The people of the eighties and nineties were different from before. These people had grown up with the glooming shadow of the Vietnam War over their shoulder. They were not warmongers, but were Vietnam veterans and knew the price of entering wars half-heartedly. They knew that if you become committed to a cause you back it 100%. The media had also changed. CNN, real time communications, meant that a camera could view an image and at the same time convey this image over millions of television sets around the country.
Saddam Hussein with the fourth largest military in world invaded in a Blitzkrieg style the small oil exporting country of Kuwait. Unlike Vietnam where we slowly committed ourselves, we acted rapidly and precisely. Sixty F-15 Eagles were launched from Langely Air Force Base Virginia and flew 17 straight hours with aerial refueling to Saudi Arabia where Saddam was now angling his forces. Operation DESERT SHIELD began with the launch of the fighters to Saudi Arabia. Saddam called off his force from attacking Saudi Arabia. This allowed for the U.S. to send and emplace the capabilities of the world’s greatest military machine the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines and the one who played the largest role The United States Air Force. This received positive news coverage from the media and was virtually entirely backed by the public. Every tree, fence and car antenna had a yellow ribbon tied around it signaling they supported the troops.
Then entered operation DESERT STORM, this operation allowed the media to show the public the military’s new “smart bombs”. These new weapons allowed the Air Force to destroy a target with a single plane and a single bomb, when before it would take a fleet of bombers loaded with thousands of bombs. The media highlighted these weapons as not only a way to improve war capabilities, but as a way to save civilian casualties. The Air Force in sixty days virtually decimated Iraq’s military force. With extremely low causalities. That is the only type of war the public would tolerate, one with low casualties. That allowed General Schwartzcoph to launch his 100-hour “hail Mary” invasion and liberation of Kuwait. The media and the public completely supported this war because of the way it was fought and the images they viewed.
The images they viewed were the tapes from the “smart bombs” entering windows and airshaft, all complicate successes. Which resulted in all positive media coverage. The ground coverage they saw was not from young television reporter’s dodging bullets from the actual battle. The government learned the lesson of what to not show the public from the Vietnam. The reporters in the Gulf War were brought around in media convoys. They needed the government’s help to view the battlefield, in this respect it was similar to the Second World War. President Bush also learned that to wage an effective war he needed to have full support from the country, and must have a quick decisive victory because the country would not stand for a long dragging war. That is what they got. The President had give the military his goal and told them to get it done quickly and precisely. The military then ran the war they knew best. This was done because the lessons learned through the government ran Vietnam War. When the soldiers returned home they were greeted by hugs and handshakes from a public that was grateful for the service they had done. These lessons from Vietnam were learned
A president surrounded by controversy, and labeled a draft dodger. The media is already having a field day. The media has also changed its face it is no longer just CNN, and the networks. It is now worldwide on the Internet where information changed hands daily. MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, CSPAN and many others have twenty four-hour coverage of the news. Then we enter another Vietnam style conflict between a sovereign nation that is in the middle of a civil war. Just as we did in Vietnam we are slowly committing ourselves more and more as the conflict in Kosovo continues. The media show pictures of refugees and broadcasts live from the edge of the battle. Every night the public watches the images of thousands of people struggling to stay alive in “tent cities”. Also like Vietnam we have a president that is fond of reading polls and following the trend instead of doing what has to be done. The public and the media at first supported the military action. However as it drags on with no clear end in site and no clear way to define victory the media and the publics support of the conflict decrease daily. The phrase some media have been using “this is another Vietnam” scares many people who lived through that awful war.
As the media constantly changes and becomes larger with more capabilities its strength in controlling the public will only increase. More than 60% of today’s homes are equipped with cable or satellite television. More 80% of today’s public interact with the Internet in one form or another. The media keeps expanding in different directions tighten its grasp on the American public. The public itself is getting weaker in its views. The new generations and some of the old are becoming more depend on the media for it opinions on different issues. The spin that the media puts on issues have more leverage in moving support towards or away from the governments polices. Therefore as time has proven the media industry has grown in strength over the years. More and more people are becoming highly dependent on the media for information. This along with the weakening of the publics ability to rationalize and form independent opinions outside from the media spin has caused the media to have more control over the publics opinion as time goes on.
WORKS CITIED
Gary C. Woodward. Perspectives on American Political Media. Neednam Heights MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1997
George H. Roeder, Jr. The Censored War. Yale University: New Haven, 1993
John E, Mueller War, Presidents and Public Opinion. University Press of America: Lanham MD, 1985
Paul Fussell Wartime. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1989
Tom Brokaw The Greatest Generation. Random House: New York, 198
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