Iraq War: What it's doing to the military

The following two articles focus in different ways on the damage that the Iraq War is doing to the US military, especially the Army.  The wounds to the Pentagon's publicly credibility are to a large extent self-inflicted.  For instance:  Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in Broad Area by Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt New York Times 12/13/04.

Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.

Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.

The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations.

The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.

The kinds of disinformation operations discussed in this article are not aimed at deceiving an enemy on the battlefield about troops movements.  They are designed to be "black propaganda," aimed even at allied nations and, probably intentionally, at the US public, if the latter only indirectly.

And then they're flabbergasted when they realize their public credibility is low!

An Army's morale on the downswing William Pfaff International Herald Tribune 12/29/04.  Also available at CommonDreams.org.

<FONTSIZE=2>If the failure [in the Iraq War] is a traumatic one, the result is likely to resemble the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Vietnam destroyed the American citizen army: product of a 200-year tradition that rejected standing armies and held temporary and egalitarian military service to be a duty and experience of citizenship. In Vietnam, the conscript army eventually staged a mute mutiny against the folly of its government. ...

Iraq is now destroying the professional army the United States recruited to take the place of its citizen army. The new army was intended to serve as the unquestioning instrument of the policies of the elected administration. This administration's refusal to supply the manpower and means necessary for its vast military and political ambitions is now having its effect on that army. Its politically inspired fear of conscription, the merciless combat rotation policy and systematic use of involuntary extensions of duty its policies impose, are devastating to troops.