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Stardate 20011110.1747 (On Screen via long range sensors): Robert Fisk writes a denunciation of some of the coverage of the war; a few of his points are partially correct but he draws the wrong conclusion from them. For instance, he criticizes the fact that press coverage mentions "coalition forces" and indeed it is true that there is no such thing. Virtually all of the fighting has been done by the US (not that this is any virtue for our allies who are conspicuous by their absence). But that doesn't mean there is no coalition; there is one. It is not, however, a coalition of Europeans. Except for the UK, the important members of this coalition are all in the Middle East: Oman, Qatar and Pakistan. Britain is also important not only because of its political assistance (which has been invaluable) and its military assistance (which has been less so) but because of its permission to use Diego Garcia. The other members of the coalition are important because they are letting us use their territory for airbases or, in the case of Qatar, for the base of one of our fleets. The fact of the matter is that in this particular war we don't really need any military assistance from anyone in the sense of substantial commitment of military forces; the US is quite capable of fighting and winning this without substantial help. All it really needs from Europe is for them to fill in for us while we pull our forces out of there to use them for our own purposes -- which is happening.

He complains about the term "air campaign", and on this one he's wrong. There is unquestionably an air campaign going on. It's not our fault if he doesn't know what the term means. It is ironic that just the day after his commentary was published, that air campaign had its first major strategic success.

He complains about the "war on terror"; he asks rhetorically whether we've begun to work on terrorism in Chechnya or in Beirut. Like too many, he's trying to set too tight a time limit on this. An intelligent general doesn't attack on all fronts simultaneously; he selects his battles and tries to defeat his opponent in detail. We're taking on al Qaeda now; when that's finished we'll start working on Hamas and so on. (By the way, "terror" is not a synonym for "war"; if there are terrorists in Chechnya they're Chechen, not Russian.) But he's reading things into the term "war on terror" which aren't there, for he's trying to make it an idealistic war -- and war is rarely idealistic. We're not fighting to eliminate all terror everywhere; this is being fought by the US military for partisan US interests. We're fighting to eliminate terror which is a threat to the US. That mainly means terror aimed at destabilizing the current world commercial and political order, which means that our war is also in the best interests of many other nations -- but we're not doing it because of that. We're fighting this war because we were attacked and we want to make sure we don't get attacked again. It's fallacious to try to extrapolate from a label to an entire political strategy.

Now the odd thing is that Fisk proceeds to make the most amazing leap from that argument I think I've ever seen -- do they give an Olympic prize for greatest non-sequiter? He'd be a shoo-in. You see, he concludes from all this that western press can't be trusted. It's all under government control. It's all lies; it's all propaganda. But fortunately for Fisk he seems to have found a bastion of free press where he can find out the real truth of what is going on in the world: Pakistan.

At which point I find myself wondering what kind of drugs he's been smoking, and whether I might be able to get a few ounces of it. (On second thought, maybe I don't want any...) Our hero is actually trying to hold up the Arab press as the real source of accurate coverage of this war. (As examples of their accuracy, they've been reporting that it was actually Israel who was behind the attack in NYC.) And how does Fisk know that they are the source of all wisdom? Because they are anti-US and anti-war, so obviously they've got the straight dope. (Ahem.)

What, after all, are we supposed to make of the so-called "liberal" American television journalist Geraldo Rivera who is just moving to Fox TV, a Murdoch channel? "I'm feeling more patriotic than at any time in my life, itching for justice, or maybe just revenge," he announced this week. "And this catharsis I've gone through has caused me to reassess what I do for a living." This is truly chilling stuff. Here is an American journalist actually revealing that he's possibly "itching for revenge"

What we are supposed to make of that, perhaps, is to notice just how broad the support in the US is for this war. In a democracy it's supposed to be a good thing for a broad majority of citizens to agree with the policy of their nation -- unless, it seems, that majority disagrees with Fisk. In that case democracy has run amok; its citizenry has been deceived and brainwashed by its press who are not slanting the news heavily enough against the war (or, from his point of view, are slanting it too much in favor of it and not telling enough of the truth about why it's a lousy idea). It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that Americans actually didn't need any slanting one way or the other: just watching two buildings be destroyed and thousands of people die was enough.

Mr. Fisk's mistake is to assume too much power on the part of the press. He seems to think that public opinion is plastic and that as long as there is enough of the right kind of coverage then the populace will go along. This is extremely elitist; it denigrates the ability of the public in general and the American public in particular to reject bullshit and to make up its own mind.

Bullshit such as Fisk's own writing, for example. (discussion in progress)

Update 20011112: Some examples of the highly reliable Pakistani press reports.