Posted on 12/27/2001 11:06:45 AM PST by SusanUSA
The quick and decisive victory in the Afghanistan war left some of the most celebrated liberals among the media elite scurrying for cover after having been egregiously wrong in declaring that the war was going badly in its earliest phases.
Take PBS's Dan Schorr for example. Just six days after the U.S. increased its air attacks on the Taliban defenses the old liberal advocate pontificated that "This is a war in trouble," during the PBS "Weekend Edition" show on October 27.
That was then. Now he's trying to explain his goof. Schorr told the Wall Street Journal's Matthew Rose "I had to eat a little crow. I have never been in Afghanistan and know nothing about Pashtuns and the rest of it."
That wasn't enough to stop him from commenting on a war in a country about which he now admits he knows barely anything.
Then there was the New York Time's leftist star R.W. Apple. According to Ross on October 31 he wrote "Signs of progress are sparse."
After the U.S. and its Afghani allies tore through Taliban defenses and took Kabul, he began singing a different tune.
Wrote Ross: After Kabul fell in mid-November, Mr. Apple noted the shift in mood. "What a difference a week makes," he wrote on Nov. 16 under the heading "Letter From Washington."
Apple now tells Ross his late-October column was "unduly pessimistic, but it was a reflection of the state of mind at the time. This is journalism, not history."
Excuse me, R.W., but it's anything but journalism. It's out and out liberal propaganda aimed at a president you do not believe has any right to be occupying the White House or capable of running a war.
Not to be outdone by a fellow N.Y. Times celebrity journalist, on Oct. 28 the often rather confused Celtic minx Maureen Dowd declared "Now, like the British and Russians before him, [President Bush] is facing the most brutish, corrupt, wily and patient warriors in the world, nicknamed dukhi, or ghosts, by flayed Russian soldiers who saw them melt away."
Marc Santora, a Dowd spokesman argued that there was a "moment of hesitation" in Washington that Dowd's column was generously designed to overcome.
Then there was the LA Times editorialist Jacob Heilbrunn who a few days later declared the first round of the war a failure: "The United States is not headed into a quagmire; it's already in one."
Then, on November 4 keeping up the drumfire he wrote, "There does not appear to be a political force capable of replacing the Taliban."
A mere five days after Heilbrunn's monstrous gaffe the Taliban's northern stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif was overwhelmed by Northern Alliance troops aided by U.S. bombing sorties. A few days later Kabul fell.
"Three weeks after that, the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar was taken," Ross notes, adding that, "In Bonn, Germany, various anti-Taliban forces from Afghanistan were negotiating a deal to set up an interim government."
Heilbrunn can't bring himself to admit how far off the mark he was. Ross writes that "he still isn't convinced that there is a viable political regime in place, especially if it doesn't have strong Western support. But he acknowledges that his earlier view was 'too saturnine. It may not be completely wrong, but I thought the Northern Alliance was a fairly fictitious force that would inevitably begin to feud,'" he told Ross. "I am cautiously optimistic, but that could be proven wrong, too."
Ross write that the quick victory destroyed a lot of myths favored by the media elite:
Myth #1: History repeats itself.
Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again. The history of the defeats Britain and later, the Soviets suffered in trying to overcome the Afghanis prove the U.S. is heading in the same direction. As in Vietnam, the U.S. will find itself mired in a quagmire battling tough guerrilla forces on unfamiliar terrain.
Myth #2: The Alleged Popularity of the Taliban regime.
The award for the most egregious example of this canard must surely go to freelance columnist Nicholas von Hoffman who wrote a 1,500-word critique of the U.S. effort entitled, "Why Are We in Afghanistan?" in the weekly New York Observer on Nov. 19.
"We are mapless, we are lost, and we are distracted by gusts of wishful thinking," to believe Afghans would switch sides so easily he wrote. "Moreover, as hellish as the Taliban are, it appears that the ordinary people of Afghanistan prefer them to the brigands and bandits with whom we've been trying to make common cause."
