Information Warfare
Strategy page has an interesting post up about the Pentagon working to combat what it views as misinformation in major news articles: Information Warfare: Calling Out the New York Times
I think that there are several interesting aspects to this story. Of course it is patently obvious that an important aspect of the war in Iraq, and the war on terror in general, is most at its heart an information war. Neither Al-Qaida or the insurgents in Iraq are able to inflict meaningful damage to U.S. forces from a conventional military perspective, their only hope is to create an environment in America that is beneficial to their desired goal. Information war, or propaganda if you prefer, is clearly the best and easiest way of achieving that goal.
For the Pentagon not to respond would be foolish.
On the other hand, our democratic processes and institutions are stronger when we have the unvarnished truth, especially as coming from official sources. This is not to say that the Pentagon is lying, but when one begins to engage in information war, especially when the battleground is one’s own populace, the temptation to use any means necessary to ‘win’ is always there. Add in that this information war certainly has direct political effects and we are moving toward some pretty dangerous ground.
Probably the best solution would be to have a media that was a little more savvy to the attempts of the enemy to manipulate it (or as some would prefer, a little more patriotic) but that doesn’t seem likely to come into being spontaneously. Certainly blogs and other alternative media outlets present alternative views, but they still are a long way from matching the penetration and impact of major media outlets.
Clearly such things require a balancing act, and I think if fairly safe to say we don’t have great balance right now.
(via Instapundit)
