War and Imagery
War is the major political event that inspires public interest and emotion. People care about war because it personally affects their lives. Not only is the public affected in political terms, but neighbors and family members are sent to foreign lands for the cause of freedom for all people, which bring the war home in personal terms.
As stated previously, to win the war the Pentagon would have to win the war at home, contradictory to the failures of the administrations in Vietnam. The political justifications of the war were expressed in the analogies centering on the persons of Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler. This was a clever move on the administration. Americans overwhelmingly agreed the aggression of Saddam Hussein needed to be checked, and equating him to Hitler was a logical persuasion to the American public. Public support became a major asset to the President. Comparisons of the two began a month before the Iraqi invasion, and the administration used the media in promoting Saddam's image. Just as the case with Hitler, analogies were made in which diplomatic relations were not possible with Saddam. Hitler broke his pact with Russia shortly before the German invasion eastward and that was compared to Saddam not recognizing and abiding by the United Nations sanctions.
The administration took the stance this was a conflict of good versus evil, the same themes utilized against Hitler and the Japanese during World War II. Prior to the invasion, Americans were not aware of Saddam except for his war with Iran. Even though the United States had supported Saddam in that war, the administration had to cast him as evil as Hitler in order to gain public support. The comparison worked, as it became conventional political thought to send troops to the Gulf to stop Saddam's advance. Between August 2 and January 15 the Washington Post and New York Times published 228 stories, editorials, or columns, which invoked the Hussein-Hitler analogy. [16] President Bush was the single greatest source for the analogy in this period, as appealing to the image of Saddam as Hitler became a daily occurrence. There was no articulate opposition to the policy of sending U.S. forces to the region, and most importantly Democratic leaders supported the policy. [17] Any Democratic criticism failed to undermine any public support for Bush's strategy.
The President decided to capture on the positive results and sent additional troops to the region. These reinforcements were critical because it turned the defensive pose into an offensive stance. This could not have been done without the vast support of the American people. Any Democratic opposition consisted of calls to use more diplomacy or economic sanctions rather than force. Significantly, no important Democratic spokesman urged the President to withdraw forces from Kuwait. The Democratic criticism failed to undermine any public support for the policy. The majority of the public affirmed that it was right to send troops to the Gulf. This was a testament to the power of the administration to mobilize public opinion through the mass media.
This was a reversal from the ruin of Vietnam. Today we hear terms such as "exit strategy" utilized during conflicts. This stems from the Vietnam era where there was no exit strategy. In fact, there appeared to be no military strategy at all. In Desert Storm, American and coalition commanders predicted up to 50,000 casualties for the coalition forces. [18] Commanders also predicted the use of chemical warfare by the Iraqis and the possibility of Saddam striving to induce Israel into the war. [19] With these concerns, the coalition commanders, led by General Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command developed a strategy of annihilation for a quick and decisive end to the war. This strategy would play out on televisions across America.
For more than two weeks CNN provided the only American reporting from Iraq. CNN's coverage of the Gulf War was unique and completely redefined live satellite television news. The Gulf War opened the possibility that new forms of war and diplomacy were being born. "Television imagery transmitted by satellite," wrote one observer "is irrevocably altering the ways governments deal with each other, just as it makes traditional diplomacy all but obsolete in times of crisis. . . . Instant access from the battlefield to the conference table and back again has enormous political implications both good and bad." [20] The TV coverage of the Gulf War created a phenomenon that has come to be termed "CNN war."
The "stars" of the vast television coverage drastically improved the military's image from the disasters of Vietnam. General Schwarzkopf became an immediate celebrity on the strength of his briefings in Riyadh. In Newsweek's March 1991 edition, a Poll confirmed that 93% had a favorable opinion of the desert storm commander. General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, personified expanding opportunities for African-Americans in uniform. President Bush enjoyed approval ratings of 89% at the end of the war. [21] Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said in a Newsweek interview that the generals were "a media consultant's dream", and the brass "had all the qualities that our politicians ought to have; they were plain spoken, quietly confident, and they got the job done."
