more on Why the Press Failed

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dave Hughes <dave () oldcolo com>
Date: July 18, 2004 1:21:27 PM EDT
To: 'Dewayne-Net Technology List' <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>, 'Dave 
Farber' <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [Dewayne-Net] Why the Press Failed

Has it occurred to anybody now so blithely second guessing and
criticizing every aspect of this Administration's (and the Press's)
dealing with 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq that this is a changed world,
including the nature of warfare and armed political conflicts? (why did
the Press ALSO fail utterly during the 8 year Clinton Administration as
repeated Embassy bombings, growth of Al Quaeda should have waken up to
those global changes and trends which simply 'peaked' on 9/11).

38 Years ago while I worked as an Army officer doing War College level
of analyses, directly for Secretary of Defense McNamara during
yet-another-different-kind-of-war (Vietnam) a handful of us predicted
that future conflicts involving the United States would be irregular,
insurgent, revolutionary, terroristic, decentralized, rather than
Classic Clauswitzian. AND we saw that one entirely new thing that was
going to have to be dealt with by means far beyond 'just' military was
the coming 'miniaturization' of technology and global data
communications which was going to favor the insurgent and radical
(whether religious, ethnic, or political) FAR MORE than it would
industrial nations and conventional military powers such as the US. The
Stinger-type missile, shaped charge (RPG), advanced explosives,
encrypted global communications, and germ and biological war agents
hidden inside of non-uniformed legions of radical for whom the archaic
and historically rooted Geneva Conventions and quaint Laws of Land
Warfare were virtually inapplicable.

So all this current handwringing AS IF a simple change of
Administrations and a little introspection by the Press, is going to
magically return everything to 'normal', is the height of domestic
head-in-the-sandism. We are already a quarter of a century into a 100
Years War which is going - regardless of who is in the White House or
how many Pulitzers are handed out - more to resemble the chaos,
banditry, war lordism, political (including religious) extremism of the
Middle - shall we say the 'Dark' - Ages than anything since the 1800s
and the rise of the Nation State system.

I hate to say I told you so, but if you just read the speech I drafted,
and Sec McNamara delivered on May 18th, 1966, to the American Society of
Newspaper Editors, where he laid it all out - the future of world
conflicts, and they STILL didn't get it, I don't know why anyone should
expect them get it now no matter who is the Editor of the New York
Times. Or whether the Press's 'watchdog' role will make government OR
the public, any smarter than they are now. The capacity for American
self-deception is staggering.

Dave Hughes
dave () oldcolo com


[Note: This item comes from reader Robert Berger.  DLH]

> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
> Date: July 17, 2004 5:47:02 PM PDT
> To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber
> <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Why the Press Failed
>
> Why the Press Failed
>     By Orville Schell
>     TomDispatch
> http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1543
>      Friday 16 July 2004



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