Pligget
Little to say for myself


Wednesday, March 26, 2003  

It's Worse than I Thought

Major General Patrick Cordingley, the Today prog's regular war pundit, made a depressing observation this morning. They were discussing (ironically) to what extent the day-to-day media intrusion into the operations in Iraq - all the "embedded" war correspondents - affected military planning. He said that, when he was commanding the Desert Rats in GW1, they crossed over into Kuwait a week earlier than they had originally planned to, largely because of persistent media comments that nothing much was happening (after 5 weeks of carpet bombing). He imagined the pressure to be much worse this time, because of all the extra reporters and 24/7 rolling news channels there.

So because all those camera crews are there - supposedly to slake the public's thirst for "information" but actually just vying for the "Most (porno)Graphic Shot of the Day" award - they are in danger of morphing into the film crew for the sequel to Saving Private Ryan, with the US equivalent of Alastair Campbell playing Steven Spielberg.

This takes the old Heisenberg metaphor (that an event cannot be reported without the report changing the nature of the event) to ridiculous extremes.

posted by Plig | 17:23 |

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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau

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