Cynical media is not playing fair: "... When it comes to the exercise of American power in the world, particularly military power, there seems to be a suspicion among those in the media--indeed, a suspicion bordering on a presumption--of illegitimacy, incompetence, and ineffectiveness.".

• Author: Hume, Brit
• Position: Mass Media - Media response to Iraq war - Historical record of US military and foreign policy

BEFORE THE CONFLICT in Iraq began, my colleague and friend, the ever-voluble Chris Matthews of NBC, said that if we go to war. "[It] will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam ... Beirut, and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe." NBC analyst Gen. Barry McCaffrey predicted that, if there were a battle for Baghdad, the U.S. could take "a couple to 3,000 casualties." I worry and wonder about the fact that so many people can get things so wrong, so badly, so often, so consistently, and so repeatedly. I think that there are ideas lurking under the surface that help to explain why this happens. In brief, when it comes to the exercise of American power in the world, particularly military power, mere seems to be a suspicion among those in the media--indeed, a suspicion bordering on a presumption--of illegitimacy, incompetence, and ineffectiveness.

Think about the cycle we have been through. The U.S., attacked by a terrorist gang on Sept. 11, 2001, immediately was assailed by speculative ruminations in the media about "why they hate us." The idea that those who attacked the U.S. were themselves illegitimate--indeed, even evil--is not the kind of thought that springs to the minds of the people responsible for Newsweek cover stories. Instead, it must be that we have done something wrong. After that initial period of hand-wringing, we suffered through quite a bit of media discussion about how 9/11 really was about the Israelis and the Palentinians, and about how Pres. Bush essentially has to resolve that situation in order to win the war on terrorism. This is a little like saying that before the President can push a domestic agenda, he has to find a cure for cancer.

The next thing we heard was all the bad news about how, if we tried to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan by force of arms, the "Arab street" would rise up. Has anything in contemporary history ever been more overrated than the Arab street? I remember ABC news anchor Peter Jennings telling me at the beginning of the Gulf War that a likely outcome of that conflict would be the overthrow of Pres. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, because there would be an uprising in the Arab street. Well, there was no such thing and Mubarak remains in place. None occurred during the war in Afghanistan. Nor was there such a rebellion during the war in Iraq--in spite of some of the most overhyped coverage of civilian casualties and of American military miscalculations that can be imagined, especially on the Arab...