TCS Daily – Panoptic War
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James Joyner | Thursday, June 8, 2006 |
My latest for TCS Daily, “Panoptic War,” is up. Written before this morning’s news of Zarqawi’s killing, it’s even more apropos now.
This is an asymmetric war, with the world’s best military trying to contain a guerrilla force that, as Christopher Hitchens notes, is reduced to “the use of random murder to create a sectarian and ethnic civil war” and efforts “to alienate coalition soldiers from the population.”
Yet, the information war is asymmetric, too. The enemy can dominate media coverage by staging constant acts of mayhem. News about mundane affairs of state, like coalescing of democratic institutions, revitalization of the infrastructure, or even the relative peace and prosperity in most of Iraq is very much “dog bites man” when there’s gore to be shown.
Thankfully, we’ll have some good images for at least a while.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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