Notes Ross: "The week the column appeared, gleeful Kabul residents shaved their beards and displayed posters of Indian movie stars to show their delight in being rid of the Taliban."
Von Hoffman told Ross he still thinks declaring war was a bad idea -- because "there is by definition no way to say you've won" -- but he also pleads ignorance.
"Nobody knew anything about Afghanistan, myself included," von Hoffman says. "It turns out there really wasn't an army there. Turns out we probably still are clueless." He conceded that "in the prediction business, ... you almost never get it right."
Then what qualified you to write about a nation "Nobody knew anything about" including yourself," Nick?
Myth #3: High-altitude bombing couldn't win the war.
Critics warned that there weren't enough targets to justify bombing, and that bombing could turn major cities into death-traps for special forces operating within them.
Few commentators could match NBC News military analyst and former Army intelligence analyst William Arkin who went on CNBC on Oct. 10 and told Geraldo Rivera: "I think sooner or later we're going to have to bite the bullet and get in there in a big way or we're going to have to admit some kind of a defeat."
And just 19 days later he was back with Rivera warning that a mere 70 bombing missions a day in a place the size of Texas weren't having the desired effects on the ground. He then told Chris Matthews of CNBC's "Hardball" on Oct. 23 that the war could last "into the winter, and beyond."
His alibi for being so far off the mark: "I'm doing reporting here and people seemed to be nervous and disgruntled about the way the war was going and that's something that needs to be aired," he told Ross.
Myth #4: The Afghans are lousy allies.
The allegedly ragtag Northern Alliance controls just 10 percent of the country "through a loose and fractious affiliation of tribal leaders." They would never be able to unite and battle the Taliban.
On Nov. 12 Newsweek portrayed a demoralized Northern Alliance unit wearing running shoes, eating rice, beans and scraps of mutton, and with no easy ways to communicate. Wrote Jon Meacham, the magazine's' managing editor, the story "reflected the reality on the ground at the time and raised questions a lot of people were wondering about in Washington and Afghanistan."
Added the leftist New Republic, "Of all the proxies the United States has enlisted over the past half-century, the Northern Alliance may be the least prepared to attain America's battlefield objectives." The magazine said that ground troops were needed to take Kabul.
Peter Beinart, the New Republic's editor, now concedes that the magazine underestimated the Northern Alliance's capabilities.
Even after Kabul fell, "experts" appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Nov. 23 saw little hope for the forming of a unified government. "I think we have to be very careful, Larry, not to get our hopes up," warned Bob Schieffer, host of CBS News's "Face the Nation."
He now tells Ross "I think I meant we had to be patient ... We will know when we have won, but we are not there yet."
Myth #5: The Muslim world will explode.
Muslims the world over will be infuriated, the masses will rise up, and get rid of leaders such as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and create turmoil in the Persian Gulf states. President Bush's comments about capturing Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive" can only deepen the anger.
Columnist Katha Pollitt, in the Nov. 19 issue of the ultra-leftist Nation magazine wrote gloomily: "Thousands of new Taliban fans and recruits for anti-American suicide missions? A protracted war with a determined, hardy foe that draws in Central Asia, enrages the Muslim masses and destabilizes Pakistan or Indonesia or another country to be named later?"
She now tells Ross that it's a good idea to be cautious, especially when war and foreign policy are involved, and that "a lot of innocent people" have been killed so far. "Nobody knows the future, but I don't think we've seen the end of the story. People are talking about war on Iraq."
Finally, in an Oct. 15 commentary on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," the all-knowing and all-wise Dan Schorr, said, "Whatever success the Anglo-American alliance is having pounding the Taliban into dust, it's having little success winning the hearts and minds of Islamic peoples... Most alarming of all, anti-American feeling is rising in Pakistan, where the Taliban came from, threatening the stability of the Musharraf regime," he opined.
