Could Twitter Have Stopped the Media's Rush To War In Iraq Ten Years Ago?

Hugh Pickens writes "On the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Eric Boehlert writes that if Twitter had been around during the winter of 2002-2003, it could have provided a forum for critics to badger Beltway media insiders who abdicated their role as journalists and fell in line behind the Bush White House's march to war. 'Twitter could have helped puncture the Beltway media bubble by providing news consumers with direct access to confront journalists during the run-up to the war,' writes Boehlert. 'And the pass-around nature of Twitter could have rescued forgotten or buried news stories and commentaries that ran against the let's-go-to-war narrative that engulfed so much of the mainstream press.' For example, imagine how Twitter could have been used in real time on February 5, 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell made his infamous attack-Iraq presentation to the United Nations. At the time, Beltway pundits positively swooned over Powell's air-tight case for war. 'But Twitter could have swarmed journalists with instant analysis about the obvious shortcoming. That kind of accurate, instant analysis of Powell's presentation was posted on blogs but ignored by a mainstream media enthralled by the White House's march to war.' Ten years ago, Twitter could have also performed the task of making sure news stories that raised doubts about the war didn't fall through the cracks, as invariably happened back then. With swarms of users touting the reports, it would have been much more difficult for reporters and pundits to dismiss important events and findings. 'Ignoring Twitter, and specifically ignoring what people are saying about your work on Twitter, isn't really an option the way turning a blind eye to anti-war bloggers may have been ten years ago,' concludes Boehlert. 'In other words, Twitter could have been the megaphone — the media equalizer — that war critics lacked ten years ago."

Comments

No

[AliasMarlowe]

NO, NO, NO.

Re:No

[jhoegl]

Agreed,
The ones that got us into war, Bush, Cheney, the army, and the media, saw nothing but profits.
If only we could charge them now for the deaths, the economic collapse, and the injured war vets.
Economic rebound son!

Re:No

[megamerican]

There were plenty of people pointing out the laughable lies in Powell's speech at the time, who were just dis missed as "conspiracy theorists." There were millions of people around the world protesting. Anyone in the corporate media who was against this war were fired or silenced.

Twitter would just be flooded with lies and disinformation that discerning truth would be nigh impossible.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Social media HAS changed public activism.

It has shown exactly where people's priorities lie. We are more informed and more apathetic than ever before.

Re:No

[jandrese]

That's the correct answer to any headline that ends in a question mark.

My impression at the time was that Bush and company was hellbent on railroading the country into war, and they knew how to get what they wanted, mostly by running roughshod over the concept of checks and balances. They didn't even really try very hard to convince people, it was just "he might have chemical weapons!" and "ooh, look at this render of a mobile chemical lab that he could have maybe built". It's a shame Breaking Bad had not aired yet at the time, people would have had a lot of fun with the RV comparisons. There was also the fact that we were still neck deep in Afghanistan at the time. The war with Afghanistan at least made sense, the country had been taken over by guys who were very happily sheltering the guys who had just perpetrated the biggest acts of terrorism in modern US history. They were also being huge jerks to their own people (destroying the countries heritage, oppressing women and minorities (ok, that is part of the heretic they kept), and running the place like their own private piggybank) and nobody else in the world liked them. We even had UN buy in and some (mostly token, with a couple of exceptions) NATO support. Saddam had been keeping a reasonably low profile for a long time too, it seemed really unprovoked for Bush to suddenly single him out and call for his head.

Re:No

[BeansBaxter]

It is so interesting to hear others recollection of that time. Between seeing the satellite photos and hearing all the evidence in question I had no reason to think Iraq was complying with UN requirements. Hans Blix didn't want war. Saddam was very clearly interfering with their work. Nothing was going to change Saddam. He was only a murderous tyrant who was oppressing his people. I don't hear about Iraq much anymore. They aren't saber rattling or invading their neighbors. I don't see them running rough shod over UN resolutions. I know there were pockets of resistance and they continued to attack US troops as long as we were there. The good stories out weigh the bad however. I'm sorry France lost its cheap source of illegal oil. I know that must sting. It is too bad that the US had to take action to support a UN resolution. It is a shame we brought stability to a country in turmoil. Saddam is gone. I don't miss him.

Re:No

[RabidReindeer]

That's the correct answer to any headline that ends in a question mark.

My impression at the time was that Bush and company was hellbent on railroading the country into war, and they knew how to get what they wanted, mostly by running roughshod over the concept of checks and balances. They didn't even really try very hard to convince people, it was just "he might have chemical weapons!" and "ooh, look at this render of a mobile chemical lab that he could have maybe built". It's a shame Breaking Bad had not aired yet at the time, people would have had a lot of fun with the RV comparisons. There was also the fact that we were still neck deep in Afghanistan at the time. The war with Afghanistan at least made sense, the country had been taken over by guys who were very happily sheltering the guys who had just perpetrated the biggest acts of terrorism in modern US history. They were also being huge jerks to their own people (destroying the countries heritage, oppressing women and minorities (ok, that is part of the heretic they kept), and running the place like their own private piggybank) and nobody else in the world liked them. We even had UN buy in and some (mostly token, with a couple of exceptions) NATO support. Saddam had been keeping a reasonably low profile for a long time too, it seemed really unprovoked for Bush to suddenly single him out and call for his head.

The truly sad thing here is that for some time before 9/11, even before Bush took office, Saddam Hussein had been steadily pushing at his limitations, repeatedly violating the "no-fly" zones and doing other provocative things. I consider it very likely that given enough time, Saddam would have done something sufficiently egregious that the entire world would have said "enough", formed a "Coalition of the willing" that wasn't a mere joke and ended up more or less where we are today except that the USA would have had a decent excuse for invasion and not have lost one more reason to be considered one of the Good Guys.

9/11 wasn't even the remotest excuse. Saddam hated al-quaeda as much or more as we did, but almost from the day Bush moved into the White House, they'd been muttering about going back into Iraq. 9/11 was merely the trigger that set off the stampede. It was a long, long time before you could buck the White House without being accused of hating America and being on the side of the Terrorists.

Re:No

[iceaxe]

Saddam is gone. I don't miss him.

Do you miss the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of other people who are also gone? Not to mention the arms, legs, eyes, health, etc. of thousands of other folks?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The hundreds of thousands dead would disagree

Fucking warmongering asshole you are.

Re:No

[Shagg]

How did Bush, Cheney and the like profit?

Yeah, it's not like either of them is an ex-CEO of a private company that made billions off of government contracts as a direct result of the war.

Re:No

[vux984]

1. 30 million people living in Iraq were in danger.

Millions of people are in danger in lots of other places, we only bother to make stern condemnations, if we bother to take note at all. Why is Iraq special? Clearly "millions of people in danger" is not why we do anything. Where are we on that with Rwanda? No, we don't really care about millions of people in other countries, it just how we pretty up an invasion to sell what we want to do for other reasons. It's like invoking "think of the children"...

2. Bush contended that Iraq had refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, so the initial authorization for military conflict in 1991 stood.

Likewise, that's not a reason to go to war. That's an excuse one can use if one already wants to go to war. It is not compelling us to war.

3. He said the CIA had presented evidence that Iraq had been pursuing WMD. This is the biggest point of contention.

This is also the most complicated. Without getting into the philosophy of it too much, there really isn't any moral argument that we should prevent them from having WMD. The whole thing actually mirrors the 2nd amendment controversy within the US except at the nation state level and the US is not the world government.

Deciding that other countries may not have, nor may even research weapons technology of their own that we have massive stockpiles of is pretty indefensible.

While the US is entirely within its moral right to ensure its own security I don't thnk that extends to depriving everyone else of those same rights to 'enhance our enjoyment of our own right' stands up as reasonable.

I didn't like Saddam, I don't like Kim Jong-anything, and I KNOW that them having WMDs represents an increase in risk that WMDs will be used.

But that's a risk that seems one has to take. Like the right to bear arms means that people will have guns, some of them will be bad people, and that the risk that sometimes innocent people will be hurt by them is increased. So be it.

The world is not a safe place, and oppressing other people to make it "a little bit safer for me" is not an acceptable solution.

The US is not 'benevolent dictator for life' and elevating it to that position, and bestowing upon it powers that give it a perpetual power imbalance with it's peers will not be stable in the long run. It already exploits that position and I don't see why we want to perpetuate that.

Re:No

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Twitter only makes things worse. It surrounds you with a large bubble of people with similar views. How is that any different than how ANY of the last 6 presidential administrations have been run anyway, other than to give you more people with the same views as yours to pretend that you're in your own little information world bubble?

Re:No

[RocketRabbit]

Was Hans Blix the Terminator? Could he have just eye-lasered all the Iraqi troops that would have prevented him from making the inspections he desired to make?

Hans Blix was a guy in charge of a non-military organization. He didn't have the authority or resources to literally force himself into any spot he chose in Iraq at a whim.

Re:No

[atriusofbricia]

So you are saying that it's better that the US is now killing the Iraqis, rather than Saddam. Got it.

Firstly, they are killing each other in rather large numbers.

Secondly, what Atilla's post was getting at is that yes, it was progress to get rid of Saddam. I don't understand how you can debate that point.

Bush and Cheney were morons, otherwise they would never have been so gung-ho over the Irak thing. Everyone who knew a bit of history knew that once Saddam was gone, Irak was going to go down in civil war. But arguably, the Americans have actually made a very good job of keeping the thing from melting down. And gave the country a chance that would not be there if Saddam or his crazy son were still in power. All of this has cost the US a lot of lives and money. For very little return.

This right here honestly. War costs lives. Freedom and even the attempt at freedom costs lives. That's simply the way it is. The people who bemoan what happened never seem to want to address the flip side of their argument. I'm not saying the US going there was awesome, but if we're going to say it was the great crime of the 21st century then we damned sure need to answer the question of would Iraq be better off now if the US hadn't gone there?

There's every reason to believe that Saddam would still be in power. There's every reason to believe that he still would have wiped out large numbers of his own people to stay that way and no reason to believe that eventually he wouldn't have taken another look at Kuwait or another neighbor.

Is Iraq better off now and more importantly likely to be better off in the future because of what happened over the last 10 years? Probably so.

Re:No

[fyngyrz]

they don't live under a dictatorship anymore. Even WWII had collateral damage.

Yes, they just live under a new dictatorship, a religious one, one that is completely unable to maintain civil order but has no problem whatsoever imposing a rule just as oppressive as the one Saddam did. As for WWII, there was a real threat to be countered there, one of hugely more power and intent than anything Saddam ever even dreamed of. The one time he actually tried something along those lines (Kuwait), he got stepped on like a bug and ran home to mommy, which was fine.

There's no question that when a country steps outside of its own borders and makes war on others without the specific pretext of stopping exactly that act, it must be stopped. Unfortunately, the country that fits that definition in the case of the 2nd Iraq war is not Iraq -- it is the USA. Even more unfortunately, there is no one big enough to stop us, or even slow us down, when we do evil things.

What countries do within their own borders must be the business of that country. If you think otherwise, you just completely justified an invasion of the USA by anyone who cares to do it for failure to abide by its own constitution. Our leadership is corrupt from top to bottom - executive, judiciary, legislature, political parties - and our actions reprehensible by our own standards. But I suspect you'd say that it's entirely our job to work out our own problems. What concerns me is that you would not say the same for the Iraqis.

Re:No

[Gavagai80]

Saddam was not in the process of genocide. The war was about a decade late to save anyone from his last suppression of shia revolt, and there was no indication that he was posing much threat to his own people in 2003 given that the no fly zone was working.

Re:No

[fyngyrz]

Saddam Hussein's Iraq was actually kind of a dangerous place.

Yes. Particularly if you opposed the regime, or otherwise met Hussain's standards for "objectionable." Still, not our business, and not the cause of the current violence. We are the cause of the current violence, because we removed the previously stable, secular government.

Just as our many internal problems -- our murdering, home-invading police, our judicially violated constitution, our torture of our prisoners, our insane and evil war against people's choice to ingest certain substances and a long laundry list of other internal government malfeasance -- are not justification for others to invade us, neither is Iraq, or any other country's, internal unrest and fuckery our problem.

Invaded Iran in 1980.

Iran took care of it. Never became our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.

Killed 182,000 Kurdish civilians between 1986 and 1989.

Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.

Killed 80,000 to 230,000 civilians during uprisings in 1991

Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.

Executed hundreds of Ba'ath members in 1979

Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.

Invaded Kuwait in 1990

As Kuwait could not possibly defend itself, this actually, and reasonably, became our problem. You remember how that turned out for Iraq? It was a military action, taken against a military force, and they were crushed. This was not an invasion of a sovereign country presenting no threat to others; it was the cardinal opposite: an action to preserve the sanctity of national borders.

Repressed, tortured and killed citizens throughout his reign

Internal problem. Not our problem. Current problem is our problem, and our fault.

Re:No

[fyngyrz]

Which defines it as an internal Iraqi problem, from an Iraqi source, towards Iraqi targets. This is what distinguishes a problem where we caused the deaths, and therefore bear responsibility for.

Just as problems in the USA today in no way justify the invasion of our country by another, the problems in Iraq did not justify our invading them, and by extension, they did not justify any of the consequences of that invasion.

We have a right, although not an obligation, as does any sovereign country, to take an interest when a country steps outside its boundaries and begins to fuck with others (as in 1990 and Kuwait.)

We even have a right to engage in modification of how we deal with them, from simple diplomatic speak to the harshest refusal to trade, when they have internal issues we frown upon. Because these actions are taken outside the sovereign nation. We can gang up with other nations and do so. Still ok.

However, we do not have a right to step inside a sovereign country and fuck with its internal affairs. The moment we take the position that we do, that right extends to everyone else, and the idea of "sovereign borders" immediately becomes "who has the biggest military and strongest castle" and we decided long, long ago that such an approach was insufficient deal with the varied approach to civilization taken by the many nations of the world. And today, with the heinous fuckery our government is engaged in, everyone from China to Luxembourg has reason to step in and do to our government exactly what we did to Iraqs: squash it because it's not living up to its own standards, much less anyone else's. If you think you want that, you are a fool.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew all this stuff at the time. From public radio and the web. The pro-war people I talked to didn't give a damn. Remember, the nation had 9/11 fever. It was unamerican not to give the president full support no matter how stupid his actions seemed. Twitter would have been full of that too.

Re:No.

[Genda]

For the love-o-jebus, The nations staged the largest protest in American History... Millions across the nation in every major city and many small towns publically assembled to scream and shout, "We see you, We know what you're doing, and this war is the thinnest of shams." I was in San Francisco, there was a veritable sea of pissed off humanity as far as the eye could see. The life support systems for rectums in D.C. weren't interested, and the wholly owed and operate media was too busy fellating Dick (how appropriate) Cheney and Rummy.

Twitter could have tweeted its brains out, I can't imagine it would have made a popcorn fart in a hurricane of difference.

Re:No.

[NeutronCowboy]

The anti-war protests may have been some of the largest in history, but they were still dwarfed by all those who approved of it. On average, the US supported the war. Furthermore, the people in power - politicians, journalists and other newsmakers branded everyone who disagreed with the impending war as traitors. Remember the phrase "It's not unpatriotic to disagree"? Yeah, it was coined by protesters who were tired of being essentially threatened with firing squads every time they spoke up.

Revisionist

[0racle]

The Iraq war was not an unpopular idea at the time. It became unpopular in hindsight.

Re:Revisionist

[newcastlejon]

The Iraq war was not an unpopular idea at the time. It became unpopular in hindsight.

There are a few million people who would disagree with you.

Re:Revisionist

[Fallingcow]

Bingo. Twitter would have been full of war cheerleaders shouting down the handful of dissenters, just like every other popular online forum at the time.

Re:Revisionist

[Hatta]

The Iraq war was an unpopular idea at the time. Some of the largest protests ever occured in opposition to the Iraq war. That the media at the time doesn't make this clear is testament to the power of the American propaganda system.

Re:Revisionist

[phantomfive]

Yeah but more millions would agree with him. That's what popularity means, most people favor it. And they did, Bush did a good job selling war as something necessary. People believed he must have had a good reason. Eventually they found out he didn't, which is why they felt he lied.

