I accidentally stumbled onto CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour’s new show “Power & Persuasion” yesterday while flipping through the TV channels after work. I’ve always been a fan of Amanpour for several reasons; the foremost being her clear cut straight forward interview style and lack of melodramatics during reporting. It’s rare in a modern journalist you find someone just giving you the news and avoiding trying to narrate the events. I find it very annoying when journalists who are doing a news story decide to become an editor or even worse– a fiction writer complete with over pronounced descriptive paragraphs that would fit right into a Stephen King novel. I’ve always been adverse to new journalism styling that evokes such writing style. I’d rather hear the story through the information and not the other way around.
So I stopped on the show to see how Amanpour in the spotlight would fair. This particular edition had on as guests Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. I will tell you up front despite my sometime left wing leanings I absolutely despise Hillary Clinton. When she won the Senate seat in NY I gave serious thought to leaving the state. I rue her that much. I find her artificial, arrogant, and clearly out for herself when she should be looking out for the rest of us. In short, I hate Hillary Clinton and literally list her number one on my list of US politicians who I could do without. On the other hand, I rather like Robert Gates. I think Gates did an excellent job under George W. Bush’s administration and was one of the bright second term highlights of that team. His succeeding of Donal Rumsfeld in 2006 was nothing short of a welcome change in the Secretary of Defense position. Gates was everything Rumsfeld was not. Gates is a seasoned CIA and Intelligence Director with clear ability to address complex statements and communicate the importance of issues to the general public. Rumsfeld always looked annoyed when questioned by the media and was quick to throw fits in public. Gates was calm, cool, and collected. He seemingly welcomed the questions as if he was dying to speak on any given subject as it was clearly near and dear to his heart. When Barrack Obama appointed him as Secretary of Defense again it was a surprise. Gates had always been considered a core Republican (Gates goes as far back as a Reagan era insider and you cannot get more GOP than that) leader and was by no means some liberal pansy looking to pull out of either Iraq or Afghanistan. Nevertheless it was one more thing that made me appreciate the bipartisan efforts of Obama and understand that even “the other side” viewed Gates’ value as a head of our country’s defensive military strategies in a time of war.
So I decided to watch a few minutes of the program. I was not surprised by Hillary’s terse manner (she’s Rumsfeld in a skirt), but I was surprised how cohesive Gates and her were together. They did work well even though clearly Gates was still a Conservative and Hillary was still a carpet bagging psycho. Nevertheless it does seem strange that two such diverse people are able to work so well, but there it was– working well.
I walked away with one idea brought forward by Gates during the interview. The question was something along the lines of “What would the US pulling out of Afghanistan in a state of retreat send as a message to the Taliban and Al Qaeda ?” Gates didn’t flinch or hesitate and answered adamant, “Pulling out of Afghanistan in that state would send a message to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as, other extremists worldwide that they had beaten a second super power. In the 1980s when the Mujaheddin beat the Soviets it was seen as a smaller force being able to beat up a world power. This would give them their second victory.” Gates then went on, “Al Qaeda doesn’t run like other terrorist organizations. It’s not a unified structure. Their ability to motivate other extremists is central to the reputation they garner from their acts. It’s not about actually winning; it’s about what their victories mean as a statement.” Gates then answered questions on information as a weapon and the use of next generation services such as mobile to web services as Twitter. Hillary Clinton chimed in, “When Twitter was going to shut down for eight hours to do software upgrades and I found out that the Iranians in the streets protesting were using that as their main vehicle of information decimation I immediately called them and told them you cannot shut down today. They stayed up.”
It was interesting to hear how modern national defense had evolved. How next generation technologies such as cell phones, web blogs, and Twitter were allowing coordination of dissidents within another country to mobilize. How that could be both a benefit to our allies and huge problem when dealing with our enemies. So it appears clearly that from a national stand point the US government is placing more value on information warfare and adapting its communication capabilities to keep up with our opponents. Said Gates on the subject “It’s the young men and women of our service who bring these ideas to the table. Who keep us informed about these things. When Al Qaeda was driving around with a FM radio transmitter on a motorcycle broadcasting names of people they’d behead if the village supported our efforts and we found out, we located and eliminated that threat. The young people brought that to our attention. As a result, we were able to turn support for the US in that village by showing those villagers we are watching out for them.”
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
