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one must bear in mind that the constraints on the government and coalition forces provide an advantage to insurgent propaganda. The media scrutinizes coalition and government statements and actions in search of a scandal. The coalition must investigate operations resulting in collateral damage or claims that targets were non-combatants. While the investigation is on-going, which can take days or weeks, the insurgents capitalize on the opportunity to issue false claims to the media, which accept the information without scrutiny. The results of the coalition investigation do not receive the same attention as the insurgent claims. At times, village officials claim or exaggerate collateral damage in order to receive blood money, that is, financial compensation for wrongful deaths. For the insurgents, it is a win-win situation. They have a platform for recruitment and financial aid from others susceptible to insurgent sympathies. Moreover, the coalition or government may place greater restrictions on the rules of engagement. From the insurgent perspective, any device which fetters coalition firepower simply shifts the correlation of forces in their favor.
aligning a counterinsurgency strategy for afghanistan
raymond millen
smallwarjournals.com
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Um, I'm not sure what to say other than "yea, that's what happens."
You didn't comment on the subject.
I think it's pretty stupid of you, seeing as it is your subject.
My comment?
Sure.
So what?
I'll echo other posters... I'm not seeing your point SnC. If anything, it is an indictment of a media far too willing to accept facts without fact-checking, but that is endemic to the MSM nowadays.
Terrorist fist jab?
Ah yes, the joys of dogmatic assumptions.
"The media always accept claims from the insurgents we fight without scrutiny"
Bull .
In places that we find ourselves in these days, it is hard to get decent initial accounts of combat incidents.
A lot of the reports I read in the big bad mainstream media will go to lengths to provide some guage as to the veracity of claims, i.e. "unconfirmed reports", and we never really know what "claims from insurgents" we DON'T see simply due to common sense judgments on the part of journalists and editors to exclude obviously off-base claims.
Quite frankly this seems like less of an attempt at shaping a decent counterinsurgency strategy and more of an attempt at giving a new helping of "blame the media" Kool-Aid for the converted, who view anything less than a massive right-ward tilt on their news as "biased".
Just to be clear, reports from war tend to be based on very little, and often turn out to be little more than rumors. But editors and journalists tend to emphasize this, and apply scrutiny to such things, as opposed to simply becoming mere mouthpieces for "insurgents", as they are very mindful that both sides will attempt to play them for gain.
Give me a few concrete examples of how the "media always accepts claims from the insurgents we fight without scrutiny".
You must prove that in every case of some dreadful combat incident, the big bad "media" suddenly loses any common sense and integrity to breathlessly report "insurgent claims" as undeniable truth.
Otherwise, you must withdraw that assertion as being false. He who asserts must prove. All one needs to do is to find one or more cases where the media applies scrutiny and common sense, and the whole schtick goes right out the window.
Basing strategy on things that are provably wrong is generally a bad idea.
Lastly,
Insurgents, generally do get more "cred" from native populations when making claims, although eventually, even the Iraqi's came to realize that Al Qaeda was a bunch of murderous psychopaths.
That is a reality we have to deal with, and something we learned from Vietnam that was distilled into the counterinsurgency doctrine that then-colonel Patreus wrote. Take steps to minimize the potential for such indicents, and yes that includes restrictive rules of engagement and more risk for our soldiers initially, and you can counter this problem.
ah, good old afganistan, our 51st state.
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