The talk radio personalities are smart and articulate people, especially within their controlled environments and talking points. I don't have the quick-thinking capacity to dare call up and debate with any of them, and I'm far too proud to test that theory in real time. So I merely listen to the pundits, their great admirers, and the inarticulate dissenters who make it past the screeners.
I digress. In listening to talk radio, I've noticed a heartfelt and agonizing concern among the hosts and the guests that Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the Democrats are beholden to the enemy, that their actions put us in harm's way and risk increasing the chance of a terrorist act. A filmmaker produces a film that puts America in a bad light and could become propaganda for terrorists. The New York Times publishes an article revealing secret programs to the public and to the enemy. A Democratic leader claims that the war has failed, diminishing our morale and boosting the resolve of the Jihadists.
Of course, in our technologically advanced age with instant worldwide communication a norm, any public criticism of the U.S. in the war on terrorism will undoubtedly be heard, and probably used, by the terrorists. So what do we do, never make movies that suggest Americans sin from time to time? Never allow our press the freedom to question government policy? Never admit our fallibility and that our best intentions can lead or have lead to failure?
Unless we are willing to forsake the freedom to openly criticize, we will have to accept and live with the possibility than such criticisms can be used against us by enemies. That is a price of living is a free society at war. Having international law poses similar risks: Al Qaeda members may claim to have been tortured, or that the U.S. violated international law in its war against them. The law may be used against us, but for that should we abandon the idea of international law and global respect for human rights?
The perpetuity of these pressing concerns and questions brought to my mind a 1991 reflection on war by Umberto Eco, in which he wrote:
Even when the media are gagged, the new technologies of communication permit an unstoppable flow of information--and not even a dictator can prevent this, because such technologies make use of fundamental infrastructures that he cannot do without either. This flow of information assumes the role played in traditional wars by the secret services: it neutralizes every surprise action--and you cannot have a war in which it is impossible to surprise the enemy. War produces a general exchange of intelligence with the enemy. But information does more: it continually allows the enemy to speak (while the aim of all wartime policy is to block enemy propaganda), and demoralizes the citizens of the contending parties with regard to their own government (while Calusewitz points out that a condition for victory is the moral cohesion of the combatant). Every war in the past was based on the principle that the citizens, believing it to be a just war, were anxious to destroy the enemy. Now information not only shakes the faith of the citizens, it also leaves them vulnerable when faced with the death of the enemy--no longer a distant and vague event but instead unbearable visual evidence.In our modern wars, Eco says, "everyone has the enemy behind the lines." While our policies and even secret programs are being revealed the world over, bin Laden enters our living rooms to propagate his cause against us. Eco thought, even before the Internet advanced in scope and power, that this unstoppable flow of information makes war impossible, a waste, and he implored us to seek an alternative.
Is Eco right? Perhaps, perhaps not. If he is correct, it is a bit ironic that Sean Hannity and friends are the among those complaining loudest about our media's emboldening the enemy.