CENTRE POINT
We should beware the laptop bombardiers
SIMON JENKINS
ou furnish the pictures and I'll fur- nish the war,' William Randolph Hearst cabled his bemused staff in Havana in 1898. They fabricated a tale of an abused maiden imprisoned by Spanish desperados. Hearst duly goaded Washington into the Ameri- can-Spanish war and led his reporters to the 'front' in person. The techniques used by the modern press to drive politicians to war are, I believe, hardly less insidious. In Beirut and Somalia they succeeded. They may yet succeed in Bosnia.
Television cameras and Are-you-a-man- or-a-wimp? editorials drew Ronald Reagan into Beirut in 1982 and George Bush into Somalia in 1992. In the latter case, it took Bill Clinton 14 months and hundreds of corpses to get out. Two weeks ago media pressure drove the same Mr Clinton to overrule his own judgment and that of his military advisers and drop three bombs on a road outside Gorazde. The bombs induced near-euphoria among British and American newspapers: 'At last!' they cried in unison.
My first thought was that General West- moreland must be shedding a wry tear. Why did the American press not cheer him when he spoke in Vietnam of 'surgical air attacks on enemy lines' and 'teaching the enemy a lesson it will not forget'? Why did Anthony Lewis of the New York Times not demand he drop `ten bombs for every Viet- cong shell', as he demanded last week for every Serbian one? Why did the Washing- ton Post not describe Westmoreland's bombs as 'instruments of an intelligent diplomacy'?
Newspapers are rarely for peace until after war has broken out. If they join peace parties before the shooting starts they suf- fer fearfully — as the Observer found over Suez. War is like murder and political scan- dal, adrenalin to every news desk and every circulation manager. War is sound, lights, action. Better still, it is righteous indigna- tion, virtue against evil.
Press analysts have espoused a Bosnian war with all the enthusiasm of the press pack in Waugh's Scoop. They have mocked the United Nations' humanitarian man- date, ignored the fate of the relief convoys and pressed, overtly or covertly, for military aid to the Bosnian side. The Bosnian Serb case, such as it is, has gone by the board, as has Croatia's since the Croats were shown to be less than angels. Equally neglected is the argument for no intervention. As Hearst shrewdly judged, non-intervention becomes politically incorrect as soon as the press decides to commit itself en masse to one side. The non-intervener is not just a spoil-sport, he is immoral, blind, an accom- plice to a unilateral evil. Armenia or Rwan- da or Liberia can go hang. When the drums of war are beating, the journalist chooses his colours and expects the world to rally to them.
The Balkans are thus pushed towards their Byronic fate, of serving as a play- ground in which great powers can pretend to teach others lessons in life. Last October Mr Clinton was sent an open letter by a devastating array of mostly liberal writers, politicians and diplomats. All demanded a western air war in Bosnia. Mr Clinton protested that he could see 'no long-term strategy behind a bombing campaign', a view repeated this month by his defence secretary, William Perry, and his chief of staff. No sensible person advocates bomb- ing when there is no likelihood of follow-up on the ground. The thesis that bombing is an aid to Bosnian diplomacy is confined almost exclusively to newspaper editorial rooms.
Yet when the Russians negotiated the more or less willing removal of Serbian guns from Sarajevo earlier this month, credit was ascribed in the British and American media to the threat of bombing. The big lie became a most useful myth. Repeat the same threat at Gorazde, said the laptop bombardiers, and the Serbs would scuttle back to the forest. Mr Clinton caved in, despite Mr Perry informing him and the world that the town was a lost cause.
I have never known one bomb to be greeted with such ecstasy. The International Herald Tribune led its Bosnia page with the heading 'An End to Neutrality', to the fury of General Rose's embattled UN head- quarters. The bombing was a risk 'emphati- cally worth taking', asserted the New York Times. One Washington Post analyst, Charles Krauthammer, hailed the moment when 'the United States enters the Balkan wars'. Another, Jim Hoagland, explained that Mr Clinton's task was now to show Americans 'that air strikes on Gorazde are linked to . . . worthy long-term goals'. In Britain the Guardian and Independent as well as the Times and Financial Times were for the bomb. Even the Telegraph's distin- guished defence analyst, John Keegan, gave it his seal of approval. The failure of the Gorazde bombing was wholly predictable. It was tactically useless. It was strategically and diplomatically counter-productive. Yet every leading British and American newspaper supported it — albeit with the armchair general's let- out that action might now be 'too little and too late'. I can only conclude that the bombing met a need, indeed a craving, for a wider war in Bosnia that seems to lie deep in the subconscious of the western media. Whether bombing is seen as an alternative to a ground war or as a part of one — which it could only be — makes no difference. 'Bosnia' has become a code. Its meaning abroad is distinct from any reality on the ground.
Bosnia is not Somalia, nor was Somalia Beirut. But the role of the media in each is uncannily similar. President Reagan admit- ted that television pictures of the Chatila massacre were what persuaded him to send the marines back into Beirut in September 1982. The aid agencies in Mogadishu attracted television coverage to Somalia that had neglected the worse humanitarian horrors of Angola or Sudan. In such cases a familiar saga unfolds. It begins with a call to send in troops to escort aid convoys, then 'to enforce peace'. As the going gets tough, more ruthless action is demanded, preferably from sea or air. 'The town must be destroyed to save the town' is the motto of this phase. There follow the usual atroci- ties and a sudden about-turn. The media declare the whole operation a 'sad fiasco' and call for immediate withdrawal. This way governments cannot win and the press cannot lose.
A leading American member of the war party, William Safire, wrote of Bosnia a year ago: 'When television brings films of suffering into our homes and rescue work- ers and journalists report rapine and geno- cide, we Americans are moved to a more principled position.' His principled propos- al was that America should withdraw the Nato nuclear umbrella unless Europe agreed to wage war on the Serbs. This blackmail could yet achieve a historical first: a proxy American war in Europe the sole purpose of which would be to give moral uplift to the American President and his media critics. It should be great televi- sion. And this time none of the body-bags need be American.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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