It would appear that their real target, G.W. Bush, showed by his conduct of the war just how biased and wrong his leftist critics in the media were in warning America that he was leading the nation into a humiliating and long-lasting Vietnam-like quagmire.
The media has never understood the reasons for our defeat in Vietnam. JFK and LBJ bought into the belief that war was too important to be left to skilled generals. Both LBJ and Nixon thought super bright WHIZ kids or Germans accents named Henry should run our military strategy. Robert MacNamara was the chief WHIZ kid for LBJ. He had run Ford Motor company and knew how to make cars at a profit. He hadn't a clue about how to win wars. Henry Kissenger and Eva Braun have one thing in commmon. They both could understand Hitler wiht out the services of a translator. They were also equally good military strategists.
Time after time in Nam the military view was dismissed and the latest intellectual fad war theory was followed. It was a disastor.
Bush Sr, an experienced combat veteran, did it right in the gulf a decade ago. He defined the goals and told two military pros named Colin Powell and Norm Swartzkoff to get it done. The military will always pick the plan with the highest chance of success at the lowest cost in American lives. That is very natural. The military wants to win and they don't want to die. In case you haven't noticed armies that lose tend to die a lot.
Dubya to no big surprise decided to follow in the footsteps of his Dad rather than LBJ and Nixon. And as it did for his Dad, the strategy of picking good commanders and delegating the autority to fight as they see fit worked. It is the one thing that Lincoln, Roosevelt and the Bush family have in commmon. The Bushes and Roosevelt have a better track record at picking commanders than did Abe Lincoln.
Wining a war is rather simple. It takes ground troops to win a war. The media does understand that fact. What they fail to understand is that if the air attack is good enough the ground attack doesn't have to be all that good. And if there is no air defense, the best ground troops are not worth much of anything. It is the lesson that Hitler taught the world when his airforce backing Franko defeated a better ground force in Spain prior to world war II. They failed to understand that even a corporal named Hitler knew he could not defeat England with out air superiority. Churchill, Eisenhower, and MacArthur have all expounded on the need for air superiority. It did not dawn on teh media that the Taliban had ZERO AIR power after the first day.
The other fact is the media believs that Russian troops and more importantly Russian tactics are a winning formula. They are not. Sadam used Russian tactics and they weren't even close to being match to ours. Again they fail to understand that total air makes total ground easy.
The media is convinced that the Taliban defenders were motivated well trained troops. But they fail to understand that even a supurb ground force can't beat a pretty poor gound force with a superb air force behind it.
Let me put it this way, when Allah goes up against B-52's bet on the B-52s. And as to the media, they are what they always are Clueless. Just remember this true statement about the press. The guys who run the presses could write the news. But the guys that write the news cannot run the presses.
Journalists love to style journalism as "the first draft of history." It is not that, not at all. Say rather, journalism is the first draft of the Democratic Party platform.
Bush Sr, an experienced combat veteran, did it right in the gulf a decade ago.
I wonder, if he and his advisors had it to do again, would they finish off Saddam? In retrospect, I think we should have at least backed the rebel groups opposed to his regime, as we did with the Northern and Eastern Alliances.
Dubya to no big surprise decided to follow in the footsteps of his Dad rather than LBJ and Nixon. And as it did for his Dad, the strategy of picking good commanders and delegating the autority to fight as they see fit worked.
Right! One mark of a wise leader is his willingness to step back and allow others to do that at which they are best. I shudder to think of a "micro-managing" Gore as President during this time.
Thank you. Just stay out of the tunnel. *L*
What does this mean?
Then how come we are still sending toops over there ? How come we are still dropping bombs ?
We haven't defeated the Taliban? Where are they?
In Pakistan. I think the more important question is : where is bin Laden, he's the one responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
I'm not criticizing the US response to the 9/11 attack, I just think it is dangerous and premature to declare victory. Both Rumsfeld and GW have cautioned that there is still a long way to go in this thing.
What does this mean?
It's my addition to the title they wrote. It means I was not surprised they were wrong. I doubt they were either.
