by Tina Grazier
Here at Post Scripts weve been saying from the very beginning that support for the war is important. The collective will of the people to press boldly on, to present a firm, united resolve, makes all the difference. Now, a new study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university’s Kennedy School of Government strongly indicates the validity of this premise. The study shows that the opposite, that is, anti-war sentiment in news reporting caused an upsurge in violence by terrorists in Iraq. I thank these researchers and scholars for publishing their findings; they could have buried it.
Negative U.S. media linked to increased insurgent attacks, by Shawn Waterman – UPI
Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable “emboldenment effect” on insurgents there. ** Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university’s Kennedy School of Government. ** The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled “Is There an ‘Emboldenment’ Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq.” ** The researchers studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November, tracking what they called “anti-resolve statements” by U.S. politicians and reports about American public opinion on the war. ** “We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases,” says the study, published earlier this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading U.S. nonprofit economic research organization. ** In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent following what the researchers call “high-mention weeks,” like the two just before the November 2006 election.
“The researchers conclude that the increases in attacks are a necessary cost of the way democratic societies fight wars and say they are concerned that the research may be seized upon by the Iraq war’s supporters to try and silence its critics.,” ** We are a little bit worried about that Mr. Monten said in an interview. “Our data suggests that there is a small, but measurable cost” to “anything that provides information about attitudes towards the war.”
Im not sure what the worry is all aboutCode Pink is not going away and the media certainly wont quit covering their childish and flamboyant look at me protests. Big moneybags types like George Soros arent about to be shamed into silence anytime soon. Certainly the left leaning journalism crowd isn’t going to shut up and the talking heads literally delight in making this “George Bush’s war”…a clear signal to our enemy that “America doesn’t have the stomach for war”. So this is not a “necessary” way democracies fight wars. It is a willfull brand of undermining a national effort to defend the country.
Id have more respect for anti war types if they would adopt the more mature position of conscientious objector, a person who objects for personal reasons…quietly. There isn’t much of a chance that this report will change behaviors or that it will cause anyone to admit that the loud and proud antiwar stance has cause our enemy to be emboldened. It should act as a wakeup call or at least give reason to pause. Personally, I believe there is a very good chance that a lack of unified resolve has caused the war to continue longer than it may otherwise have gone causing more injuries and deaths. There is no way to prove itbut there is now strong evidence to support these claims.
Anytime you go to war you go with the added resolve to end it as quickly as possible. Efforts to undermine our leaders and soldiers only prolongs war. So I say it boldly and with certainty: Anti-war sentiment kills!