Dauber

“ And on the clipper rushed with tossing mast,
A bath of flame broke round her as she passed.
The watch was set, the night came, and the men
Hid from the moon in shadowed nooks to sleep,
Bunched like the dead; still, like the dead, as when
Plague in a city leaves none even to weep.
The ship's track brightened to a mile-broad sweep;
The mate there felt her pulse, and eyed the spars:
South-west by south she staggered under the stars.
Down in his bunk the Dauber lay awake
Thinking of his unfitness for the sea. ”

“ I discuss these trade-offs at greater length
in Cori E. Dauber, “Winning the Battle But Losing the War: the
Relationship Between the Media Coverage of Iraq and Public
Support,” May, 2005, Chapel Hill, NC, unpublished ms.
108. It should be noted, however, that reports of American
combat casualties per se is not what reduces public support for a
given military operation, even though that is widely assumed to
be the case, particularly by the press. Support will hold so long as
the public continues to believe there is hope for the success of the
109
mission ”

“ This he would some day paint, the ship at night,
And sleeping seamen tired to the soul;
The space below the bunks as black as coal,
Gleams upon chests, upon the unlit lamp,
The ranging door hook, and the locker clamp.
This he would paint, and that, and all these scenes,
And proud ships carrying on, and men their minds,
And blues of rollers toppling into greens,
And shattering into white that bursts and blinds,
And scattering ships running erect like hinds,
And men in oilskins beating down a sail
High on the yellow yard, in snow, in hail. ”

“ Swayed like a queen, and answered to the curb.
Then in the sunset's flush they went aloft,
And unbent sails in that most lovely hour,
When the light gentles and the wind is soft,
And beauty in the heart breaks like a flower. ”

“ It is for that reason that the military force fighting today against a terrorist organization in defense of a democratic state is really fighting a two-front war. There is on the one hand the ground war, meaning the war that has to actually be won on the ground, the state of play on the ground as it exists in reality. ”

“ In this radically different information environment, a situation where not one, but a confluence of new technologies have all become available simultaneously, the possibility for synergistic effects is created, producing an entirely new environment from that of previous wars. Obviously the Internet is first among equals ”

“ The problem for the Army, and the larger military of course, is that it has no way to enforce or even pass on lessons that should be learned by the press. Yet it remains the case that a war against terrorism, or, if you prefer, against terrorists, is by definition a war of wills and therefore a war against propaganda and images. ”

“ But the primary issue will continue to be responding to insurgent uses of technology in a more nimble and powerful way. If the truth about an event that has made the news is not known, then by all means an investigation is in order, because nothing will erode credibility more rapidly than to reverse positions already taken. ”

“ If the truth is known, military spokespeople need to be proactive, to engage in rapid response or, if at all possible, to get out ahead of stories that are predictable. When investigations are necessary, the military must understand that bringing them to closure as rapidly as possible—meaning before the story has fallen off the media’s radar—is absolutely essential. ”

“ While we hear that large numbers of bodies have turned up after having been beheaded, tortured, or mutilated, and the descriptions of the state those bodies are in is often quite graphic in the print press, those are not images we are likely to see in the American press anytime soon. ”

“ As in the case of the presidential campaign, when we discuss media attention we are really first and foremost talking about television. When we are talking about gaining television’s attention, we are really talking about gaining the attention of the cameras—and the way to do that, of course, is to provide good visuals, however those are defined in a particular context. ”

“ In fact, as far as production values go, the software available on the open market may not be the limiting factor for these groups. An enormous amount of opensource software is available. (open-source software is that which is intentionally made available for free by the original programmer in the hopes that a community of users will develop, in the process assisting the programmer in improving the original program.) ”

“ There is a vast literature on the potential for new technologies to create a Revolution in Military Affairs or “networked warfare,” but that is a discussion of the impact of military technology on the way the force itself can be used. Today there is a question regarding the impact of new communication and information technologies in the hands of civilians—some of whom are combatants—on the environment in which the force will be used. ”

“ So long as they make clear that they are only able to speak in those limited terms—we cannot be positive yet, we are in the midst of an accountability check to confirm, but we do not believe the claim that marines have been captured—there will be times when doing so will be far less damaging than saying nothing until they are able to speak with absolute certainty. ”

“ On the one hand, there is clear and notable evolution in the technology being used in the generation of propaganda, based on what is being captured in the Iraqi battlespace:
Over time technology has gone bigger and bigger. ”

“ It should be emphasized that the near taboo regarding the showing of dead bodies is a near taboo, not an absolute one. Obviously there have been quite dramatic images regularly transmitted from the war in Iraq that involve the human body in extremis, in particular many images of large numbers of dead Iraqis. ”

“ In the last few years, which technologies have met these criteria? Cameras of increasing quality (even high-definition) have become cheaper and cheaper (and smaller and smaller) even in countries without dependable electricity. Laptop computers are similarly available worldwide, at lower and lower prices and higher and higher quality. And the software that permits images to be edited and manipulated is available worldwide, requiring no training beyond the instructions that come with the software itself. ”

“ Insurgents making use of terrorist techniques are fighting to shape the attitudes and perceptions of the public to undermine the public will to fight. In a modern age, this is done by shaping media coverage. It is not going too far to say that terrorist attacks are, in fact, media events, designed to draw the attention of the press since, without a larger audience, a terrorist attack will have accomplished very little. ”

