, in the West, peace is viewed as the norm, not an aberration. Consequently, breaches of peace are met with initial reluctance to use force, even to the point that Western societies frequently engage in denial and self-deception about the ultimate need for force. However, once the decision to act is made, overwhelming force is wielded to end conflicts quickly.

"Iraqi Freedom" perfectly conforms to the "Western way of war," which has totally baffled the network anchors and newsroom reporters who do not grasp it. But it is not lost on the so-called "embeds," who witnessed this war-fighting style up close.

The result is that Reuters, CNN, most of the old-line broadcast networks and the New York Times, largely because of their liberal bias, have drifted into a quagmire of their own. Because of their aversion to making "value judgments" about anything, including military success, the mainstream media equated a terrorist pickup truck, armed with a half-a-dozen poorly trained irregulars with a .30-caliber machine gun, to a squad of Marines. This is, of course, absurd. We never even fought the worst Iraqi troops -- they quickly and quietly left. When coalition forces encountered the best Iraqi units, they have killed Saddam's forces by the truckload, according to one report.

The media's quagmire deepened when it failed to understand the straightforward explanations patiently delivered by Generals Vincent Brooks and Tommy Franks. The follow-up questions at the CENTCOM briefings indicated that either the journalists deliberately ignored the information they were handed, or worse, utterly failed to understand it.

From the onset of hostilities, allied commanders, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have consistently told the press exactly how the campaign would unfold. In a nutshell, the Rumsfeld/Franks plan resembled Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "Island Hopping" strategy in World War II in the Pacific, where, it is worth noting, MacArthur had the lowest casualty ratio-to-troops employed of any general in any theater of the entire war.

The Rumsfeld/Franks plan was obvious to anyone wanting to understand it: bypass strong points, isolating them and allowing them to run out of food, ammo, and above all, severing their command and control from Baghdad; blast northward along twin lines of attack so as to draw out the Iraqi Republican Guard into an open fight; and seal off all avenues of escape (or reinforcement) for Saddam and his regime; and topple Saddam's oppressive government.

Journalists' incessant questions, both at the briefings and in the studios, about the coalition's "threatened" or "overextended" supply lines were nonsense. The supply-line issue was baseless: coalition forces, in a pinch, could always have been temporarily re supplied by air; but there was never any danger of outstripping supply lines because American aircraft controlled the skies, and coalition spies and special operations people dominated the intelligence functions. Nevertheless, for nearly a week, news headlines kept harping on "insufficient force." (Someone might want to tell that to the Iraqi "elite" Republican Guard!)

The media's staggering inability to grasp the Western way of war has left it re-fighting Vietnam, or, worse, World War I, and the pundits should have known better, if for no other reason than our stunning success in Afghanistan. Does anyone recall the "quagmire" alerts then? After only a week, journalists were complaining that some of the northern cities had not fallen, and that American fighters could not handle the intense cold of the mountains. Only a few weeks later, Taliban and al-Qaeda thugs were scurrying into the hills as fast as they could, thoroughly routed by an "insufficient" American force.

As Hanson points out, rarely do Western armies outnumber their enemy, but they always place superior force and firepower in theater. Typically, the Western way of war relies on superior training and discipline -- mixed with the individual initiative inherent in free societies and simply not present in un-free armies -- that results in an unparalleled success rate.

How often did commanders in the field boast about their units' superb training and about the cohesion of "the plan?" And is it not telling that individual commanders in the field, acting on their own initiative, and not Tommy Franks or Donald Rumsfeld, ordered the rescued of Pfc. Jessica Lynch? Yet again, the mainstream media missed it, to the point that it virtually ignored training as a key element of the combat situation, even when the GIs themselves repeatedly cited their superior preparation as key to the low casualty ratios and to battlefield victory.

Long after U.S. troops have departed Baghdad in victory, and turned Iraq over to a new, democratic government, the media will still be stuck in its own "Vietnam quagmire" of false perceptions and flawed assumptions. The mainstream media's only salvation may be to replace network anchors and newsroom reporters with reporters who were with the troops, and who saw the Western way of war in operation. To those "embeds," there is no question that the war has proceeded on schedule, on plan, and to a victorious and just conclusion.

-- Larry Schweikart, a professor of history at the University of Dayton, teaches a course in "Technology and the Culture of War" and has written program histories of the United States Navy's Trident Submarine System ("Trident," Southern Illinois University Press, 1984) and the USAF's National Aerospace Plane System ("The Quest for the Orbital Jet," USAF, 1998)

-30-

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[driftless]

The ignorance of the left regarding warfare is most evident on wretched web-sites like DU where you have many of their morons claiming that if it weren't for our vastly superior tanks and planes, the Iraqis would have slaughtered us. This view is contradicted by the Mogadishu situation where you had a small contingent of vastly outnumbered Army Rangers, with no air, large guns, or tank support, killing several thousand Somali terrorists while only losing eighteen dead. Most liberals are probably like Maureen Dowd: excellent about the latest fashions from Paris, but totally ignorant about our armed forces capabilities.

[semaj]

Good article. Thanks.

