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John Mueller, Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. 379. $55.00, cloth. W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz, eds., Taken By Storm: The Media, Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. 308. $40.00, cloth.
Two of the more striking images of the Gulf War were televised extracts of military VTR pictures of the impact of precision guided munitions--and, by extension, the apparently awesome high technology firepower used to eject Iraq from Kuwait--and the real time television reports of the consequences of air operations for the Iraqi capital. Both images suggest fruitful avenues for investigators of the meaning of the Gulf War for armed forces and society both in the U.S. and further afield. The first can be used as a vehicle to consider how the war involved a (self-conscious) departure from the political and military management of operations witnessed in Vietnam and thereby established key elements of future U.S. strategic thinking on the role of force in its security policy: the critique of the dangers of micro-management of military operations; the emphasis on clear and practicable political objectives; the use of overwhelming force; the sensitivity to U.S. casualties; the identification of a clear exit point, and so on.
The second image is also connected with the ghost of Vietnam: many have argued that key decision makers concerned with operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm were emphatic that the relatively open military/ media relationship characteristic of the Vietnam era would not be allowed to become (so it was thought) a source of military weakness by fomenting an erosion of the domestic political will to sustain the war. The power of the media would be integrated into the overall political and military management of the war--in short, the democratic right to know would be subordinated to the military need to know, thus raising important issues about the causal and ethical relationships between military and political elites, media organizations, and the wider public. It is to the credit of the contributors to these two excellent books that readers will find much food for thought as they consider the research implications of these images.
First there is the question of historical...