It's important to note that George Bush's tentative embrace of a Vietnam analogy for the Iraq war (which, as Backword explains, is going to create an interesting pickle for Hitch) is likely just an opening salvo of a new campaign to blame the media for the debacle in Iraq and by extension the Republican electoral debacle in 3 weeks time. For consider the source material for the analogy -- Tom Friedman (subs. req'd) , the epitome of acceptable opinion in Washington --
Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of ''winning'' in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election ... But while there may be no single hand coordinating the upsurge in violence in Iraq, enough people seem to be deliberately stoking the fires there before our election that the parallel with Tet is not inappropriate. The jihadists want to sow so much havoc that Bush supporters will be defeated in the midterms and the president will face a revolt from his own party, as well as from Democrats, if he does not begin a pullout from Iraq.
The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the ''Global Islamic Media Front'' carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: ''The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.''
Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to ''chat rooms,'' ''television channels,'' and to ''famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others.'' This is the first time I've ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.
It would be depressing to see the jihadists influence our politics with a Tet-like media/war frenzy.
This analysis mirrors to a remarkable extent a standard right-wing blog talking point, e.g. Glenn Reynolds:
Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military operation. The press plays a symbiotic role, and isn't willing to address that.
And is there something a tad fishy about that list of US opinion-formers who were going to get the jihadi e-mails? Who knows, maybe those are the authors of books one sees on the shelf at the Tal Afar Barnes and Noble.
[UPDATE: the blame-the-media angle is quite clear in Tony Snow's briefing today, and is seized up by, inter alia, James Taranto; George Bush essentially cited Friedman's column without naming him here]
Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of ''winning'' in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election ... But while there may be no single hand coordinating the upsurge in violence in Iraq, enough people seem to be deliberately stoking the fires there before our election that the parallel with Tet is not inappropriate. The jihadists want to sow so much havoc that Bush supporters will be defeated in the midterms and the president will face a revolt from his own party, as well as from Democrats, if he does not begin a pullout from Iraq.
The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the ''Global Islamic Media Front'' carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: ''The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.''
Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to ''chat rooms,'' ''television channels,'' and to ''famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others.'' This is the first time I've ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.
It would be depressing to see the jihadists influence our politics with a Tet-like media/war frenzy.
This analysis mirrors to a remarkable extent a standard right-wing blog talking point, e.g. Glenn Reynolds:
Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military operation. The press plays a symbiotic role, and isn't willing to address that.
And is there something a tad fishy about that list of US opinion-formers who were going to get the jihadi e-mails? Who knows, maybe those are the authors of books one sees on the shelf at the Tal Afar Barnes and Noble.
[UPDATE: the blame-the-media angle is quite clear in Tony Snow's briefing today, and is seized up by, inter alia, James Taranto; George Bush essentially cited Friedman's column without naming him here]