Bill Roggio comments on this series about “war bloggers”

Here is a comment from Bill Roggio about these posts about war bloggers, posted with his permission.

The series you have run here is valuable. I am very interested in seeing how this plays out. I certainly appreciate both the tone and nature of your postings, and your willingness to have a civil and productive discussion. We need more of this kind of debate and analysis, and less of the uncivil “debates” - if you can call them that - that exist throughout much of the Internet. My sincerest thanks.

Some comments by Bill Roggio, Editor of the Long War Journal

Bill Roggio, Editor of the Long War Journal, generously replied to my posts about his recent reports concerning events in Basra. See his bio here.

Comment #1

I certainly appreciate the attention you’ve given me for the Basrah reporting. I do think you are drawing the wrong conclusions to my reports.

I am surprised you can say my reporting brims with “certainty and simplicity” and then call the mainstream reports “tentative.” Go reread them, and ask yourself who is declaring a winner and a loser? Is that not the definition of “certainty and simplicity”, to claim to know who won and who lost? I have done no such thing — I have never said the government or Sadr has won. I challenge you to find a statement from me that said I believed the Iraqi government was victorious. You are assuming this from reading the reports. But you would be wrong to think that I declared a winner or loser.

Basra, a test case: war blogger’s vs. experts

(#9 in a series)  Current events in Basra provide a test case to compare the accuracy of the war bloggers vs. that of conventional experts.  This post shows of a prominent war blogger, Bill Roggio (Editor of the Long War Journal; see his bio here).  The following post looks at the views of several experts.

{Update}  I use Roggio’s work, like Totten’s in the earlier posts, as one of the best of the war bloggers.  Roggio’s analysis about Basra differs from the experts’ view in two ways.

•  LWJ describes the Basra fighting as a normal “government vs. militia” operation.  This contrasts with analysis by regional experts, who emphasize the political dimensions of these operations - an apparent attempt by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to prevent losses in the next elections.
• LWJ describes the operations as a success, contrast with analysts’ reports that this - based on what little we know - appears to be at best a tie, and more likely a win for al Sadr.  See Marc Lynch’s reports here and here, and Chet Richard’s analysis here.

“Maliki: ‘Security operations in Basra will continue‘”, Bill Roggio, Editor of the Long War Journal (31 March 2008) - Excerpt:

One day after Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, called for his fighters to abandon combat, the fighting in Basrah has come to a near-halt, and the Iraqi security forces are patrolling the streets. While Sadr spokesman said the Iraqi government agreed to Sadr’s terms for the cease-fire, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has said the security forces will continue operations in Basrah in the South. Meanwhile, the Mahdi Army took heavy casualties in Basrah, Nasiriyah, Babil, and Baghdad over the weekend, despite Sadr’s call for the end of fighting.

Evidence of the war bloggers’ growing influence

(#8 in a series)  One frequent response to my series on War Bloggers is that are a minor phenomenon, especially compared to the mainstream media.  First that ignores the increasing prominence of the war bloggers.  Second, this ignores their increasing role in the mainstream media - NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and now this — a glowing review in the influential Columbia Journalism Review.

Note:  I use “mil-blogs” in the narrow sense of “blogs by soldiers”, per Major Elizabeth Robbins (US Army) in “Muddy Boots 10:  the rise of Soldier blogs“, Military Review(September-October 2007).  The CJR article uses the term in a wider sense, what I call “war bloggers.”

“Blogging the Long War“, Columbia Journalism Review(March/April 2008) - “Bill Roggio wants to be your source for conflict coverage”

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, among the seven-hundred-odd journalists who embedded with combat units were few who were familiar with the military in any intimate way. To many critics, especially those with military experience, this revealed itself in the press’s coverage of the war, which they felt often missed the mark when it came to explaining the hows and the whys of the fight, as well as the mundane realities of military life and culture. It wasn’t long before a rash of blogs - dubbed “milblogs” and written by soldiers in the field and civilians back home, many of whom were veterans-emerged to describe life in a military at war and complain about the press’s failings, real or imagined.

