Mar 19, 2006

I Caught You Saying What You Said

by Cliopatria

Operation ~~Stormer~~ Swarmer, the big military campaign in Iraq this week that did nothing and meant nothing, was clearly a media stunt, and a very cheap one at that. But it's painful to watch the news media try to figure out why the joke was a joke. Here's the BBC solemnly picking its way through the wreckage:

So how and why did this latest apparently routine combing operation, yielding a few arms caches and netting some low-grade suspects, manage to win stop-press coverage around the world?

The use of the phrase"the largest air assault operation" was clearly crucial, raising visions of a massive bombing campaign.

Military readers are, at this moment, laughing at loud. In the paragraphs that follow, the Beeb graciously allows that, yes, the term"air assault" doesn't actually have anything at all to do with bombing, and is in fact simply the term that the military uses to describe the insertion of infantry into combat by helicopter. The section heading for that discussion is, hilariously:"Question of semantics?"

So, yeah: They said they were going to conduct an air assault, and then they didn't actually bomb anything! What does it all mean? The use of the phrase"the largest air assault operation" raised visions of a massive bombing campaign only to people who had no business covering the event as journalists.

I've written about this problem before, but the question just keeps coming back around: How on earth are people supposed to engage in the critical examination of a topic they know nothing about? And why do the news media keep assigning to military stories people who know nothing at all about the military?

It's exactly as though you opened your morning newspaper and read a story saying that a corporation was trying to finance a takeover using a mysterious financing plan apparently known as a"bond," which appears to be somehow different than corporate"stock," but we're not sure how. ("Stocks versus bonds: A Question of Semantics?)

If news producers are in the dark about the military, what does that mean for news consumers? Given the events of the last few years, we need -- we urgently need -- critical coverage of the military. And we have reporters who think they're terribly sly for figuring out that the U.S. Army doesn't actually intend to bomb anything when it conducts an air assault.

More Comments:

Barry DeCicco - 3/22/2006

Test post

Richard Newell - 3/20/2006

The large force reminds me of the Owesat operation of February 19 that,it is claimed, bagged five high value targets.

General Casey, on Meet the Press, says Swarmer bagged one or two high value targets. Pretty vague, I know. Of course, we could be having a ex post facto downgrading of what constitutes a high value target.

I agree, by the way, with your point about reporters and the military. Not many reporters have a background, so they often end up substituting attitude (pro or con) for substance. That doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

Richard Newell - 3/19/2006

Every account I read seems to have the reporters landing after it is well underway (and any secret part over?). And the CNN story contained this nugget:

"Unlike many previous operations, including the 2004 campaign to recapture Falluja, no western journalists accompanied the troops".

I was taken by one description that the operation included Iraqi commandos. There is a unit of Kurdish special ops that works closely with the most secret units of the US Army. Maybe I'm just fishing, but the political message of conditions requiring a large operation at this stage would seem to run counter to the impression Bush is trying to make.

Chris Bray - 3/19/2006

Thanks for correcting the name, which I've fixed in the text.

As for the rest, the Army took a bunch of reporters along, so I doubt very much it was a big secret move against high-value targets.

Richard Newell - 3/19/2006

Actually, it's Operation Swarmer, rather than Stormer. Since it is an extraordinarily large hammer to crack a really small nut, I suspect it was based on high value target intelligence, and included units or elements of units that DOD doesn't identify as a matter of policy. Like a unit that used to be called Delta.