Reporting For Duty

During the Holidays, I ran across this article in the Opinion Journal from The Wall Street Journal, written by John Guardiano, an Arlington, Va.-based journalist, who served in Iraq in 2003 as a field radio operator with the Marine Corps Reserve's Fourth Civil Affairs Group. It's a must read!

Reporting For Duty: The US Military tells Iraqi's the truth and some call it a "scandal".

The latest Iraq "scandal" the politicians and the media have discovered is the U.S. military's alleged covert purchase of favorable articles in the Iraqi press. This alleged "propaganda campaign . . . violates fundamental principles of Western journalism," reports the New York Times.

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After major combat operations had ended in April 2003, it quickly became apparent to us Marines that ours was as much a war of information and ideas as a war of guns and bullets. We had won every military engagement; our difficulties lay with the popular Iraqi perceptions that the ex-Baathists, Saddam loyalists and Sunni overlords were lying low and would soon return to power after we Americans had left--which would happen soon, ordinary Iraqis were told. Moreover, blatant lies were spread about our supposed misdeeds: that Marines became Marines after they had murdered a family member; that we were raping Iraqi women and plundering Iraq's oil riches.

It is obviously more difficult to secure the cooperation of a people to rebuild their country if they are intimidated and misled about what you are doing and why you are doing it. That's why we founded our own Iraqi newspaper--which we clearly labeled as such--and that's why we broadcast radio and television clips.

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The U.S. can and will win in Iraq, but only if we win the larger-scale media war. Correcting misperceptions--in Baghdad and Washington, New York and Tikrit--is not somebody else's job; it is the job of the U.S. military. For unless the truth is widely known and shared, no military victory in the 21st century can ever be complete.