When the Press Is in the Dark, So Is Everyone

Pop quiz. Which of the following is true?

(A) The Vietnam War was lost because of the press.

(B) The Vietnam War was lost because the generals couldn’t bear the truth and politicians couldn’t tell the truth, and after 10 agonizing years the nation lost faith in its leaders.

The correct answer, of course, is B. Although you’d hardly know it by the baloney they’re serving for lunch in the Pentagon situation room.

Folks, take a breath. The press is not very graceful at explaining itself. So I’m with you if you think that reporters and editors sound whiny when they complain about the lockout imposed on coverage of this war. But I’m not with you, not even close, if you think it’s good for America, good for the military, good for the world or good for you when we muzzle our media and accept the secretary of Defense’s sugarcoated war of secrecy.

A few truths: When they’re riding along with the troops, American journalists are not going to give away any operational matters that will put our forces at risk. For the government to suggest otherwise is, simply, untrue. And for the public to believe it proves only how easily people are swayed by wartime propaganda.

I was on the front lines in the Gulf War, and I knew in advance when the ground assault was to begin. Lots of reporters did. Did we alert Iraq? Of course not.

Carrying the press along into battle is a burden, but not such an impossible one. Imagine, we were victorious in World War II with Ernie Pyle and Ernie Hemingway and all the gang riding along in the jeeps and bomber planes. The fact is, the soldiers and Marines and sailors and airmen who are sticking their necks out to make this a better world deserve to have their stories told. And we are lucky to live in a nation where men and women are ready to stick their necks out to do it.

As always, the military needs stealth, yes, and the cover of darkness, plus time and room to maneuver. But it does not need to do its work unobserved.

We’re told that the U.S. doesn’t want to offend “host countries” by putting journalists on their soil, right? Excuse me, I thought this was a struggle about values and ways of life. The lesson we should be teaching our “friends” is this: America does business in the open.

Another truth: The military, of all institutions, is not exempt from our system of accountability. The people who want the cloak of secrecy are too often the people who need it.

Vietnam, which has shaped the Pentagon’s anti-press thinking for a generation, was proof of this. It wasn’t the troops in the field who objected to the press. I’ll repeat that: It wasn’t the troops. No, they wanted the story told. It was the generals back in Saigon who couldn’t handle the facts: that they couldn’t win by the rules they had been given and they couldn’t stand up to the politicians who insisted they must. They started lying, webs of lies, years of lies. And when nobody believed them anymore, they lashed out at those who told the truth.

As a result of that experience, U.S. combat doctrine today boils down to this: Outgun all foes, among them the press. It’s shameful to see the government fight on the battlefield of public relations to prevent the country from understanding the battlefield of combat.

Here’s how to connect the dots: Eliminate the word “press” and substitute the word “public.” The only reason the press is a factor at all is because Americans read it and watch it. The Pentagon is not afraid of the press but of American public opinion.

So the official briefings get shaded by a little white-out here and there. The Pentagon fields its own video camera and sanitizes excerpts. That puts it down in the same league as the world’s cheap tyrants who insist on controlling people by controlling what they know.

You say you share the Pentagon’s worries? You wonder about your neighbor’s resolve? In that case, our democracy is much weaker than we dare admit. To let ourselves be wrapped in a cozy blackout curtain because we don’t trust each other to know the truth is no way to run a free country, not in peacetime and surely not in wartime. We should all remember the real lesson of Vietnam. It was not the press that lied when the communist troops kept coming and coming and coming. Or the soldiers or Marines wallowing in the mud. Their blood was no lie; neither was their courage.

The lies came from the men with stars on their collars and their bosses in the pressed suits. The lies came from the podium.

This is a war for freedom. So let’s have some.