One day my father came home from playing tennis and my mother was lying on the floor crying. She had just heard Helen Caldicott describe the effects of a nuclear strike on a major American city. From that point on my parents dedicated themselves to ridding the the planet of nuclear weapons. My mother joined WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom). My father, frustrated by the fragmentation of the many disarmament groups (SANE, The Freeze, etc) created an umbrella group which united the various forces. At the time, William Arkin had written influential articles about the arms race and a few books including, "Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race". My father invited Mr. Arkin to speak to his disarmament group and surprisingly he willingly agreed. A few weeks later, Arkin sat at my parents dinning room table speaking to members of my father's fledgling anti-nuke group.
So it's with sadness and reluctance that I conclude that Mr. Arkin's op-ed, "TV Generals Make for a Dangerous Picture" slamming the New York Time's investigation entitled, "Behind Analysts: The Pentagon's Hidden Hand" totally misses the mark. A convoluted and conflicted mess, it glosses over the thorniest issues brought to light by David Barstow. Arkin, declaring the investigation "focused on the wrong issues," writes,
the problem is not necessarily that the networks employ former officers as analysts, or that the Pentagon reaches out to them.
The larger problem is the role these general play, not just on TV but in American society. In our modern era, not-so-old soldiers neither die nor fade away -- they become board members and corporate icons and consultants, on TV and elsewhere, and even among this group of generally straight-shooters, there's a strong reluctance to say anything that would jeopardize their consulting gigs or positions on corporate boards.
First of all, the Times piece never suggested TV networks shouldn't employ former officers as analysts - just that they should hire ones who are truly independent not "message force multipliers" for the Bush administration's war policies. Let's be real Mr. Arkin, the Pentagon did far more than simply, "reach out to them." This was a highly organized propaganda campaign designed to squash criticisms of the Bush Administration. Rumsfeld and company even hired an outside firm to track these generals public statements to ensure they were using the talking points they'd been given. Secondly, the piece deals extensively with the Generals affiliation with defense contractors and corporate boards. The NY Times uncovered serious conflicts of interest - these generals got the inside track for lucrative contracts in the very wars they were supposed to be "objectively" critiquing. Finally, "straightshooters"!? Bill what you been smoking, read the words of the generals themselves -
"It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ " Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.
Oh, you have no idea," Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. "You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV." It was, he said, "psyops on steroids" — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. "It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ " he said. "It’s more subtle."
"We knew we had extraordinary access," said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Fox analyst who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growing military contractor.
Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that "some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’ " For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s security forces. "I know a snow job when I see one," he said. He did not share this on TV.
"Human nature," he explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical.
Sounds like a real group of straightshooters.
Arkin, a friend and colleague of General Barry McCaffrey, spends nearly a quarter of the op-ed defending General McCaffrey's honor. Whether out of loyalty or friendship this energy is misguided - McCaffrey was an active member of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq" - a group encouraged by the Bush administration who's members read like a who's who of nonconservative heavyweights: Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, and a host of others. Arkin writes:
During my time at NBC, one general -- Barry McCaffrey -- stood out for consistently criticizing the Pentagon on the air, and to this day he is among the most visible of the paid military analysts on television. Part of it is McCaffrey's personality and decisive voice. And while he was one of the earliest and most forceful figures arguing that more troops were needed, much of his analysis of Iraq in 2003 was handicapped by a myopic view of ground forces and the Army, and by a dislike of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that was obvious and outspoken. (To be fair to McCaffrey, few former or active duty generals read the war or its aftermath correctly.)
Later in the piece he admits that McCaffrey's critizism of Pentagon policies were probably wrong headed "I'm not sure that McCaffrey was right -- and I'm not sure that having more troops then,our assumptions about what would happen in postwar Iraq and our ignorance of the country and its dynamics, would have made much of a difference."
This is just the problem Mr. Arkin, McCaffrey is viewed as a war critic because he turned against the Iraq war tactics. John McCain thought we needed more troops as well, he was hard on Donald Rumsfeld- does that make him an Iraq war critic? Absolutely not. In fact, both of these fools actively lobbied for this war and when it didn't go exactly as planned the y covered their asses by "criticizing" the war plan. Back seat driving, Monday morning quarterbacking, Iraq war zealots crying their alligator tears.
Down towards the end of the article Arkin minimizes the serious violation of the public trust this scandal has exposed.
The Bush administration, in reaching out to sympathetic news commentators to shape public opinion, isn't doing anything different than the Clinton administration. I am not sure the Bush administration's efforts in the Iraq campaign were any more treacherous. It's just that the stakes were higher
.
Remember the VMRs (planted news stories) and Armstrong Williams among the countless other incidents? Comparing the Bush Administration manipulation of the media to the Clinton's administration's PR efforts is like saying a jaywalker should be given the same prison sentence as a murder. Come on.
Speaking of "shaping public opinion" - I think there are laws on the books that strictly forbid this type of opinion shaping. The word "psy-op" is used several times by the generals themselves in the documents the Times obtained. This is a clear violation of the Smith Mundt act and The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1972 which prohibits the dissemination of propaganda domestically. So I think this a little more serious than simply getting the governments message out with a little innocent PR.
Towards the end of the piece, Arkin finally starts to make some sense but it's a day late and a dollar short.
It's now clear that in the run-up to the war, during the war in 2003 and in its aftermath, we would have all benefited from hearing more from experts on Iraq and the Middle East, from historians, from anti-war advocates. Retired generals play a role, an important one. But for the networks, they played too big of a role -- just as the "military" solutions in Iraq play too big of a role, just as the military solutions in the war against terrorism swamp every other approach.
Well as I said in my rebuttal to his piece on Wapo's website, this is a point where we agree. We needed - but didn't get - anti-war voices in the run up to the war. The few anti-war dissenters the American public heard were marginalized and generally (pun intended) dismissed by the mainstream media. Even today, only the opinions of vets, military brass, ex-American intelligence, pols, or family members of those killed in the war carry any weight as far as corporate news is concerned. Mr. Arkin, just take yourself for example; when was the last time anyone listened to you?