Greg Krehbiel
The NYT cried, people died
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 March 2008
“Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable ‘emboldenment effect’ on insurgents there.
“Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university’s Kennedy School of Government.”
Source: Negative U.S. media linked to increased insurgent attacks
2008-03-24 » Greg Krehbiel
24 March 2008 @ 3:22 pm
So if you ignore terrorists, they go away.
Would somebody please explain that to Fox?
25 March 2008 @ 7:22 am
JKrehbielp
You silly, he didn’t say the Times was reporting on terrorists, but on Americans criticising the war.
I think what you mean is, “If you ignore war critics, they go away.” Which of course they do not (as we both know.)
I think it goes to show that we should have waged a more aggressive propaganda war in Iraq (Udeh and Kuseh (SP?) are gone, thanks USA!)
25 March 2008 @ 8:41 am
I don’t want to get in the middle of a family argument here, but I think the point is that the constant harping in the media about all of the things that have gone wrong in Iraq encourages the terrorists to do more damage. In other words, negative news feeds on itself.
25 March 2008 @ 1:55 pm
I guess I see more sinister forces at work, Gordon. The terrorism prior to elections in Spain makes me suspect that this is a deliberate attempt to fuel anti-war sentiment as a political force.
Not that no one should be anti-war, or anti-this-war, but bombs are a really crummy way to buy an election.
25 March 2008 @ 4:31 pm
Do I understand you to say that increased terrorism in Iraq is intended to add to anti-war feelings in the U.S. in order to influence the U.S. presidential election?
That may be true, or it may not be, but I don\’t think that\’s what the Harvard researchers were saying.
29 March 2008 @ 1:45 pm
Here’s an interesting comparison:
Have any of you seen “Flags of Our Fathers”?. Pay attention to the scenes showing the soldiers listening to “Tokyo Rose”.
She had the best music on her station during World War II; the Japanese developed and implemented a form of psycological warfare to demoralize the American forces. Every day she would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways. The Japanese hoped it would have a negative impact on American GI’s morale.
What was that demoralizing message? It had three main points:
1. Your President is lying to you.
2. This war is illegal.
3. You cannot win the war.
Does this sound familiar today?
It is because we are being bombarded by Tokyo Hillary, Tokyo Harry, Tokyo Teddy, Tokyo Nancy, Tokyo Murtha, etc.,and they have picked up the same message and are broadcasting it on Tokyo CNN, Tokyo ABC, Tokyo CBS, Tokyo NBC, etc., to our troops.
The only difference is that they claim to support our troops before they demoralize them. Come to think of it, Tokyo Rose told the troops she was on their side, too.
29 March 2008 @ 2:34 pm
What’s interesting to me is that nowadays we think the whole country was united behind WWII. That wasn’t actually the case. A lot of people were against it — not only at the beginning, but all along. Part of the war was fighting the enemy, but a big part was keeping up the spirits back home.