Item — HN Reader

If the media covered Iraq/Afghanistan like they covered WWI/WW2/Korea, there could be burning cities (well, burning crappy towns in the case of Afghanistan), tens of thousands of dead civilians, etc. (I don't actually think that would happen, outside of Fallujah, Baqubah, Shahikot, Konar, etc.)

There are a lot more embedded reporters now than there were in Vietnam. The main difference with Vietnam was the draft. For almost all Americans, the wars now are something on TV which happens to other people, which they might feel intellectually one way or the other about, but which has very little direct impact.

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There are more embedded but either they have more constraints on what they can/will say (I've heard this but can't find a citation so I wont stand on it) or they are siding with what's going on. You don't get the same feeling of senselessness from the reporting that you did from Vietnam.

The US killed more civilians in one afternoon on 16 MAR 1968 at My Lai (and, unlawfully) than have died in the ENTIRE AFGHAN WAR FOR TEN YEARS.

The reason there is no news reporting of numerous horrible atrocities committed by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan is that...there haven't been (m)any. There have been potentially needless but non-criminal incidents, and accidents, which are documented. There have not been many genuine crimes. (I believe there were more in Iraq than there have been in Afghanistan; in Iraq there was a military unit running a brothel, several cases of detainees potentially being abused, etc.)

The crime in Afghanistan and Iraq, if any, is that we're wasting huge amounts of "blood and treasure" for a mission which isn't in the US vital national interest. As far as how the actual war is being conducted, it's about as bloodless as an occupation can be. We're effectively trading combat effectiveness and huge amounts of money for casualties on both sides.

Very well, point retracted. But I think that the media should work harder to make people realize what hell on earth occupation is for the occupied in the same way they made people realize what a hell Vietnam was.

I don't disagree that the media has done a horrible job of reporting on Iraq/Afghanistan.

However, I think you really overestimate the downrange reporting coming from Vietnam (I don't know how old you are; the war was over before I was born, so I only read about it after the fact).

There was definitely a lot of focus on US casualties. We were losing about 300 per week, whereas now it is more like 300 per quarter or per year.

The main difference was in Vietnam, the journalists had free reign to go anywhere in the allied area they wished; in Iraq/Afghanistan, reporters are generally embedded with a specific unit. Maybe psychologically embedding with the unit makes reports identify with the soldiers more.

The only really stunning difference between Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan was down to Walter Cronkite giving his opinion that the war would end in stalemate. I don't think very many other Vietnam war reporters (from Vietnam; not US based) gave personal commentary like that. I think that is down to Walter Cronkite as a person, and that he had experience with a previous war (he flew on bombers and covered landings during WW2) before reporting on Vietnam. None of the embedded reporters in Afghanistan or Iraq covered a major war other than Gulf War I before (Anderson Cooper, Geraldo, Christiane Amanpour, etc.)