One definition of defeat is "to overcome". As a government, the Taliban has been overcome. We are not yet victorious in the "War on Terror" but in this battle we have defeated the Taliban's goal to remain in power.
I hope I didn't give the impression that I think we are at, or even near, the end. I acknowledge that this article is discussing how mistaken (purposely?) the Leftist media were on only one of many objectives in this "war". There are many.
I hope one of those objectives will be that we hang tough with our demands that any Taliban fighters be found, confined, and tried. That is (I think) why the bombs and troops are still being actively used. It looks as though our "allies" are attempting to say "Thanks but we'll take it from here." I think allowing that would be a mistake.
What a crummy excuse. It explains only why his prediction was wrong. It does not explain why he made a prediction in the first place when he admittedly knew "nothing about Pashtuns and the rest of it".
Here's a suggestion, Dan. The next time you're reporting on something and you lack information, try telling people that. There's nothing wrong with saying "it will be difficult to make any predictions because we know so little about the Pashtuns." You could even get in a little dig at your competition by saying "and those people who claim they do are fooling themselves." People actually appreciate honesty, and you won't have to eat any crow. But then responsible reporting like that wouldn't fit your agenda, would it?
The Democrats promote and the Repulicans forget that there were serious threats to impeach President Bush if he exceeded his congressional permission to ONLY remove Sadam from Kuwait.
You may recall that Bush went to the United Nations to get approval for the attack on Kuwait before he went to congress. He was certain as was I that he could not have even gotten the Congress to approve removing Sadam from Kuwait, if he had not gotten the United Nations approval first. You forget it was easier to get the leftist UN to approve the attack on Sadam than it was our own House and Senate.
Don't you remember everyone fron Mitchell, to Daschle, to Kennedy screaming give sanctions a try first. They paraded every military democrat on every TV program telling us how it woiuld be another Viet Nam?
Every Democrat and nearly all of the Media was demanding that we only do sanctions against Sadam for a year or two. They said if the sactions don't work then maybe they would give Bush the right do something else about Sadam.
Don't you remember Ross Perot on Larry King saying that Bush Sr. had only prepared for 10,000 American casualties? Perot said if we attacked Sadam we were likely going to have 50,000 badly wounded troops and Bush was committing a criminal act by only prepairing for 10,000. Perot kept saying that lots of our men would die for lack of medical treatment at the hands of the nearly undefeatable Sadam. Perot an Senator Dodd kept telling us Sadam had the worlds 4th largest army. Trained in desert warfare. You may recall that we actually only had 138 casualties nothing near the 10,000 planned for. Afterwords a Democrat controlled Senate Committe accused Bush of wasting huge sums of money on medical supplies. They said he was spending taxpawer money with his "cronies in the medical supply field". The supplies were never used. What would they have said if he had prepared for 50,000 people to be hurt?
Lots of us were going to die to protect the interests of "BIG OIL" was what the Democrats were screaming. How many times did we hear that it was all about BIG OIL. Americans should not die for BIG OIL. they said... over and over and over. It was not about Sadam.. it was about BIG OIL they said.
American approval for removing Sadam from Kuwait never reached 50 percent before we attacked. If Bush had done what you reccomend he would have been impeached and convicted.
I find it amazing how easy it is to Democrats to trash Bush Sr. for not doing enough to Sadam, when they didn't want to do anything except let Sadam keep Kuwait and prepare to take the Saudi Oil Fields. If we had followd the Democrats plan on Sadam, today he would have more wealth than the United States, he would control most of the worlds oil. He would have more nukes than the Soviet Union had at its peak, and gasoline would be 50 dollars a gallon. Our unemployemnt rate would be 45 percent.
Bush did not take out Sadam because the democratic congress forbid him from doing so. But even Bush Sr. knows better than to say anything. The Press would print in foot high letters that Bush Sr. is trying to shift blame for his failure onto the Democrats.
All he can hope for in our media world is that a handful of people will remember the truth. The handful is indeed very small.
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