TRB on the Information War

I'm usually no fan of The New Republic, but I think their "war diarist" has it about right, especially concerning Iraqi TV.

Monk


THE NEW REPUBLIC
KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY
March 27, 2003

Do not believe any commentator who says that a rising surge of "nationalism" is preventing Iraqis from greeting U.S. and British troops in the streets with open arms. What is preventing them from rising up and taking over the streets of their cities is confusion about American intentions and fear of the murderous brown-shirt thugs known as the Fedayeen Saddam, who are leading the small-arms-fire attacks on American and British soldiers. The coalition forces have an urgent need to send clear and unmistakable signals to the people of Iraq that unlike in 1991, there is no turning back from the destruction of Saddam Hussein. And in order to do this effectively they must turn to the Iraqi opposition, which has so far been marginalized.
I pressed this point in a meeting with American officials yesterday. The United States needs to understand that Iraqis do not get CNN. They have not heard constant iterations of how Saddam's demise is imminent. More importantly, they have not seen it demonstrated. American forces so far have been content to position themselves outside southern Iraqi cities; they have only just began to disrupt Iraqi TV, which is Saddam's principal tool of maintaining psychological control over Iraq; and, above all, they have not allowed Iraqis to go in and organize the population, a task which we are very eager to carry out. In Basra, this hesitation has meant tanks sitting on the outskirts of a very porous city whose main arteries to neighboring towns and villages have not even been cut off. Sporadic and faint-hearted British fire was not enough to prevent Fedayeen Saddam from quelling the beginnings of a popular uprising. Moreover, hanging above the head of every Iraqi like a sword of Damocles is the memory of March 1991, when the uprising of the people of southern Iraq, the intifada, was mercilessly suppressed, and in a particularly brutal way in Basra. If Saddam came back from the grave after 1991, Iraqis are thinking, why could he not do so now? Phone calls the opposition has received over the last two days from sources in southern Iraq confirm this sense of ambiguity and hesitation.
Iraqi state TV must be put out of commission, and permanently. One Bush administration official pointed out to me that destroying Iraqi TV will only mean it has to be rebuilt after the war. So what? Money pinching at the tactical level will lead to disaster at the strategic level. Saddam's image and those of his henchmen have been visible all throughout the campaigns in the south and the bombing of Baghdad. Saddam rules through his face, through his ubiquitous presence in day-to-day life. That is what his millions of larger-than-life wall posters are all about. Every day that image is aired reinforces an aura of invincibility. Despite the on-camera speculation of the Western media, not a single Iraqi believes him to be dead. Our phone conversations confirm that, too.
But eliminating his image is not enough. The coalition needs the Iraqi opposition--Iraqis who can sneak into the cities and help organize other Iraqis, men from the same families and social networks that hold these places together, who know how to communicate with their entrapped brethren, who can tell them why this time Saddam is finished, and who are able to root out his cronies when they try to melt away into the civilian population. One cannot liberate a people--much less facilitate the emergence of a democracy--without empowering the people being liberated. Did not a Free France need its wartime resistance to help, partially at least, redeem the nation's sense of self-respect and honor, as De Gaulle demonstrated when he rode into Paris? It is a million times easier for an Iraqi soldier to join his fellow Iraqis in rebellion than it is to surrender his arms in humiliation to a foreigner. To date, however, my meetings with administration officials have given me the impression that some quarters of Washington are at war with Saddam Hussein and others are at war with the Iraqi National Congress. The administration still adamantly refuses to let the Iraqi opposition activate our networks to make the fighting easier for the coalition in the cities, towns, and villages. Why?