IO and Foreign Deaths
Two very quick pts (sorry to have been out of the conversation; it's commencement weekend here, and a bit crazy.) And again I apologize for my failures re. the quote function. First, I agree that there are real concerns regarding the military running an explicit IO campaign in an attempt to persuade the American people. I know PAOs who are absolutely adamant that the line between IO and PA must be an absolutely bright one because otherwise PA loses its credibility, but that might be somewhat "inside baseball," I'm not sure the public will make that distinction -- all they'll know is that people in uniform are advocating a position. I don't have a good answer for that (yet), beyond keeping this to the informal channels such as YouTube, where, of course, material is seen by fewer people unless a particular video either "goes virual" or is picked up by the mainstream media.
Second, what about foreign casualties? I think the evidence is mixed. On the one hand, opinion polling suggests that the American public finds foreign casualties less of a check against rationales for military operations -- they care more about American combat casualties in determining whether an operation would be a good idea, and in deciding whether an operation is no longer justified -- but that doesn't mean they don't care at all. The idea that there is some kind of "CNN effect," that they'll see certain kinds of images on TV and "demand that the government do something" is completely overblown on the other hand, but that doesn't mean that they can't be convinced that humanitarian military operations are justified (although it is harder to justify American combat operations in such a context.) With Rwanda, the pictures weren't enough (given how sanitized they were, particularly) in a context where the government was making every possible effort to avoid arguing for an intervention, up to and including orders being issued to the White House staff that "the g word" (ie "genoicde) not be uttered in relation to what was happening.
Here's what's interesting: remember I made the point that images of death were heavily sanitized in the American press. Now, that obviously cuts both ways. It means we don't see American casualties, but we also don't see the real price of terrorism -- we see the burning cars after a VBIED is detonated, but not the bodies of the civilian casualties that result. What if we did? Are we sure that Americans would be more likely to demand a swift pull-out? Historically, Americans have justified their participation in wars as going to the defense of the weak. Who's to say that such images wouldn't totally galvanize the public, (given the proper narrative frames, of course) reminding us of the nature of the enemy we fight. I argued that pictures of dead enemy would backfire. I'm not as sure pictures of dead victims would, particularly in Mark's little clip, where they're contrasted with pictures of what we bring -- schools, and healthcare, and hope. I mean, just who are the real occupiers here?
The key is to avoid a narrative where the cause of the violence is sectarianism, and to focus on the narrative where the deaths have been caused by other impulses (not that hard, after all.) The narrative that says it's "just" sectarian violence is read as a narrative of futility, a parallel to one that was argued during the Balkans -- it's a shorthand for an argument that says, look, these guys have been at this for who knows how many generations (even if they haven't been), it's something we Americans will never hope to understand, and can never stop, so what are we doing in the middle of it? The failure here, from an IO perspective, has been the failure to explain AQI's merry little campaign to stoke the flames, their involvement as quite active players in the sectarian side of the violence.
And with that, I'm off to my research assistant's commissioning, and various commencement events.
Originally Posted by Cori
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