A century and a half worth of grave markers fill Beechbrook Cemetery, a grassy landscape on Cape Ann where generations of Gloucester men and women who helped build the historic Massachusetts community rest. On a cluster of modest tablets "SPA" features prominently. Today, few Americans would recognize the acronym, unless they read what surrounds the letters on some of the headstones: the word "War," a name, and a branch of military service.
For a once-famous conflict that defined the country's imperial role in Latin America while launching another in Asia -- the United
Nearly 2,500 American soldiers and sailors died from hostile fire and disease in the three-month-long war with Spain, slightly more than the 2,400 military deaths over two decades in Afghanistan. The lives lost 120 years ago were no less loved, mourned or honored than those that comprise the casualty count today. And for those who fought in or favored the war in 1898, their voices also were no less loud in arguing that the cause was just and its results worth the cost. It's human nature, after all. Who wants to think of loved ones dying in vain or in wars, victories or not, that poured the nation's wealth down the drain?
That said, the fact most all Americans have forgotten our 19th Century version of nation building is worth contemplating. So is a question: Just like the Spanish-American War's drift into historical oblivion, will Afghanistan suffer the same fate? Anyone tuned into broadcast and cable news in the last few weeks doubtless would call that idea bonkers. The instant analysis and expert opinionating about the implications of our client-state's collapse clog the media's arteries. Indeed, its volume and portentousness alone suggest the conventional wisdom sees the war as an epochal event.
Media savants, of course, would say, "What do you expect?" The imagery that captured Kabul's chaos explains the on-air reaction as well as the real time opinion polling on Americans' views. How could it be otherwise? And, a cynic might add, just wait. In the 24/7 news cycle, the next telegenic shiny objects are certain to exert their mesmerizing power. They are glittering already. Partisan pissing contests over who lost Kabul, the Biden administration's "political crisis," and the effects on the 2022 elections, rather than serious reporting on the decisions that produced a seemingly interminable war, already dominate prime time. A few more weeks? Afghanistan, the war, will simply go away.
But defaulting to a Marshall McLuhan perspective -- that the medium isthe message -- misses the fundamental problem with news coverage of the country's first generation-long war. Americans today are no better informed about Afghanistan, what we did on the ground, and why it went awry than they were when the war began. In fact, in 2018, after 15 years of war, a survey found only 38 percent could find the country on a map. Like virtually every international story that calls for expertise, sustained attention and resources, over two decades broadcast and cable news barely gave a few minutes of airtime each week as the country's long-failing intervention unwound.
Ignoring the Afghanistan story isn't unique. In fact, Donald Trump's America First crowd has nothing on major media's C-suites. Well before the last GI in Kabul boarded the final outbound C-17, broadcast and cable news organizations have been in wholesale retreat. Closed international bureaus, skeleton foreign staffs, reporters who helicopter into a capital or crisis abroad for a quick news hit and gone, not to mention metastasizing commentary and shrinking space for hard news: the reasons for the superficiality of international news aren't hard to diagnose. Neither are the consequences for Americans who still depend on broadcast and cable as their primary news source; in Afghanistan and elsewhere, their understanding is poorer as a result.
The opinionating dominating prime time only compounds the problem. The current apocalyptic commentary is a case in point. Whether from left or right, it's fodder for a Monty Python script. Consider many of the former officials, retired generals, and paid "analysts" who nightly join the networks' marquee journalists. For years the same cast of characters has explained why the war mattered and how it was going to turn out. On stage again, they are now soothsaying on Afghanistan's future, the global role of the U.S. and President Biden's political fate. Instead, wouldn't it be nice if the green rooms full of former generals and foreign policy geniuses owned up to why, for years on camera, they got a trillion-dollar, 20-year war wrong?
Accountability, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. No doubt network executives would make the obvious point in defending their programming as well as their corporations. They owe their allegiance to their shareholders. Maximizing "shareholder value," along with ratings, advertising rates and market share determines their companies' standing. The publishers of the major daily newspapers that rallied Americans to flag-waving enthusiasm as the troops sailed to Cuba in 1898 could have said the same thing.
If viewers click past hard news and in-depth reporting as they search for opinions that coddle their own, what they need to know takes a backseat to what they want. Unfortunately, as citizens, voters and perhaps family members of servicemen and women, so does their understanding of crucial issues that can only be delivered in a democracy by the Fourth Estate.
Photos courtesy of Kent Harrington.
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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of