Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq
328
Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq
328eBook
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Overview
The U.S.-led coalition wasn’t merely engaged in a fight to build a more tolerant, participatory society against incredible odds. It was also in a constant clash with forces that influenced public perception about the mission. During those difficult years, it became clear that warfare was now, more than ever, a blend of policy, politics, and the business of journalism.
Basile critiques the media’s reporting and assesses the Bush administration’s home-front communications strategy to argue that if policymakers fail to effectively articulate their strategy, manage their message, and counter misinformation, they will find themselves unable to execute that policy. That, Basile argues, places the United States at great risk. Tough Sell blends Basile’s personal story with lessons from the media war in Iraq that can improve our ability to communicate about and prosecute the War on Terror.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612349077 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Potomac Books |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 864 KB |
About the Author
Tom Basile is a Forbes opinion contributor, national political commentator, radio host, a faculty member of Fordham University, and principal of the New York–based strategic communications firm Empire Solutions. He has served in government at the local, state, and federal levels. Basile is a former Bush administration appointee and served as senior press advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from 2003 to 2004, for which he received the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Medal.
John R. Bolton is a diplomat, lawyer, and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. He also served as assistant U.S. attorney general under Ronald Reagan.
Read an Excerpt
Tough Sell
Fighting the Media War in Iraq
By Tom Basile
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 Tom BasileAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61234-900-8
CHAPTER 1
Parachuting
These tired young men and women in uniform, sweating in the sun, knew so much more than I did about war, about Iraq, and about the challenges that were waiting a short plane ride away.
New York City is one of those places where things happen. It's what makes it one of the greatest places on earth. The city bustles around you at a fever pitch and, at the end of the long days of playing whatever game dominates your life, you feel a sense of triumph just for being part of the greatness of the city. Every once in a while, the influencers of Gotham manage to drag themselves away from their offices on a weeknight, put on black tie, and pause to reflect. On this particular night in June 2007, the Economic Club of New York was holding its Centennial Gala, celebrating a hundred years of contributing to American discourse on economic and foreign policy. The three-story ballroom at the fabled Waldorf-Astoria was aglow, as much from the candles and chandeliers as from the sparkling elite of New York's financial powerhouses. The gathering storm of the coming economic collapse didn't appear to be on anyone's mind. Hollywood has the Oscars. Washington has the Alfalfa Club and the Gridiron dinners. Although many prestigious functions of note happen every year in the Big Apple, the Economic Club of New York is clearly one of the oldest and most venerable institutions for the wealthy and successful — not that I claim to be either. I was the guest of a client. Alan Greenspan, Pete Peterson, John Whitehead, and Harold Burson were there. So were the likes of John Hennessy and Bill McDonough. The guest list read like the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. In fact, Paul Gigot was on the dais. As I sat there at table thirty-five with bunch of private equity and venture capital folks, talk of Iraq swirled around. I couldn't help but think that the scene was about as far from the Middle East as you could get while still being on this planet.
About a half hour into the program, former commerce secretary Barbara Hackman Franklin introduced the keynote speaker. Interestingly, it was not some economist, captain of industry, or Wall Street financial wizard but a political scientist. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped up to the ostentatious cherrywood podium and gave her best analysis of where we'd been, where we were, and where we were going as a nation. As she spoke in her characteristically even and amiable tone, the audience began to listen intently, momentarily forgetting their marinated baby artichoke tarts and parmesan herb salads. Rice spoke of what she called American Realism as "an approach to the world that arises not only from the realities of global politics, but from the nature of America's character." She said,
America has always been, and will always be, not a status quo power, but a revolutionary power — a nation with New World eyes, that looks at change not as a threat to be feared, but as an opportunity to be seized.
She continued with a refreshing simplicity of word to say that "American Realism deals with the world as it is, but strives to make the world better than it is: more free, more just, more peaceful, more prosperous, and ultimately safer."
She did what she could to inform and impress, extolling some little-known facts about the Bush administration's foreign aid record. She reminded everyone that in 1946 the question on everyone's minds was not "Would communism be stopped in Eastern Europe?" but "Would Western Europe survive communism's advance?" After all, the communists won 48 percent of the vote in Italy and 46 percent of the vote in France just after World War II. More than two million people were starving in postwar Europe because of failed reconstruction programs. In the late 1940s, the Turks were embroiled in civil conflict, and Greece had erupted in civil war. The years that followed the Nazis' defeat saw post–World War II Germany permanently divided, Czechoslovakia fall to a communist coup, the Soviet Union explode a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule, and the Chinese embark on communist revolution. "Few would have thought," she said, "that freedom was on the march in those days," but because our decision-makers "kept faith with our highest principles, supported them with national power, kept their optimism, and practiced a brand of distinctly American Realism," we defeated a great collective threat to freedom. The comparisons to the War on Terrorism were straightforward and direct for the sophisticated audience.
