In article , Paul J. Adam
wrote:

In message , Ed Rasimus
writes
We were prepared to fight as long as it took, IF--repeat IF--the
give-up rather than fight crowd in the US would have stopped
distracting the politicians so that we could have won.

In semi-modern parlance, US domestic opinion was a centre of gravity,
and keeping public opinion on-side was a key enabling factor that North
Vietnam successfully attacked.

Well, yes. It's that "attention deficit" again. Something that US
allies have learned to worry about. For a distressingly long time.


Or, flipping it around, if the "fight" crowd in the US had made a better
case for "why we fight" then things might have been very different.

Hmmm. Yes, but. At the risk of pushing this more-than-somewhat OT topic
into an arid wilderness, we are faced with the fait accompli of the
destruction of the liberal arts education in the US and much of the
anglosphere in favour of some kind of bizarre, historically-ignorant,
posturing self-loathing that passes for "the Left". Which has gained
itself a stranglehold, a bit like Russian ivy, all over the bloody
place, especially the meeja.

Me, when I need leftwing guidance, I ask myself what Lenin would have
done. The answer rarely involves gender politics or queer studies, but
tends towards, shall we say, more robust solutions. From which, as the
most liberal and tolerant of men, I am usually obliged to distance
myself. Still, it's always there as a thought.




This is one reason I get very, very angry with anyone who dismisses "the
media". They may be ill-informed (and many are), they may be downright
hostile (and many are), but they have to be worked with and dealt with.
Ignore them or annoy them and they will hurt you badly.

Another "yes, but." The thing I can't forgive the meeja (by which I
mean overwhelmingly tv) is their utter incapacity to avoid telling
lies. Indeed, their complete epistemological inability to tell one from
the other: only what makes "good" tv and what does not. They're quite
smart at that.
From bitter personal experience, I'd never give a tv interview unless
it was live: they will cut you up into what they fancy in the editing
room, every time. Reminds me of the fable of the frog and the scorpion.
Indeed (well, I *was* speaking of Lenin) the most effective
revolutionary act I can think of in 2006 is to blow up every television
transmitter and send ballbearings into reverse Clarke orbit.



And when they _are_ properly handled, they can become ambassadors:
embedded journalists, having to live alongside the troops, tend to
become evangelists for "where do we get these men?".

Yes, but. Or, in this instance, perhaps, "but, yet." Embedded
journalists, though, are rarely of the Looneymouth Flakjacket
persuasion, broadcasting with authority in a shirt of many pockets not
too dangerously far from a well-supplied bar. As for tv "journalism":
"Does my bum look big in this?" is its only honest contribution to
anything.


Hence, the hard work required of a J3 Media Ops staffer.

Thankless in success, worse in failure.


rest snipped, all good points with which I more or less entirely agree.

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" Ibn Khaldun

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