The media's war

The WaPo's David Ignatius has, "Questions About Libya, And Rescuing Its Rebels." (Well, don't we all?)

CAIRO -- The weak have a new power in the modern media age: Their suffering is visible to millions of well-intentioned people around the world who are likely to support humanitarian intervention to rescue them from their plight. ...

This paradoxical power of the weak is obvious today in Libya, where a ragtag, barely organized group of rebels challenged the entrenched power of the dictator, Moammar Gaddafi. The world (or at least, the portion of it that watches cable television) quickly rallied to the rebels' cause. Their very helplessness was part of their attraction.

The impulse to help the embattled Libyan rebels preceded any serious analysis of their leadership and intentions.

Quite so. As I wrote last month,

The campaign in Libya was almost entirely media driven from the outset.

I do not mean by that the the media actually promoted the war against Qaddafi or that media outlets or reporters encouraged Western intervention. I mean that Qaddafi's major strategic blunder was allowing foreign media to cover the resistance from its beginning practically without hindrance, even including broadcasting from Tripoli literally while the initial Allied cruise missiles were landing.

The images and video coming from Libya, especially during the early days of the street demonstrations showing protesters being gunned down, were the sine qua non of Western intervention.