The speech was striking. It was striking not because I hadn't heard the pitch before or didn't know the facts she offered but because I suspected that few of the influencers in the room, let alone the general public, knew them. How many of these folks, I thought, actually know that between 2001 and 2007 the United States nearly tripled foreign assistance worldwide and quadrupled aid for sub-Saharan Africa? Do people realize that over the past four years this nation dedicated $1.2 billion to fight malaria and $30 billion to fightAIDS, the largest effort by one nation in history to fight a single disease? Did they realize that the Bush administration was working to interdict terrorism in more than 160 countries around the world with unprecedented cooperation from other governments?
To my mind, her remarks underscored the critical knowledge gap that represents one of the most significant problems faced by the United States' Iraq policy and American foreign policy generally. There is a public diplomacy crisis to be sure. America's good work gains little attention overseas in comparison to persistent criticism leveled by liberal activists, the press, and foreign governments. Yet, much more significantly, the knowledge gap has also reached crisis levels in the United States among Americans.
The War in Iraq had proven to be the front line not just in the War on Terrorism but also in a struggle to articulate and defend American policy on the home front. At its core, the issues were bigger than George W. Bush and his administration. They are not about Republicans or Democrats. The crisis of effective communication is about the future ability of the United States in its role as the world's preeminent force to craft, sustain, and defend a foreign policy that will keep us safe. The future of American hegemony is directly related to the capacity of policymakers to articulate and win the battle for public opinion, particularly here at home.
Watching the historic events of the first decade of the twenty-first century living in Washington and New York, I have often thought of how Harry Truman met with Franklin D. Roosevelt only twice before the presidency was thrust upon him in 1945. The man from Kansas had become the vice presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention the year earlier, not because of his relationship with FDR or for that matter his leadership ability but because of one of those backroom deals that just happen in presidential electoral politics. History records that it even took a phone call from FDR himself to convince Truman to join the ticket. Yet there he was in 1945, president of the United States during World War II, having only met with Roosevelt once subsequent to the inauguration and bearing on his shoulders the decisions that could decide the fate of the world. Truman was a visionary and performed well under very difficult circumstances, but there is little doubt that in many ways he was wholly unprepared for the job when he took office. That's the way Washington works. In many ways, that's the way history is made: unsuspecting, often unprepared people being thrust into extraordinary circumstances and forced to prove their mettle by rising to the challenge.
That's the way it was for so many American civilians who came to be part of the Iraq mission. It was certainly much the way I became an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority and, consequently, the fight to effectively articulate policy in the age of the new, digital media. I'm not comparing myself to Truman or anybody who made such a substantial contribution to history. Yet, again, it's Washington and it works all the same way, whether you're a White House intern, a political staffer at a federal agency, a press secretary on Capitol Hill, or the president of the United States. I've come to learn that there is a certain formula to getting a job in our nation's capital, most of it having to do with luck and circumstance. In fact, it's really safe to say that in Washington, advancement is based primarily on who you know, luck, and then (a distant third) what you know. To be sure, I must have done something right in my career, but clearly I was in the right place at the right time. I am thankful for it. I always will be. History is replete with examples of someone in that odd, obsessed little town on the Potomac being propelled into the middle of historic events by death, resignation, scandal, knowing the right person, or just being in the right place at the right time.
On a hot and muggy late morning in July 2003 — the kind of morning that makes your shirt stick to your body from the humidity — I was sitting in my office at the Environmental Protection Agency on Pennsylvania Avenue when I received an unexpected phone call. My assistant, Tracy, came into the office and told me with a wry smile and a roll of her eyes that somebody was on the phone claiming to be calling from Iraq. Though she often thought that I was a little uptight about things, like insisting that my staff show up to work on time, Tracy had a good sense of humor. She liked to smile and loved to laugh, especially at my expense. I thought maybe she was being sarcastic. Like any rational human being in the midst of a busy day, I thought I was about to be the victim of a practical joke. Perhaps it is one of my old buddies from college, I thought, checking in with their phantom friend who had abandoned them for the Washington game. I was late for lunch with a former colleague of mine from the White House. I told her to take a message, and I went on my way.
As I walked past the lush green North Lawn of the White House in the heat, I slowed a bit, as I usually did, to peer through the high iron fence and the sprinklers showering the grass with a cool spray. Standing on the sidewalk in the midst of the usual flock of tourists taking photographs, I happened upon someone I knew from the Office of Presidential Personnel. Upon seeing me, he gave me a rather strange look. Of course, I asked why the reaction, to which he replied, "I didn't think you were still here." I pressed him for an explanation, but he didn't elaborate. His comment concerned me. After all, I was a political appointee, and his office was responsible for my continued employment. I decided to at least temporarily shrug it off and continued my brisk walk through the typical thick air of a Washington summer day. At the restaurant, I met up with Greg Jenkins, who at that time was director of the Office of Presidential Advance, and somebody whom I worked with during the 2000 presidential campaign. Greg had returned several months earlier from a tour of duty in Afghanistan working for the White House communications operation during Operation Enduring Freedom. He made several trips to Afghanistan to help coordinate the international media and message development about the progress of the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Upon his return, he accepted the job as director of advance (which took him out of the game, so to speak) on the administration's message development and communications planning for the Global War on Terrorism.
During lunch, we talked extensively about his experience in Afghanistan, and I happened to mention the phone call that I received just before coming to meet him. He noted that the White House and the Defense Department were building a staff for Ambassador Bremer, who had recently taken over as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Over his sandwich and my salad, he posed the question, "What if they ask you to go?" To which I of course responded, "I don't know," not thinking for an instant that it was actually an option. Besides, leaving my job and being deployed over to a war zone for an indeterminate amount of time would be a major life change and a substantial risk. It would be enough of a risk to give anyone pause. He said essentially, "If they offer you something and you don't take it, you're crazy."
I returned to the office a few blocks away, hauling my body through the midday sauna, to find that Tracy had vanished and a new voicemail was waiting from this mysterious person from Baghdad. The female caller, in a rather firm voice with a German or perhaps Austrian accent, said that they had a request for me to join the communications team that Ambassador Bremer was assembling in Baghdad. She also pointed out that when "they" called, "they" expected the phone call to be returned. "They" turned out to be Special Assistant to the President Katja Bullock from the office of Presidential Personnel at the White House, who had been asked to help staff the CPA. "They" apparently needed an answer quickly. I needed to sit down.
For several months, I had been looking for a new challenge in my life. Since the inception of the Bush administration in January 2001, I had been working at the Environmental Protection Agency under former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman. I had been frustrated at the agency for quite some time and found myself increasingly butting heads with several members of the senior staff who, in my opinion, failed to promote aggressively the president's agenda. I saw promoting the president's agenda as my job after all. We simply weren't articulating the positive achievements of the Bush administration on the environment, most notably sharp increases in funding to clean up thousands of toxic sites, historic diesel fuel regulations, and other clean-air proposals.
No, I'm not kidding. Environmental groups expected Bush to do everything short of shutting the agency down after he took office. Of course, the programs, the research, and the work went on. Surprisingly, they were actually accomplishing some important things on the environment. It was just that nobody was listening. The environmental lobby, the Democrats, and the media of course had long before made up their minds that the "oilman from Texas" was going to be a mockery of an environmental leader. I'm not saying his agenda was very ambitious, but there was certainly more going on than people realized. After all, Bush even proposed a historic reduction in greenhouse gases that the Democrats killed because they didn't want him getting the credit and because the regulations were not draconian enough for their taste. Bush environmentalism was a hard sell to say the least.
You're probably not going to buy it either. Suffice it to say, for a number of reasons, the agency was a frustrating place to work.
I appreciated the opportunity to work for Whitman, who was a dynamic leader with an impressive ability to grasp numerous and difficult policy concepts. As a New Yorker, I had followed her career closely and, when the Bush transition team asked me to join her staff, I jumped at the opportunity. Most of the folks coming off the campaign wanted to work anywhere but the EPA (for obvious reasons), and I actually ended up being one of the only appointees at the agency who previously had a full-time commitment to the president's campaign. For two years, I served as director of the Office of Communications for the agency and then later supervised the public liaison team within the administrator's office. It had been difficult working with some of the "politicals" whom I felt were not playing on the White House's team. When Whitman finally announced her resignation in June of 2003, I definitely knew it was time to leave.
Some opportunities had come my way in the months preceding that phone call from Baghdad, but nothing really sparked my interest. It was July, and I was getting impatient, as I often am about the progress of my career. A couple of months earlier, Brian McCormack, a colleague of mine from the 2000 presidential campaign, and I had a few drinks at Shelley's Backroom, a bar near the Treasury Department that was frequented by White House and administration staffers. Actually, he had a beer and I had a Coke as we sat in the back of the dimly lit, smoke-filled cigar bar. We talked about his preparations to go over to work for Bremer, who at that time was about to take charge of the coalition's effort in Baghdad. Brian had served as the personal aide to Vice President Cheney since the inauguration in 2001. He too was looking forward to a change, a challenge and the opportunity to broaden his horizons.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Tough Sell by Tom Basile. Copyright © 2017 Tom Basile. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Foreword
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Parachuting
In the Shadow of the Tyrant
Learning Curve
The Face of Evil
The Civilian and the Soldier
Social Mecca
Driving the Message
New Voices
What Bleeds Leads
Disconnect
Reality Check
Burnt Orange
Unfinished
Epilogue
Index