Stop worshipping Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a blog post 140 characters at a time. Why 140 characters? Because Twitter is a relic dating back to a time when phones couldn't send messages any longer than that (thank you SMS, you reinvented the modern haiku). It's as unimportant now as it was when it was founded. The rise of Twitter mirrors the spread of the dread scourge of centralization that has taken hold as Software as a Service started to flourish: perhaps this newspost is what it will take for you to stop and re-examine how concentrated the providers of the Internet services you use every day have become.

No, because the "ignorance" wasn't accidental

[DragonWriter]

At the time, Beltway pundits positively swooned over Powell's air-tight case for war. 'But Twitter could have swarmed journalists with instant analysis about the obvious shortcoming. That kind of accurate, instant analysis of Powell's presentation was posted on blogs but ignored by a mainstream media enthralled by the White House's march to war.'

Actually, many of the claims were debunked by the UN and others prior to Powell's speech (some in the same UN session, some earlier, some both), and had been covered extensively in the news pages of the major media. The "mainstream media" didn't ignore it, though the pro-war commentary in the major media did; the major media just separated the coverage of the "air-tight" case from the coverage of all the holes that had been drilled in it before it was even presented, which was conscious misrepresentation, not accidental ignorance that faster delivery could have addressed.

So, its unlikely Twitter would have changed things in a different way than the blogs did: the people that were paying attention to the sources which debunked Powell would, perhaps, have seen the debunking in a different format, but the people that didn't see it still wouldn't have seen it.

Really?

[Sparticus789]

So tell me, how has Twitter stopped the numerous stupid political decisions since 2006?

No. Journalism is dead

[tekrat]

Journalism died at least 5 years before the Iraq war. "News" media outlets are corporate/political megaphones, they are NOT the "4th estate" that keeps the checks and balances we hoped.

Look how the media was duped to demonize the United Nations during the entire Bush Presidency, even before the Iraq war. Long before we went to war, the UN's policies and internal politics were marginalized and they were made to look like a bunch of bumbling fools so when the Bush Admin got around to saying that Hans Blix didn't know what he was talking about, we idiotically believed it.

And "news" has gotten worse as time goes on. If you watch *any* of the corporate run media outlets, you're horribly mis-informed. Twitter isn't going to change that.

Re:It would have just meant more cheerleaders

[i kan reed]

Your criticizing 2(Egypt, Tunisia) successful peaceful changes of power to fledgling democracies on the grounds that there was another that wasn't peaceful and another that wasn't successful or peaceful?

Or are you angry at the results of democracy in Egypt?

Something more specific that I'm missing?

It's hard to compare that to Iraq where every major claim the Bush administration(and the media) were making turned out to be quite literally the opposite of reality.

You may not remember these claims that were common by war cheerleaders:
Claim: "It will pay for itself." Reality: The war cost 6 trillion dollars
Claim: "It will take less than a week." Reality: 9 years
Claim: "Actively pursuing chemical weapons." Reality: not even a hint of evidence to that effect
Claim: "Collaborating with al qaeda." Reality: Hussein was actively suppressing islamist movements in Iraq.
Claim: "Greeted as liberators." Reality: A few staged photo shoots to that effect.

I mean, I can't think of a single true thing that was said by a pro-war speaker before the war, with the exception of one thing that stuck with me that bush said the night of the Invasion, slightly paraphrasing from imperfect memory: "This won't be like the wars Americans are used to. American soldiers will die." Fucking dead on for once.

Media and Government would have ignored Twitter.

[crgrace]

I marched in Orange County, CA just before the Iraq War started. There were at least 100,000 people on Jamboree Blvd. I was there. I saw them. Now, Orange County is one of the most conservative regions of California. It produced Richard Nixon, and usually has Republican representatives. So the fact so many citizens would leave work to march against a coming war was incredible to me.

That night I watched the news. Nothing. Not a single thing. Probably the biggest civil political protest in Orange County history and it wasn't on the news (at least that I saw). It should have been ALL OVER the news.

That's when I knew this "liberal media" was not true. It's really "corporatist media" and because the media in general decided for whatever reason to support the war they ignored the fact that an unprecedented number of regular citizens were against it. I learned a lot about how the world works that day. I really don't think Twitter would have made a difference.