The only thing the Internet provides is greater variety, but variety in itself is no guarantee of ‘better’.
The customary advice is to find ‘reliable’ blogs. That can set a trap for relying on blogs that simply gratify natural inclinations and reenforce biases.

I there is a fix for the news problem, I don’t really see it yet, I’m afraid.

Except for a bunch of Bush loyalists, it doesn’t have much support anywhere. Even Petraeus seems less than enthusiastic when he says there is no military solution -only a political one.

Unlike Bush’s first term, the latest crop of generals, including Petraeus, were chosen for competence, not political loyalty.

This is nonsensical on its face. You’re asking us to believe that a) the generals chosen for political loyalty rather than competence opposed their boss’s plan, while b) the generals chosen for competence rather than political loyalty just happened to go along with it; and that c) Bush had a sudden and dramatic personality shift such that he now values competence over political loyalty, even though d) Alberto Gonzales is still Attorney General.

Right.

Jules looked at the AP, at the NYT, at the WaPo, at other major newspapers / organizations who have made quite some ‘in-depth series’ recently, but none of them offers what Jules wants to read – and I agree with Jules that it is incredibly important for media to look at it.

That’s because what Jules wants to read isn’t reality.

Perhaps he should try the fiction section of the Library? Or just stick to writing nasty crap about recently deceased people he’s never met.

Entropy – 20K troops isn’t a surge, it’s a trickle. Keep on spinning…

Not sure what you’re talking about here. If 20k troops is not a surge, then it certainly is not an “escalation” either.

Entropy – 20K troops isn’t a surge, it’s a trickle. Keep on spinning…
Maybe you’ll rip out your smoke detector after the WaPo great “investjournal” piece today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071101895.html?nav=rss_email/components

Even Ryan Crocker and Davis Petraeus concede that the surge isn’t going to provide the quick fix that was promised.

So when Crittenden complains that the media aren’t reporting about the effects of the surge, he is completely wrong.

The problem is that the surge isn’t going to provide a reasonably successful end to the war within a reasonably short time-period.

I think people like Crocker and Petraeus should be congratulated for speaking frankly. If there had been more frankness along the way, maybe Americans wouldn’t be so tired of the war now.

Crittenden is just blowing smoke. Stop enabling him to blow his smoke on your audience.

Reality exists. Reality needs to be confronted. If you think the war needs to continue, you ought to be promoting the ideas of Crocker and Petraeus, not the snivelings of some axe-grinder who bashes the media from his own safe outpost in…the media!!

I don’t want to defend the media. The media did a horrible job in the lead up to this war. But the problems in Iraq aren’t the fault of the media, for God’s sake.

The generals unanimously opposed escalation. Bush got different generals who would do what he wanted. There’s nothing suggesting that this is a carefully considered military strategy; everything points to this as simply escalation for the sake of escalation. I’m sure the officers on the ground are carrying out their orders as capably as possible, but to call that a ’strategy’ is to indulge in the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Uh, not sure how to say this except you seem to have no idea what you’re talking about. The strategy is fundamentally different and the generals who oversaw past failures are gone or, in the case of Casey, in positions that don’t affect actual operations on the ground. Unlike Bush’s first term, the latest crop of generals, including Petraeus, were chosen for competence, not political loyalty.

The generals unanimously opposed escalation. Bush got different generals who would do what he wanted. There’s nothing suggesting that this is a carefully considered military strategy; everything points to this as simply escalation for the sake of escalation. I’m sure the officers on the ground are carrying out their orders as capably as possible, but to call that a ’strategy’ is to indulge in the soft bigotry of low expectations.

In my perception, the strategy around CI is primarily bottom-up while traditional war is top-down, i.e. there is a lot more emphasis on the local command groups reporting results back to HQ who adjusts orders. I was trying to get at this by referring to operational strategy, but I have no idea what it’s called. Is that even distinguished in the military?

