I’ve generated a fair amount of controversy in this column by my position against the looming war in Iraq. It hasn’t been a popular position, as my mail bears witness. Some readers have taken me to task for being “an out-of-touch” liberal, or a Vietnam-era peacenik. But as I’ve made clear many times, there is always a rebuttable presumption against war.
Given the mass death and destruction that wars cause, even good wars, the champions of any war should always have the burden of persuading the rest of us that the cost is worth it. And no such cost as war imposes on life (often innocent) and property is ever worth paying until all other avenues for peaceful resolution have been exhausted.
But in spite of my doubts – which are shared by a substantial minority of other Americans – it looks as if we are going to war. That being the case, my news organization will be covering it – from the trenches. I will have one reporter with the Marines in Kuwait, another with the Army in Kuwait and one more stationed on an aircraft carrier. By the time most of you read this, I will be in the Kingdom of Bahrain, whose friendly port is home to our navy in the Persian Gulf.
You see, the Pentagon has finally learned that when it comes to war correspondents, more means more. By allowing reporters to “embed” (a military term, now the Pentagon’s new buzzword) with U.S. forces, the hope is that rumor and innuendo about operations and casualties can be cut to a minimum, and that enemy claims about U.S. forces committing war crimes can be independently verified. And – perhaps the biggest challenge of all – that the traditional enmity and culture-gap between the media and the military can be closed. In short, more correspondents mean more information, more media-military simpatico, a better informed public and world.
Accordingly, the Pentagon has arranged for the embedding of about 500 reporters. Many of them have already received special training at government-run boot camps for the media – essentially crash courses in caution, prudence and combat procedures. The Pentagon, while preserving operational security, has also increased the opportunities for correspondents to report directly from the field. This has introduced something never before seen in military history – a media which has been specially trained by the military who will report from and travel with combat units, perhaps under fire. What it amounts to is the Pentagon’s recognition that in this Internet-savvy world, where misinformation can be as influential as good information, knowledge is a new battleground, as important as airstrips in Basra or a northern front south of the Turkish border. And the Pentagon has decided to cast its lot with openness and better disclosure.
The aims are laudable, but the proposition is risky. Many questions remain unanswered. By including civilian reporters, will there be degradation in the combat efficiency of military units? Can reporters be trusted to maintain operational security by not disclosing information which might imperil soldiers’ lives or the success of missions? Of course, there are the risks to reporters – but they, like the soldiers they will be covering, are volunteers, and have willingly assumed the dangers.
There is little question that the old Vietnam-era habits of reporting – where some reporters did little more than hang out in Saigon hotels and report on one another’s babblings over drinks – won’t happen in this war. Many courageous reporters did cover Vietnam on the battlefield, but they rarely traveled with units, shared their living conditions, boredom, field rations or angst. The result was an “Us-Them” mentality that poorly served the media, the military and, ultimately, the public.
I don’t know if the Pentagon’s experiment with more media openness will work – I certainly hope that it does. And I don’t know if journalists, once exposed to the hardship, fear and boredom that is often reported by men and women in combat, will want the experience again. But I do believe that both the press and the military will be forever changed by this new policy.
Reporters must always bring skepticism to the battlefield. It is the most necessary of attitudes to do our jobs. And the government will always want the story to be told its way, with successes maximized and mistakes minimized. But I suspect that this time, whatever a reporter’s position on the war, there won’t be any “us vs. them” mentality.
I’m guessing that if there aren’t many atheists in foxholes, neither are there many stupid arguments about “Why We Fight.” This time, the soldiers will fight, the reporters will report and the public will decide. This is, I believe, the way it ought to be.
