Media Measures of a War's Success

What makes a war "successful"?

These days, in the news coverage of the war in Afghanistan, there's a lot of media spin about "metrics" as a way of measuring success.

A recent New York Times article along that line made quite a splash. Under the headline "White House Struggles to Gauge Afghan Success," the Aug. 7 story was emblematic of what passes for rationality among those who make and cover war policies in Washington.

"As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan buildup, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won," the article began. "Those 'metrics' of success, demanded by Congress and eagerly awaited by the military, are seen as crucial if the president is to convince Capitol Hill and the country that his revamped strategy is working."

It was a classic media drum roll to dramatize an escalating war: in a context of American political truisms. "Without concrete signs of progress," the story went on, "Mr. Obama may lack the political stock — especially among Democrats and his liberal base — to make the case for continuing the military effort or enlarging the American presence."

Mostly, in recent decades, the USA's wars abroad have been about the USA at home. Domestic forces, economic and political, hold sway. And to gauge success, according to current vogue, we must devise "metrics" to figure out how the war is doing.

The people closer to — or inside — the caldron of war do not have such luxuries. They are experiencing war, not fumbling to discern or devise ways to quantify its progress or shortcomings.

One of the big problems with U.S. media reporting on war and "national security" is that the journalists and the newsmakers tend to share a very similar lexicon.

When they talk about "metrics," naturally enough, it's from their vantage points.

"We all share the president's goal of succeeding in Afghanistan," said Sen. John Kerry. "The challenge here is how we are going to define success in the medium term, given the difficult security environment we face."

But when, in effect, "success" is arbitrarily defined by — let's face it — the occupying power, what does it mean to say that "we all share the president's goal of succeeding in Afghanistan"?

Journalists and policymakers alike have often come to recognize the circular process when an administration chases its tail in a quest for "success." Thus, the current enthusiasm for "metrics."

But while the White House "struggles to gauge Afghan success," people in the middle of the Afghan war are struggling to survive.

After a war, journalists may be fond of asking whether it was a "success." On such questions, everyone is invited to offer an opinion. The powerful have the loudest megaphones. Others speak up as well. But the dead do not have a say.

And therein lies what we might call a fatal flaw — as powerful officials and influential journalists lead the chase for "metrics" and other indices of a war's success. Those who pay "the ultimate price" are excluded from the ponderous assessments. They, literally, have no voice.

The dead have been rendered as digits and widgets, moved around on spreadsheets and news pages as they were on battlefields and along refugee corridors. They are victims of war, hardly seen as people by those who tote up the measures of success.

It's a cruel joke that news media keep helping to tell. But anyone who's laughing has not understood the human news.

Norman Solomon is the author of the book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," which has been made into a documentary film. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM