The Tết offensive launched by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army against US led forces in South Vietnam between 30^th January 1968 and early 1969 was a military failure, with the communist forces failing to achieve any of their military objections, suffering staggering losses in the process and inflicting upon themselves a defeat of a magnitude the US had failed to achieve during the previous three years of “winning the war”.  Nevertheless, the journalists “on the ground” at the time saw things very differently, such that by February 1968 Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News anchorman, was able to pronounce that “the Vietnam War was unwinnable” and from that moment, the US had lost the War.

Almost to a man, modern "war correspondents" prefer to focus on the human story, of civilians caught up in a conflict not of their making.  So the lasting image of war becomes one of a naked Vietnamese child, burnt skin peeling from her body, running away from her napalmed village.  The true story of war, that of one sovereign regime resisting another seeking to impose its will through the use of armed might, is lost in emotive scenes of the suffering of non-combatants.  Even when journalists find themselves with nothing else to report but fighting between opposing forces, they misinterpret what they see.  A recent case to point occurred early in the Iraq War in 2003, when journalists were eager to suggest that the US thrust into Iraq had “run out of steam” short of Bagdad and that the war was not “going to plan”.  In fact, having applied successfully classic blitzkrieg tactics, US armour was merely awaiting its planned re-supply and for other ground forces to catch up with the advance.[1]

There is a depressing feeling of déjà vu when watching the television coverage of the latest crisis in the Middle East.  Once again the media concentrates on the human stories,[2]  but constant reports of the latest civilian casualties do not help us to understand or to focus upon what is actually going on.  This manner of reporting does us a disservice; it is manipulative, deliberately playing on our emotions, rather than seeking to inform or providing dispassionate, impartial analysis.  Whilst the media does remind us from time to time, almost as an afterthought, that Hezbollah and its supporters seek nothing less than the total annihilation of the state of Israel, its pictures tell an entirely different story: one of innocents made to suffer by Israeli military action and so called disproportionate retaliation.

I have a simple-minded understanding of the conflict.  This latest crisis in the Middle East has everything to do with Iran's desire for hegemony in the region.  Iran is waging war against Israel through its proxy, Hezbollah. Israel, a sovereign state, fights by internationally accepted rules of war, whilst Hezbollah does not.[3] If Israel, a democracy, does not fight, it will cease to exist. In the fug of the television media's constant broadcasting of the "human story" with its inherent anti-war message, this truth is being lost.

So, how many Divisions has the BBC?  Like the Pope and Walter Cronkite's CBS it does not have any, but nonetheless more than enough to overcome the Israelis in Lebanon.

Save when our national security is at grave and immediate risk (for example, by invasion) the Government should never commit our armed forces to war without providing them with all the tools required for the job.  This New Labour Government, which has such a flair for involving us in military adventures abroad, pays insufficient attention to the finer details of waging war such as providing adequate equipment; routine provision of body armour and armoured personnel carriers being but the most recent examples.  It is abhorrent that "mere, transient politicians" waste our servicemen's lives with so little thought or good purpose.