It also depends on the war, though. Now this is a completely different universe as far as media goes, but 80 years earlier whole newspapers were eviscerating Lincoln’s policy on a regular basis, largely because their allegiance was to the other party. Anyway the development of the relationship between newspapers and the U.S. government has not been a straight line, I think. It would be interesting to see how our turn-of-the-century adventures (Philippines, Hawaii, etc.) were covered in newspapers of the time. Perhaps I’ll look them up if I get a chance. A parallel development may be that over the course of the 20th century certain papers (and broadcast organizations) were attempting to develop a ‘national’ perspective rather than being mouthpieces for one party or another.
Here’s a newspaper printing a speech by a senator against our involvement in the Philippines. But this is a case (like the Civil War or Vietnam) where there was not monolithic agreement that we should be fighting, from the halls of Congress on down. WWII (post Pearl Harbor) may be an outlier in that regard.
It’s hard to make blanket comparisons, because the social norms were different. The media back then did not run stories with the graphic descriptions, language, and imagery of crime and violence that we get today as a matter of course. The press reflects the population pretty much, and as mores change, so does what is covered and how it is covered. There was actually some interesting editorials after the atomic bomb drops; some folks already were wondering what we had unleashed. But the strategic bombing campaign, yeah, I can’t recall seeing any mainstream stuff criticizing that on moral grounds. Then again, it is not clear exactly how much the public or even the press really appreciated about the scope and scale of things.
I’m not sure though that today the public at large would be at all worked up about it either. I mean, it was pretty much a minority that was really concerned about the Vietnamese and our bombing campaigns there, and even fewer who care about our lower level but chronic drone war, either.
A world where the US would have been as fascist as the Third Reich and actually part of the Axis was also not that far off.
I think TR prevented the US from going socialist, if not community (in a way similar to what Bismarck did in Germany), and FDR kept the US from going fascist (until today).
Do we have any Roosevelts we can get as president today?
That the military of the US essentially was happy to confirm leaks originally that they’d hit a suicide bomber on this strike tells me that they were originally incredibly confident that they had a legitimate target and that they struck that legitimate target. Until they started hearing that they’d essentially killed a family, they hadn’t any idea.
Yeah, it was a shitty situation where they had to make a call on the shot or risk dozens more dead Afghan civilians and potentially more service members as well, after one attack already succeeding. I think they realized pretty quickly they fucked up, since they wouldn’t release footage of the shot to show the secondary explosion they claimed occurred.
Some things never change. You’re welcome, Afghanistan!
Not trying to flippant, this is horrible and infuriating. And also seems like too much to be hopeful that we’ll learn some lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and avoid these catastrophes. A very tragic but fitting end to our Afghanistan occupation.
This is not at all clear. The car was parked in the courtyard of a home, not rolling down the road toward a mass of refugees and US forces. It’s not at all clear to me that they had to do anything except keep watching it. Maybe there is some reason, but I don’t know what it is.
I don’t know, but they watched the car all day without taking the shot. They watched the car being loaded with the things they though were explosives and didn’t take the shot. They watched the car drive around some more and didn’t take the shot.
I’m just reacting to the claim — which they also made at the time — that they had to act. I can’t really see at this point why it was necessary to take the shot when the car was in a fixed place, stationary, not threatening anyone or anything, surrounded by kids. I think it’s a reasonable point.
Edit:
This is from the CNN story:
In the lead up to the strike, drone operators surveilled the courtyard for up to 4 to 5 minutes. In that time, a male driver left the vehicle. One child was parking the vehicle and other children were present in the car and the courtyard – as CNN had been told by the Ahmadi family.
It’s Monday morning quarterbacking, but the profile doesn’t seem right. Suicide bombers generally don’t take their families to work with them. The kids should’ve made them think twice.
As far as I’ve read, most organizations target young single men for that same reason. Family guys just aren’t as likely to pull the trigger.
On the other hand, at some point you may be dealing with an atypical suicide bomber, or an atypical scene, and then you could end up having other lives on your conscience.
I suspect this will end up being one of those situations where the people making the decision didn’t have all the information that the people carrying it out did, while the people carrying out the decision thought the decisionmakers had more information than they did.
Drone operators: “They wouldn’t tell us to shoot if they didn’t know these were bad guys.”
Commanders: “If they weren’t bad guys, the drone operators would’ve told us.”
