Articles

The Importance of Being Honest
Sunday, Aug 31, 2008
By Chip Jones
Times-Dispatch Guest Columnist

Shortly after I arrived at Camp Fallujah, the heavily fortified American military compound in western Iraq, a public affairs officer called me over to his computer. With a wry smile, he showed me where the command in Baghdad had placed me in the pecking order of journalists embedded with military units in midsummer of 2007.

Pointing to one group of names on the computer screen, the officer explained, "We call these the high-priority journalists." It was a fairly short list, with names from large newspapers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and a few from news services like Bloomberg.

"Now you," he said, somewhat apologetically, "are on this list." He pointed to a different color-coded group. "These are what we call low-priority journalists."

We had a good laugh over that, and for the rest of my time with the Marines in Fallujah I called myself "LPJ."

Whatever they called me, I was just glad to make it over to Iraq to complete research for my second book, Red, White or Yellow? The Media and the Military in Iraq. As a reporter and student of military history, I wanted to explore charges of bias -- from conservative and liberal critics alike -- about the coverage of a war that had started with "shock and awe" but quickly devolved into a deadly quagmire for the United States.

With so many Americans still dying or suffering wounds, I wondered why newspapers and networks were paying so little attention to the biggest story of our time.

Was it simply "war fatigue," the term used in Vietnam and Korea, as Americans lost interest in overseas conflicts that didn't seem to have direct bearing on their lives? Or was it the result of an all-volunteer military, with many Americans not even knowing anyone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Was this a case of collective apathy by a celebrity-soaked nation more interested in Paris Hilton's court case than in men and women fighting and dying on their behalf? Or perhaps the military simply was failing to gets its story out over the din of the debate back in Washington?

At that time, the military -- then under the recent new command of Army Gen. David Petraeus -- was eager to get the word out about the peace that appeared to be succeeding in western Iraq in Anbar Province.

ounterinsurgency efforts that engaged key Sunni tribal leaders had brought several months of relative calm in an area that had been wracked by urban combat in Ramadi, Haditha, and Fallujah.

Major U.S. newspapers were starting to give the combined military and State Department efforts some credit, but because of the ongoing violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, the view of some military commanders I met was that their troops' successes were being woefully underreported. They were only too glad to speak to another journalist, even one who was simply writing a book on the issue.

After the initial interest of the U.S. media in the 2003 invasion -- with more than 700 reporters embedding with American units -- the early eagerness of journalists to report from Iraq had fallen off. Some attributed the dropoff in news coverage to cost-cutting moves by newspapers hard-pressed by declining circulations and the pressure created by Internet competition.

Still others cited the cost and danger of sending anyone to Iraq as it became nearly impossible to travel across a country where IEDs had turned the roads and highways into killing zones.

By the time I arrived on my self-financed research expedition, I was one of only four reporters officially embedded with the military in Anbar.

By then, Fallujah was on the Corps' list of legendary battlegrounds. Military analysts often compared the fight for the riverside trading center to one of the deadliest urban conflicts in Vietnam -- Hue City during the Tet Offensive of 1968. In early 2004, four U.S. security contractors from North Carolina-based Blackwater Security Consulting Co. made the mistake of taking a shortcut as they escorted supply vehicles.

After an ambush, Iraqi boys dragged the Americans' smoking corpses onto the street and beat their charred flesh. This last act -- beating the bodies with flip-flops -- was meant "to show that Americans were scum under the soles of their shoes," wrote Bing West in his book about the battle for Fallujah, No True Glory.

The rage of men and boys is nothing new, of course. Anyone who has visited the Tower of London knows that the biggest spectator sport in jolly old England once was the beheading of prisoners held by the king or queen. Any student of history knows that every nation and culture usually has some blood on its hands.

Indeed, one of the most unsettling legacies of the Bush administration's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has yet to be settled and requires more inquiry and openness by the government: the continuing revelations about water-boardings and other forms of torture of American-held captives. This secret program has not only tarnished our own image and created a sense of a double-standard, but it also could exact a heavy toll on any American POWs captured in future conflicts.

