Flipping the Media COIN To Defeat the Anti-American Insurgency Behind the Headlines

Counterinsurgency – “COIN” – is the military term for nation-building. The media throw it around like loose political change. But it’s useful not only in describing President Obama’s wavering policy in Afghanistan. As General McChrystal’s experience with Rolling Stone proves, the politically-activist media are an insurgent force that has to be dealt with in order to enable American voters to understand what is going on in the war.

Let us belabor a metaphor. If the liberal media are the Taliban, how shall the counterinsurgency be conducted?

The Pentagon’s strategy has to gel around the classic anti-guerilla tactic taught at the JFK Special Forces School at Fort Bragg.

General Stanley McChrystal and his “Team America” staff apparently forgot the lessons many of them were taught there. They apparently believed, to predictable result, that if you’re the coolest spec ops guys, everyone will automatically treat you as such no matter what you say or do.

A few years ago, I observed a part of the Green Beret school’s graduation exercise. For reasons long forgotten, it’s called “Robin Sage.” The principal objective, for “A-teams” of would-be grads, is to be inserted into the “Peoples Republic of Pineland,” find a designated guerrilla group (comprised of former SEALs, Green Beanies and such), earn their confidence and begin to “train” them. The “guerrillas” don’t make it easy on them.

Instead of reaching out to their possible allies in the media, McChrystal & Co. allowed one of what former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld might have called the “media dead-enders” to gain their confidence and report their unguarded moments.

After McChrystal’s defenestration, some Army old-thinkers now are ready to return to the rules of media engagement that served them so disastrously in the Vietnam Era: the media are the enemy to be shunned and scorned openly. But this produced nearly three decades of disaster, with the military receiving the coverage that an open media enemy should expect.

The lesson is nearly the precise opposite. Yes, the media – most of it at least – is comprised of people who are completely invested in the success of Barack Obama and will blame the military for every failure of his wrong-headed policies. The answer to that isn’t for the military to exile itself to another decade in the media wilderness.

The answer – for the military, not conservative politicians – is to do precisely what the JFK School teaches.

Most reporters, editors and broadcast producers are entirely ignorant of the military. And when embedded reporters spend a lot of time with our troops, they almost inevitably come to admire them.

The answer is to carefully, discretely and continuously reach out to those in the media who aren’t the obvious dead-enders. Bring them into the training facilities. Put them in places where they can gain the knowledge essential to fair reporting. Allow them to observe, listen and learn what our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen do. Educate them, gain their confidence and teach them what is important to convey to the public. Not every backseat ride in an F-15 will result in a convert, but many will.

And when the time comes to write or broadcast a story, you’ll at least get a fair shake.