Technology played a vital role in the coverage of the war and the war itself by globalizing the news process of the war. Technological developments allowed television networks to broadcast live from deep within enemy territory. The duel between Saddam Hussein's Scud ballistic missiles and President Bush's Patriot missiles created an interactive dialogue of images, which incorporated precisely a credible news organization. As the war unfolded questions were asked about the dramatic initial panic: did the Scuds carry chemical warheads? Then the diplomatic crisis took center stage: would Israel retaliate and split Bush's fragile, carefully crafted Gulf coalition? Saddam started a war of imagery with the gas masks and frantic reporters. The coalition countered with its own captivating imagery: the Patriot in action. The world watched the TV debut of the "missile that hits a missile." One after another of Iraq's Scuds was visibly destroyed by the spectacular Patriot interceptors: coalition high-tech dominating Saddam's crude terror weapon. The Patriots helped keep the Israeli war machine out of the Gulf War, and thus the coalition held together. Only a handful of Arab nations expressed any support for Iraq's Scud campaign; most condemned Saddam's attacks on his Saudi brothers. Hussein lost the dialogue of images. The political and psychological consequences of images of the Patriot and Scud dueling in the desert night skies provide a classic example of strategic communications in the twenty-four hour news cycle.
Marines in the Gulf, headed by a former Public Affairs Officer, Lieutenant General Walter Boomer, went out of their way to be open and to assist the press, which contributed to exceptionally positive press coverage. Scott Simon of National Public Radio reported (in an interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation, October 1993) that several members of the press were fully briefed before the ground offensive that the Marine amphibious landing was an allied deception. The Marines briefed the press to prevent them from inadvertently blowing the story by naively covering it. The members of the press, sworn to secrecy, maintained the security of the deception, and supported it with continued press coverage of the practice Marine landings. Further, the Marines seemed to have fully incorporated the press in their Gulf War campaign of information supremacy. A Marine Corps representative, speaking at the MIT Symposium, argued that the press coverage acted as a Marine Corps "force multiplier" by keeping Marines motivated and keeping US and world opinion firmly behind the Marines.
The military was more than accommodating to the media during the buildup and the war itself. One of the concerns of the news organizations in the Pentagon press corps was they did not have enough staff in the Persian Gulf to cover the hostilities. On January 17, one day after the bombing began a USAF C-141 Cargo plane with 126 news media personnel on board left Andrews Air Force Base. [22] The fact that senior military commanders dedicated one cargo plane to the job of transporting another 126 journalists to Saudi Arabia demonstrated the military's commitment to take reporters to the scene of the action so they could tell the story to American people.
Conclusion
The Bush administration and the Pentagon did an admirable job in utilizing the media to accomplish national goals in the Gulf War. During the troop build-up, the President used effective methods in presenting Saddam as the Evil tyrant worthy of such company as Adolf Hitler. The administration effectively used growing public support to turn the defensive posture into the offensive prose when it was clear Saddam had no intention of leaving Kuwait. Once the war started the administration and the pentagon brilliantly employed the media to maintain public support and achieve the goals the nation had set forth after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm attracted more than 1600 reporters, who covered 539,000 troops. [23] The media had enormous influence in forming U.S. public perception. All the imagery built up to the daily scenes across American televisions of Iraqi soldiers kneeling at the feet of American soldiers and marines. This was the first major American war to be covered by news media able to broadcast reports instantaneously to the world, including the enemy.
The press arrangements were a good faith effort on the part of the military to be as fair as possible to a large number of reporters on the battlefield, to get as many reporters as possible out with troops during a highly mobile, modern ground war, and to allow as much freedom as possible, while still preventing the enemy from knowing precisely the nature of coalition plans. The Pentagon learned the lessons from Vietnam and devised a well conceived plan to accommodate the media and tell the story to the American people. The national interest of the United States was to expel Saddam Hussein and his forces from Kuwait, thus attempting to stabilize tensions in the region. The mission of Desert Storm and the buildup of forces were successful because of the campaign of the Bush administration and the Pentagon to secure overwhelming public support for the foreign policy initiatives concerning Iraq.
There was a lesson learned in the discovery about the CNN war that policymakers and military commanders, and those that inform them should examine. All concerned must communicate the goals of policies and the objectives of military operations clearly and simply enough so that the widest of audiences can envision the ways and the means being used to reach those goals. This understanding starts with the President, descends to the most junior soldier, and then reaches to the average citizen. The operational ways and means must be clear and simple so individuals can understand how they personally are being affected. The policy goals and motives for the operation need to be equally clear and simple, but also compelling, so that citizens and allies alike will want to be a part of these operations, while our adversaries will feel powerless to escape the inevitable outcome if they oppose our goals. If commanders draw these pictures and convey this strategic understanding, they should have little fear of video on the battlefields or print in the papers of future CNN wars.
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Show Footnotes and Bibliography
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Copyright © 2010 Bryan Hayes.
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