“ Where the technology itself is not the most advanced but is several generations behind, they use it to access cutting edge techniques, and constantly push the envelope in terms of creative applications of what technology allows. For example, the British have complained that insurgents have been using Google Earth to plan their attacks on British compounds in Iraq more precisely. ”

“ Terrorists (and, again, insurgents using terrorist methods) no longer depend upon the professional media to communicate with their own constituents and no longer depend upon the professional media to communicate with the outside world. (In fact, to an unprecedented degree, the professional media have become dependent upon them.) Technological developments permit any terrorist cell to film, edit, and upload their actions virtually in real time whether Western media are there to serve witness or not. ”

“ The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monograph, which methodically lays out the nature of this new environment in terms of its implications for a war against media-savvy insurgents, and then considers possible courses of action for the Army and the U.S. military as they seek to respond to an enemy that has proven enormously adaptive to this new environment and the new type of warfare it enables. ”

“ That said, the Army has to find ways to go around the press, to reach the American people in particular— and other audiences as well—directly, on the assumption that continuing to depend upon the media, and only the media, to get their message out will continue to be insufficient. The enemy has made today’s technologies work for them; the American military can and should do the same. ”

“ But they did do so without explaining that the material they were airing was designed and intended to manipulate, in part precisely by drawing powerfully on the viewer’s emotions. Indeed, they made the situation worse by highlighting precisely those emotional appeals when they went to the family, who could hardly be expected to have anything in mind beyond their loved one’s safety at that moment. ”

“ Once the victim’s bodies are found, we know they have been killed—as well as the method of their execution. Why take the risk, even if it is a minimal risk, that such a tape might provide any worthwhile intelligence information to the other side? ”

“ The reporter then suggests an equivalence between the terrorists and Tony Blair, since both have the ability to be compassionate, the implication being that Tony Blair has as much control over the situation as the men actually holding the knife to Bigley’s throat—which is certainly the argument the terrorists would make. That which would lead the viewer to anger against the terrorists most directly is precisely that which is not shown. ”

“ American media outlets now depend on the terrorists and insurgents for content, so that by uploading this material to the Internet and making it available to anyone who finds it, these groups ensure that it will find its way onto American television network news shows as well. ”

“ They get down on the ground, and they take off their ear pieces. They take off their masks. They do whatever they do with them before taking them in small numbers into the cells where they then would be located, at which point they are no longer in transit and, therefore, they are no longer restrained the way they were. ”

“ The latest estimates suggest that Internet use in the Middle East and North Africa is growing at a rate higher than any other place in the world. Between the years 2000-05, Internet access rates grew at a measure of around 411.5% (compounded growth.) Connectivity may be even higher than is estimated by conventional measures because of the large number of people in the region who use Internet cafes or community access points. ”

“ But these are sophisticated propagandists who are not only constructing sophisticated texts meant to simultaneously reach multiple audiences, they are also constructing multiple texts targeted to reach a variety of different categories of audience. They understand that the trick is that, in doing so, texts targeted to different audiences need to be modified slightly for each different audience. ”

“ The Internet alone is a powerful, even revolutionary, tool; the Internet in combination with these other technologies has the potential to be used as a weapon. Technology, however, and the rapidly improving ways to distribute and disseminate content that technology makes possible, is nothing without the content itself. ”

“ They fight a battle to shape the perceptions and attitudes of the public—a battle over the public’s very will to continue fighting, whether that is the indigenous public insurgents seek to intimidate or the domestic American public they seek to influence so as to force counterinsurgents to withdraw from the battlefield prematurely. ”

“ Beginning with the Chechens fighting against the Russians in the early 1990s, one innovation in terrorist propaganda made possible by innovations in media technology was the filming of terrorist attacks by the terrorists themselves. ”

“ They have often seen the potential in such technologies very quickly, and have proven adept at developing flexible and creative new applications almost as quickly as these technologies have become available to them. In particular, they have used communication technologies to sidestep the traditional media, which has made it possible for such groups to get their message out to their followers in a direct, unfiltered fashion. ”

“ If people want to ask questions and find out what is reasonably happening, it seemed to me not an unreasonable thing, when you’re moving them from the vehicle they’re in towards their cells to have them stop in some area prior to that and do what you do to get them in a circumstance that’s more appropriate for being in a cell than how they were arranged in the buses, the ferries and the airplanes. ”

“ By disseminating enemy propaganda without comment or critique, the press is failing its responsibilities, including, in any event, any responsibility to be neutral, for the media do unwittingly facilitate the terrorist’s purposes. ”

“ When a video is released of Bigley pleading for his life, it provides an opportunity for precisely the type of situation Hoffman writes about: the pressure is put squarely on the government to void its policy of not negotiating with terrorists. How can they not move heaven and earth to bring their man home and end this specific family’s anguish? 78 Mr. KENNETH BIGLEY (Hostage) : I don’t want to die. ”

“ As that suggests, part of the reason terrorists can take advantage of this technology as easily as American “citizen journalists” can is that this is hardly a phenomenon restricted to the developed world or to citizens of the developed world. ”