[Bluntpoint]

CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC feel cheated. They all added reporters to their payrolls. Problem: Most were assigned to to count body bags full of U.S. soldiers.

[longtermmemmory]

My question from the leftist media quagmire. Will CNN pay a price for withholding information? CNN has an office in Cuba, why did they not report about the people tried and executed in ONE WEEK! CNN seems to be getting away with their selective reporting of Hussein's slaughter. I have even seen the anti-american newsreader on the american headline news that they have on the broadcast version of late night CNN.

[SamAdams76]

And is it not telling that individual commanders in the field, acting on their own initiative, and not Tommy Franks or Donald Rumsfeld, ordered the rescued of Pfc. Jessica Lynch?

That is one big difference right there. U.S. field commanders are empowered to make decisions on their own in order to adjust to rapidly changing battle conditions. Iraqi field commanders are used to taking orders from the top and when they are on their own and out of communication with Saddam, they are crippled. Of course, there are many factors but this is an important one.

[longtermmemmory]

Isn't it individual rights which are a threat to the euro way of social engineering?

[Gamecock]

That is one big difference right there. U.S. field commanders are empowered to make decisions on their own in order to adjust to rapidly changing battle conditions.

Take it down a few notches more, we train our youngest soldiers to become leaders, to take initiative. I have served as an escort officer for deligations of foreign officers and civilian leaders. Many are clueless about the NCO corps. They cannot comprehend what an NCO does. They have no idea of the authority given to a second lieutenant. Our youngest NCOs and junior officers impress these folks to no end! That is our secret! We train our soldiers, from top to bottom, to think and take initiative!

[Blood of Tyrants]

I don't think that Iraq managed to put even one aircraft into the sky. Does anyone know of such an event?

[Skywalk]

Well, remember lots of Somalia casualties were inflicted by the choppers with the chain guns and small rockets. That and later, as .50 cal-equipped vehicles went in, that took out even more.

Not taking anything away from our boys, just correcting you a bit.

[Valin]

Flag

[antaresequity]

Hey Varmint Al,

It is worth a repost...but if you notice poster LS is the author, he did post it once as an article, and has responded to your post above...

He is the professor who is paid to much, to little etc

[Varmint Al]

Thanks for the heads up. I also posted Prof. Larry Schweikart's op-ed on a couple of hunting forums, my email list, and sent the link to Rush, since I am a Rush 24/7 member. I would like to hear Rush read from the op-ed Monday morning.

Dittos Rush... from Varmint Al

[gonzo]

"...The ignorance of the left regarding warfare is most evident on wretched web-sites like DU where you have many of their morons claiming that if it weren't for our vastly superior tanks and planes, the Iraqis would have slaughtered us. This view is contradicted by the Mogadishu situation where you had a small contingent of vastly outnumbered Army Rangers, with no air, large guns, or tank support, killing several thousand Somali terrorists while only losing eighteen dead..."

We can thank the klintoons for no air, guns, or tank support, but I did like the Commanders' orders during our withdrawal, a little-reported event. He ordered: "Kill anyone that comes on this beach", and we did!

Those shit-heads lost half their so-called Army, and they're worse-off than ever................FRegards

[driftless]

Thank you, I stand corrected. I should have remembered that we did have choppers providing firepower. However I do stand by my main assertion that in anything resembling a so-called fair fight (obviously no such thing in war), our troops soldier for soldier, and Brit or Israeli troops, are far superior to anything our enemies can put up. I could have the same equipment as Andre Agassi, or make him play with my own inferior rackets, but head to head he would destroy me even if had to use a whisk broom.

[Varmint Al]

I got this in an email. Anyone else heard about this????

I am sure that all of you heard about the sandstorm in Iraq recently
(the worst in 100 years some say) and the drenching rain that
followed the next day. Our troops were bogged down and couldn't move
effectively.

The media was already wondering if the troops were in a "quagmire" and
dire predictions of gloom and doom came from the left wing media. What they
didn't report was that yesterday, after the weather had cleared, the
Marine group that was mired the worst looked out at the plain they were just
about to cross. What did they see?

Hundreds if not thousands of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines had been
uncovered by the wind and then washed off by the rain. If they had
proceeded as planned, many lives would have undoubtedly been lost.

As it was, they simply drove around them and let the demolition teams
destroy them. Thank you, God, for protecting our young men and women!

[Night Hides Not]

You have my vote for Post of the Day.

Our military's training is heavily based on being able to assume the role of your squad/platoon leader should they be taken out. As you said, taking the initiative is stressed.

When I was a Chaparral/Vulcan Platoon Leader (late 70's), my squad leaders were mostly Corporals and Buck Sergeants. Thanks to my inexperience, we flunked our first ARTEP (training evaluation). From then on, it was kick ass and take names.

During NATO Tac Evals, our battery ALWAYS put the base over the top in Base Survivability.

Even with our meager Carter-era defense budget, we'd figure out a way to get our training accomplished. All of this new technology is great, but the defense dollar that goes the farthest is the dollar spent on training.

It is time for Charley Rangel and the others to STFU about a draft. Our all-volunteer force, for all of its warts and PC, has proven itself on the field of battle, and the results speak for themselves!