Yet, during my visit I was privileged to talk to soldiers and Marines, and was struck by their sense of duty and basic American values, including respect for other cultures. In Haditha, for instance, I was amazed to see a Marine captain exchange ceremonial pecks on the cheek with his Iraqi counterpart -- all in an effort to establish lasting ties with a new ally.

I also was impressed by the intelligence of those Army and Marine and State Department personnel who work with the media. They know -- perhaps better than armchair critics of the media -- the importance of providing independent views of the war. Most of the professionals I spoke with in Fallujah, Haditha, and Baghdad would rather see informed, if critical, news reporting than endure inaccurate "puff piece" journalism written to support one point of view or another.

While the notion of "fair and balanced" reporting has long since been corrupted as a TV tag line, what I saw in Iraq was -- by and large -- a group of military public affairs pros who actually believe in helping reporters and photographers alike perform the most fair and balanced reporting possible under often extreme -- and dangerous -- conditions. They know better than anyone that the First Amendment must be respected on the battlefield as much as it is in newsrooms back home.

Yet in an age of 24/7 news cycles, military public affairs specialists also have learned from hard experience -- including the horrific images of Fallujah that were instantly beamed around the world -- how easy it is for emotion to overtake reason. Perhaps this, more than anything else, is the lasting legacy of Iraq for the government, media, and military alike:

Don't let images and impressions and emotions drive important decisions that can put soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen at risk. Fallujah provides a lasting lesson in that regard, and we should never forget how the horribly graphic footage of the charred bodies of the Blackwater contractors hanging from a bridge sparked a precipitous decision by the Bush administration to order an immediate retaking of the city by the Marines.

The commanding general -- Gen. James T. Conway -- argued against rushing back into the heavily fortified city. But Conway, now commandant of the Marine Corps, was overruled by President Bush. That fateful decision led to a nearly two-year long conflict with 15,000 combatants that left 153 Americans and thousands more Iraqis dead in the city's streets.

"Fallujah," West concluded, "provides a cautionary tale about mixing the combustible ingredients of battle and politics, and illustrates the role of the media on the battlefield of the twenty-first century."

I have no doubt that America will face other Fallujahs in the coming years -- and other Abu Ghraibs, Guantanamos, and countless other challenges testing our resolve, good judgment, and adherence to our nation's laws and core values.

As presidential race heats up, it's worth pondering such lessons, and to learn from our mistakes in Iraq -- including learning about what's known as "perception warfare" -- the battle for hearts and minds in an age of the Internet, cell phones, and other forms of instant communications. West, himself a former Marine officer in Vietnam and assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, offered this sobering conclusion about the battle along the Euphrates:

"The April 2004 siege of Fallujah was lost on the playing fields of digital technology. As [then Lt. General] Conway put it, 'Al Jazeera kicked our butts.'"

Though the killing eventually stopped and al-Qaida in Iraq was routed, the lesson for the next president is to remain calm in the face of anything that's designed to goad a larger, more powerful enemy into premature battle.

In years to come, let's hope the media, the military, and the government learns from its mistakes in Iraq. There are plenty of examples to choose from.

(Reprinted with permission of the Richmond Times-Dispatch)

RED, WHITE OR YELLOW Highlighted by American Library Association

Excerpts from "Booklist," the magazine of the American Library Association. The ALA has 65,000 members and promotes libraries and library education throughout the world. It is the nation's oldest and largest library association.

"The complexities of war reporting, balancing the public's right to know with military security, have been compounded with 24/7 news cycles, embedding, and the Internet. Journalist Jones examines the changes in war reporting from the Spanish American War through Vietnam and the early days of Iraq, when the press followed the script of the Bush administration. Jones draws on his time spent embedded with U.S. Marines at Camp Fallujah in Iraq and interviews with veteran war correspondents… Photographs add to the personal reflections of reporters and soldiers sorting out patriotism and news of war."