Part Two
Part Two
Continued
Television pictures of bombing targets in Iraq caused U.S. war planners to
fine-tune their strategy of avoiding collateral damage. Haass said, "We had a
little glimpse of that with the attack on what we thought at the time and since
have concluded we were correct in thinking was a command, control, and
communications facility, which, at the time unbeknownst to us, was inhabited by
several hundred civilians." Wolfowitz agreed: "I guess the bombing of that
bunker is the sort of most germane episode, and it's one where the TV images
were very vivid. And it's in fact because of the general way in which the air
targeting was done, you'd probably have a hard time proving that it had an
effect on decisions, but I think it probably did lead us to be more careful....
You might well find that there were now some targets that they thought, 'Well,
maybe we don't have to hit them right away if this is going to be the
consequence.'"66 Although he was Reagan's vice president, George Bush
would privately have scoffed at what he would have considered to be an
excessively emotional approach to foreign policy.
Thus it was ironic that he should be president during the 1992 famine in
Somalia, where domestic turmoil prevented food and other supplies from going
where they were needed. Whereas newspaper reportage did not turn the Ukrainian
famine of the 1930s into a burning domestic American issue, television coverage
of the famine in Somalia played a critical role in generating public pressure
on President George Bush to intervene. Without television coverage of the
Somali plight, it is unlikely that the Bush administration would have felt so
compelled to send troops to Somalia in December 1992. Likewise, without the
incentive of television coverage of American troops in an unambiguously heroic
mode (and of the president greeting them and their Somali beneficiaries three
weeks before leaving office), Bush might have declined to act.