News you can trust about the fighting in Basra!

We have the usual stream of confident but contradictory reports about the current wave of fighting in Iraq.  It is the confidence I find most interesting.  My guess is that the confidence is more deserved in the second of the two articles shown below.  The precise detail given in the first seems somewhat excessive.  Note the first reporter uses body counts as a metric of success, the second speaks of the area controlled by each side — perhaps a small indicator of reliability.

Mahdi Army taking significant casualties in Baghdad, South, Bill Roggio, The Long War Journal  (29 March 2008) — Excerpt:

With the fifth day of fighting in Baghdad, Basrah and the South completed, the Mahdi Army has suffered major losses over the past 36 hours.  The Mahdi Army has not fared well over the past five days of fighting, losing an estimated two percent of its combat power, using the best case estimate for the size of the militia.

More views of the events at Basra (2) — bloggers and war-bloggers

This post links to reports on events in Basra by bloggers, in addition to those I posted yesterday.  In the first post today, I - IV are links to what seem to me expert opinions.  This post, #V gives examples of what looks to me like simplistic speculation.  The last post, VI and VII, links to valuable background material.  The Internet can make us smarter or dumber, depending on how we choose to use it.

V.  Once you have read the first post (I - IV) you are prepared to read this, an example of War Porn, ignoring much of the vital context — a WWII narrative imposed on a far more complex reality:  “Iraqi security forces battle the Mahdi Army“, Bill Roggio (Editor of the Long War Journal; see his bio here)  (26 March 2008).  Recommended by the Instapundit.  Excerpt:

BAGHDAD, IRAQ: The cease-fire extension issued by Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army, appears to be in jeopardy after the Iraqi government has launched an offensive against the Shia terror group in the southern city of Basrah. Dubbed Operation Knights’ Assault, Iraqi security forces have gone on the offensive to wrest control of the strategic oil hub and Iraq’s second largest city from Mahdi Army control. The fighting has spread to Baghdad and the southern provinces.

Knights’ Assault is an Iraqi-led operation and was ordered directly by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who is in Basrah to direct the operation along with Interior Minister Jawad Bolani. Basrah has seen an uptick in Iranian-backed terror activity since the British withdrew from the city late last year. Political assassinations and intimidation campaigns have been on the rise as the Iranians work to extend their influence in the oil-rich city. …

The Internet is flooded with material like this.  Here are some more examples (note:  excepts like these cannot represent the full scope of the original posts).  The contrast is obvious with the experts quoted in part one.

War porn

A fascinating development of the Iraq War are the “war bloggers”, like Michael Yon and Bill Roggio, providing disintermediated news — non-journalists reporting directly from Iraq.  Free from the commercial and political entanglements of the major media, war bloggers can precisely target their audience.  Many of them report events using the narrative that brought Tom Clancy fame and fortune.  It may do the same for them.

Clancy has a well-deserved reputation for technical accuracy, but the action takes place in a world unlike ours.  In Clancy-world the equivalent of Prince Charles is a warm family man.  The equivalent of Michael Gorbechav a wise statesman, steering Russia to a prosperous and democratic future.  The CIA is efficient and effective.  When Federal agents shoot someone, even a bad guy, they feel remorse (no episodes in his books like Ruby Ridge, Waco, or the too-numerous no-knock SWAT teams shootings of innocent people).  Clancy-world is a better one than ours, and that might account for much of his popularity.

Similarly some war-bloggers provide a Disney-like view of the war, imposing a WWII-like narrative on Iraq.  Probably this is what their readers want.

1. Reporting the war as good guys — our allies — fighting bad guys (al Qaeda).  But, like al Qaeda in Iraq, Shiite Arab and Sunni Arab militias have also done terrible things to civilians — murder, rape, ethnic cleanings (all those incidents reported daily at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment).   It paints a false picture to whitewash the militia in order to make al Qaeda look like the bad guys.
2. Ignoring or minimizing the economic depression the war has imposed on Iraq, and the hardships causes by deterioration of basic services:  sewage, clean water, electricity, health care.

Comments (8)