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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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.