Return of the Contra

I have had the long standing position that one of the great things that GW Bush has done for America is to let its military out of the closet. In being boldly unilateral and stating a now seemingly cliched but Congressionally approved case for the use of the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan he put Americas reputation in plain view. That was the right thing to do because it put all of the political opponents in plain view, domestically as well as internationally. People say that America is worse off for it. I disagree. This has been, by all measures, one of the most openly debated (though wrongheadedly for many) war in my  life.

The alternative is coming:

What about the multitude of Islamist insurgencies, low-intensity conflicts, and counter-terror operations the U.S. faces in the years ahead? The U.S. will get the best results when it arranges a media blackout of these conflicts. The U.S. government will arrange such a blackout when it employs local proxies, militias, and tribes to do its fighting. There will be few or no U.S. conventional units going to such conflicts in the future with which reporters can embed. By contrast, reporters are almost never allowed to cover current special operations missions, such as those that would support such proxy wars. As for the local proxy and militia allies of the U.S., they are unlikely to have much sympathy for the needs and traditions of Fourth Estate.

A current example of these practices can be found in Somalia. There, the U.S. intelligence community and special operating forces have worked with the Ethiopian army and local Somali tribes to wage a campaign against an Islamist movement that had previously gained power in the country. There is virtually no Western news coverage from inside Somalia. Western reporters are forced to cover the war as best as they can from either Nairobi or Addis Ababa. Since the "common, everyman" U.S. soldier is not present, the U.S. media has little interest in the conflict. Few if any visual images of the Somali conflict make it to Western news media. The U.S. can sustain a conflict on these terms for a long time, far longer than the media-intensive war in Iraq.

If it was me in the White House, I'd use a mix of these 'open' and 'closed' theatres to prosecute wars in the future. There will be plenty of resources available to spin the spinnable war and win the winnable. But keeping them separate will probably be the best idea.