I do not believe that this is what our forefathers intended. The code of ethics for the society of professional journalists states:
...public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility.
The basic ethics of a journalist that calls for:
1. Seeking truth,
2. Providing fair and comprehensive account of events and issues
3. Thoroughness and honesty
All are victims of the massive agenda driven competition for economic or political supremacy. The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our servicemembers who are at war.
My assessment is that your profession, to some extent, has strayed from these ethical standards and allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on TV, what they read in our newspapers and what they see on the web. For some of you, just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own preconcieved notions, biases and agendas.
It is astounding to me when I hear the vehement disagreement with the military's forays into information operations that seek to disseminate the truth and inform the Iraqi people in order to counter our enemy's blatant propaganda. As I assess various media entities, some are unquestionably engaged in political propaganda that is uncontrolled. There is no question in my mind that the strength our democracy and our freedoms remain linked to your ability to exercise freedom of the press - I adamantly support this basic foundation of our democracy and completely supported the embedding of media into our formations up until my last day in uniform. The issue is one of maintaining professional ethics and standards from within your institution. Military leaders must accept that these injustices will happen and whether they like what you print or not they must deal with you and enable you, if you are an ethical journalist.
Finally, I will leave this subject with a question that we must ask ourselves--who is responsible for maintaining the ethical standards of the profession in order to ensure that our democracy does not continue to be threatened by this dangerous shift away from your sacred duty of public enlightenment?
Let me now transition to our current national security condition.
As we all know war is an extension of politics and when a nation goes to war it must bring to bear all elements of power in order to win. Warfighting is not solely the responsibility of the military commander unless he has been given the responsibility and resources to synchronize the political, economic and informational power of the nation. So who is responsible for developing the grand strategy that will allow America to emerge victorious from this generational struggle against extremism?
After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve "victory" in that war torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism. From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan to the administration's latest "surge" strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power. The latest "revised strategy" is a desperate attempt by an administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people. An even worse and more disturbing assessment is that America can not achieve the political consensus necessary to devise a grand strategy that will synchronize and commit our national power to achieve victory in Iraq. Some of you have heard me talk about our nations crisis in leadership. Let me elaborate.
While the politicians espouse their rhetoric designed to preserve their reputations and their political power -our soldiers die! Our national leadership ignored the lessons of WWII as we entered into this war and to this day continue to believe that victory can be achieved through the application of military power alone. Our forefathers understood that tremendous economic and political capacity had to be mobilized, synchronized and applied if we were to achieve victory in a global war. That has been and continues to be the key to victory in Iraq. Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat. The administration, congress and the entire interagency, especially the department of state, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure and the American people must hold them accountable.
There has been a glaring, unfortunate, display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. As a Japanese proverb says, "action without vision is a nightmare." there is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight.
Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the Republican and Democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives. Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq - without bipartisan cooperation we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope.
