Matt Welch has responded to those arguing for propaganda in Reason magazine here. Matt and I have exchanged several e-mails over the subject, the crux of which were "Boy, I just really wish we had the time to delve into this more deeply"--or, at least, I wish I had more time. I mean, it is Friday and I am a university professor and blogging is work.....

Nevetheless, the divide here seems to be between the neo-libertarian right--which believes liberty means something different in war time than in peace--and the paleo-libertarian right--which believes (at least under my reading) that liberty is a constant.

Here is one of the core arguments made by Matt:

Shackleford's folly, aside from the feeble unpatriotic slap, is that that formulation assumes all weapons are equally neutral in moral value and practical effectiveness, which they are not. There's a reason, aside from international treaty, we no longer use nerve gas on enemy lines, or napalm on villages, or atomic bombs on cities -- world reaction would cause more negative consequences than whatever "positive" gains could be had on the ground. And if we used horses to do a tank's job, or muskets instead of M-16s, these weapons wouldn't be an "asset," they'd be a hindrance.

Now batting for Rusty Shackleford, Steve Green the Vodkapundit:

Now then. If a nuke were to go off in New York or Los Angeles or even Des Moines tomorrow, do you doubt that even President Kerry (cough, cough) would hesitate before retaliating in kind? Oh, but that would be retaliation, wouldn't it? And would it not therefore be a fair response? And what about propaganda? It's not as if the enemy doesn't use it – so why should our government be so restrained? Especially when our stuff is pretty damn innocent? [Read the rest]

The second, and more important argument made by Matt is on the effectiveness of propaganda. Even if it is moral to use, it should not be if it does more harm than good:

Is unlabeled propaganda a useful weapon? In the long run I don't think it is. First, people will eventually find out, either from military officials alarmed at the practice, or Iraqi journalists with whatever motive. As most dictators have eventually learned, truth [ed note: emphasis mine] has a way breaking through even the tightest of seals.

And as long as we're playing with effete American League rules, why not send in two pinch-hitters for Shackleford (after all, I'm a pitcher not a catcher)? Now batting for Rusty Shackleford, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdon:

....the actual “outing” of the propaganda effort by the LAT is, ironically, the only thing that might cause the effort to backfire—but then, we murder to dissect, as they say....

Taking this parallel one step further, let me add that our use of propaganda seems to me to fit this paradigm perfectly, insofar as we have used it to beat back the anti-American rhetoric coming not only from the Arab world, but from the western press as well.

Or to put it more bluntly, this campaign was designed to retaliate not only against enemy propaganda in Iraq and other parts of the middle east, but ironically (and sadly) against our very own media, whose coverage has been almost uniformly sensationalistic and dire. [Read the rest]

UPDATE: Wunderkraut sends me a link to this nifty graphic from File It Under. Click it for a larger view and then go check out the original post here.

Posted by: Rusty at 12:03 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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