The modern US military uses a concept known as “centralized planning, decentralized execution” for both conventional and COIN environments. The principle difference is that in COIN decisions are “enabled” at lower echelons – simply because COIN is a more distributed fight. This concept has given rise to terms like “strategic corporals” and such.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2004/reading-list.htm

TO UNDERSTAND INSURGENCY IN IRAQ:
READ SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Reprinted with the permission of Inside Washington Publishers

Inside the Pentagon, Dec. 2, 2004 — When officers in Army Col. H.R. McMaster’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment deploy to Iraq early next year, their preparation for countering the insurgency will have included not only a list of arduous military readiness exercises, but also a litany of books on warfighting and Middle Eastern history.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2023865,00.html

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The officers – combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency – are charged with implementing the “new way forward” strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial “surge” of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
…
The team is an unusual mix of combat experience and academic achievement. It includes Colonel Peter Mansoor, a former armoured division commander with a PhD in the history of infantry; Colonel HR McMaster, author of a well-known critique of Vietnam and a seasoned counter-insurgency operations chief; Lt-Col David Kilcullen, a seconded Australian officer and expert on Islamism; and Colonel Michael Meese, son of the former US attorney-general Edwin Meese, who was a member of the ill-fated Iraq Study Group.

The Chimp-in-Chief is currently holding a news conference, I wonder how many times he will mention al-Qaeda as the source of insurrection in Iraq, never mind militias or corrupt leaders.

In my perception, the strategy around CI is primarily bottom-up while traditional war is top-down, i.e. there is a lot more emphasis on the local command groups reporting results back to HQ who adjusts orders. I was trying to get at this by referring to operational strategy, but I have no idea what it’s called. Is that even distinguished in the military?

Anyway, my point was that I don’t see what the newspapers could report that they aren’t already. The set of macro goals are pretty straight forward, and most of the complexity is around a level that is shown in the exposés a bit but is very localized. Do you disagree?

I believe Orson has a point when he suggests that blogs may be a “fix” for this problem.

On the helicopter story, for example, there was an incredible amount of detail provided here at TMV by Comrade Rudi and others…detail that the MSM simply cannot provide.

Yah, sometimes blogs are shite…and (cough, cough) biased…but this medium can serve a very useful purpose in that regard.

Domajot, I would disagree. There has been a notable lack of explanatory depth in the MSM’s coverage of the “Surge”. Almost invariably, coverage is human-interest focus on soldiers’ stories, or mostly just passing coverage of the latest car bombing, massacre etc.

TMV presents a good example of this:
You may remember a few months back a high number of helicopters being shot down in Iraq. Shaun Mullen…in posts here…connected the dots, with the help of a contact in Iraq, and theorized that this marked a new insurgency tactic with serious implications for the “Surge”.

The NYT did not arrive at this conclusion until an article several days later.

With all due respect to Shaun, there is no way the NYT — with all its resources — should have been “beaten” to the post on this story by Shaun. Yet it was.

Perhaps this is because of an anti-military bias at most MSM outlets (see, for example, the Washington Post’s self-described “anti-military military correspondent” who denounced the US military as “mercenaries” a few months back).

Thus, I think Michael has a point. Whether one agrees with the war or not, I would say the MSM coverage has been superficial and valueless at best.

It is expensive to do analysis, and the newspapers are competing with the TV, radio, and bloggers, trying to be first. Placing staff in distant locations is expensive, and this seems to be an expense many papers try to eliminate. Simpler stories require less staff, therefore cost less to produce.

News as entertainment. The broadcast media may have made this much worse, but the newspapers have to take some of the blame for this themselves, back to the yellow journalism of a hundred years ago and before. Punchy, provoking sensationalism gets more readers than dry, thoughtful analysis. when a network or a paper decides to target a specific audience, then the entertainment and the news focus complement each other. Which is why I dropped the New York Times subscription years ago – too much rah rah for the liberal wing of the Democratic party, too little substance, too much ignoring the stories that don’t fit what the target audience wants to hear. (For years the same claim, but from a Republican party cheer leading perspective, could be leveled at the Chicago Tribune.)

I agree that there is a problem with lack of substance in many news sources. But I don’t see a simple fix for it. Perhaps the closest thing is blogs. They vary from the good to the terrible, but there are some very good blogs that cover controversial subjects and offer some well informed analysis. You have to know what you are looking for, and go out and beat the electronic bushes. I would try some of the military history sites if I was looking for comments about the counter insurgency in Iraq.

I think TMV does better than many blogs by offering thoughtful AND thought provoking comment about many issues in the news. Thank you to the editors, writers, and posters from the peanut gallery.

In contrast, counter-insurgencies operate on almost no strategy whatsoever.

Uh…no. CI efforts with no strategy are CI efforts that will fail. CI requires an arguably more complex set of strategies and tactics than conventional, so called 3G warfare.

I don’t understand the uproar in the article or this post.