Has anyone noticed what’s been happening with the media coverage of Iraq? It’s not, just, that it’s become more positive: it’s that there’s simply a lot less of it. The title of the Media Research Center’s December 4 report sums it up: “Good News = Less News on Iraq War.” In September, the big three networks aired 178 Iraq stories; by November, that had declined to 68 stories. Iraq’s air time is falling as fast as U.S. and Iraq casualties. Iraq today looks too much like Vietnam for comfort-not on the ground, where the parallels are encouraging, but in the media.
In Vietnam, the South Vietnamese population turned against the Viet Cong in 1968-69, in response to the Tet Offensive. That was three years after the large-scale deployment of U.S. troops, who in mid-1968 had come under the effective leadership of General Creighton Abrams. In Iraq, the popular turn came in 2006-07, three years after the start of the war, in response to the wave of violence unleashed by al Qaeda’s bombing of the Golden Mosque in February 2006, and as General Petraeus was taking command of the Multi-National Force—Iraq.
The very neatness of the comparison raises the suspicion that history cannot possibly repeat so precisely. Undoubtedly, it cannot. But the New Republic‘s quasi-apology for Pvt. Scott Beauchamp’s horror stories reveals that at least one kind of history—the kind that, among its other sins, lies about the conduct of U.S. troops—can indeed repeat itself exactly. It was Vietnam that made the media we know today: eager to win fame by uncovering atrocity stories, anti-establishment, and anti-war. A quieter Iraq is, for them, a less interesting Iraq.
And it was that media, in turn, that invented the Vietnam War we think we know. As Arthur Herman observed in the December issue of COMMENTARY, recent work on Vietnam demonstrates that “the old account is a myth, and no longer stands up to scrutiny.” But the journalistic—and hence the popular—narrative of that war continues to be deeply distorted, and this narrative drives what is emphasized and what is left uncovered in Iraq. B.G. Burkett’s Stolen Honor, for example, exposed hundred of pages worth of fake veterans and their fables in 1998. A decade later, the New Republic fell for precisely the same slanders. It was as if Burkett has never written.
Today, military progress in Iraq is undeniable. But relax: we can still lose. As Alissa Rubin wrote in the New York Times on December 5, “A Calmer Iraq: Fragile, and Possibly Fleeting.” Well—promises, promises. Not even victory in Iraq—and that is not something it would be wise to crow about now—is likely to destroy the media’s narrative: it has become a matter of generational and professional pride. If victory does come, the Media Research Center’s report foreshadows how the press will respond: by ignoring it. No response could be more revealing of how deeply invested they are in the narrative of failure that they created for Vietnam, or how little they genuinely care about what is going on Iraq.
