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The current U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan was only months old when Walter Cronkite, the conscience of American broadcast journalism, rendered his verdict. It wasn’t easy listening for the flag-waving boosters of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 demagoguery.
“They feel that to maintain wartime morale, we've got to be a cheering section for the military,” he told CNN in February, 2002. “We should be reporting what we see and can see.
“The people have a right to know, not only a right, but a duty to know what the Army is doing in their name. We call them "our boys" and "our girls." We've got a right to know what our boys and our girls are doing in our name.”
A month later, accepting an honorary degree at Tokyo’s Waseda University, he said: "Six months since the war in Afghanistan began and we haven't gotten a combat story yet. This is unacceptable.
"We aren't putting enough pressure on the military. It is our duty to know what our troops are doing in our name."
Once again, Walter Cronkite, who has passed away aged 92, had called it as he saw it – or rather, as he wasn’t seeing it on U.S. TV screens. After an initial binge of Afghan coverage in the weeks leading up to the Taliban regime’s exit from Kabul, the evening news had gone dark on the war.
The nation’s attention soon followed. And ever since, the war in Afghanistan has gone as well as could be expected in a vacuum of public scrutiny.
For seven long years, as Osama remained at large, as the Taliban regained momentum with the help of Pakistan’s military, and as billions of U.S. tax dollars filled the pockets of dishonest contractors and war profiteers, the networks kept their backs firmly turned on the Afghan story.
Even now, with the Pentagon escalating its campaign, the American networks are conspicuous by their absence - with a few exceptions, notably Mike and Carlos Boettcher’s exemplary front line reporting with the Marines in Helmand province for ABC News.
You can almost hear Cronkite’s words about the need to pressure the Pentagon echoing through the gunfire. Because the first cry that came up from Helmand was the Marine's commander calling out for more Afghan troops and interpreters. He simply didn’t have enough men with the requisite language, cultural and back-country fighting skills.
It’s graphic proof that the Pentagon-supervised $20-billion effort to build a credible Afghan National Army has come up far short of its goals, so much so that the U.S. Government Accountability Office has declared that the Defense and State departments still lack “detailed plans and cost estimates for completing and sustaining" the ANA and National Police.
Cronkite was a reporter’s reporter. His accomplishments were so considerable in the first three decades of television that they carried his name and reputation through the next three, despite his premature removal from the CBS anchor chair in 1981.
Cronkite became an iconic figure who the U.S. broadcast news industry liked to celebrate, but did woefully little to emulate.
As the evening news of the 90’s descended into the tabloid excesses of O.J., Diana and Monica Lewinsky, the stage was set for the appalling failures of this decade’s early years, most particularly the industry’s unquestioning acceptance of the Bush administration’s rush to war in Iraq – the death knell for America’s mission in Afghanistan.
Sadly, Walter Cronkite had warned of the dangers in his 1996 book, A Reporter’s Life:
“The secret of our past success as a nation may be traced to the fact that we have been a free people, free to discuss ideas and alternatives, free to teach and learn, free to report and to hear, free to challenge the most venerable institutions without fear of reprisal…
“The public seem to sense all this, but does it really understand? The preservation of our liberties depends on an enlightened citizenry. Those who get most of their news from television probably are not getting enough information to intelligently exercise their voting franchise in a democratic system.
“As Thomas Jefferson said, the nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never can and never will be.
“We can bring that up-to-date and amplify it a bit: The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.”
- Walter Cronkite, A REPORTER’S LIFE, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996
On the sad occasion of Walter Cronkite’s death, here’s a memo to those who occupy America’s anchor chairs today. Don’t just celebrate the man. Tell management that it’s long past time to follow his example.
Either that, or you might as well substitute “Afghanistan” for “Vietnam,” and read into your teleprompters Cronkite’s 1968 pronouncement that the war is unwinnable.
