Everyone understands the lesson in economics which says that
when demand for an item increases, so does its value – which is why its price
rises.
Well, that same principle also applies in the field of
publicity. For example, if you give unlimited exposure to someone who is
running for office, he moves to the front of the pack no matter what he says or
does.
Unfortunately, the same thing can also happen in reverse.
That is, the more bad publicity you give to someone, the more you'll hurt his
chances to succeed in what he's doing. This is especially true if what he's
doing depends on the moral support of the people you are reaching with your
publicity drive.
However, despite the fact that bad publicity was heaped on
President Obama – who is the commander-in-chief of America's armed forces – for
saying that his quiet and steady strategy was working in the Levant, that
strategy has succeeded. In fact, it has been winning for some time now against
an enemy that lost almost half the land it had captured when it launched a
surprise blitz in Syria and Iraq a while
ago. And yet again, the Obama strategy won a big one when the Iraqi forces took
back the city of Ramadi .
For the first time, the people (call them critics) who were
giving Mr. Obama the bad publicity he did not deserve, are now acknowledging
that the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) is
working as the chief described it. The sad part, however, is that those critics
have only acknowledged the latest success without coupling their acknowledgment
with a change in their thinking or their behavior.
You can see all that in two editorials that were published
on December 29, 2015. One came in the Wall Street Journal under the title: “The
Retaking of Ramadi” and the subtitle: “The victory has lessons for the battles
for Mosul – and Syria .” The other came in the New
York Daily News under the title: “One battle won” and the subtitle: “What the
retaking of Ramadi means for the long struggle to defeat ISIS .”
The thing that should raise your eyebrow and make you want
to scratch your head, is that you bump into the same old themes when reading
those editorials. You encounter the following passage in the Wall Street
Journal: “We're paying a price for the Obama Administration's long failure to
train and arm...,” and you encounter the following passage in the New York
Daily News: “The coalition that has punished ISIS from the air – too cautiously
at times, thanks to President Obama's hesitant command...” They use different
words but their message is the same.
There is no doubt that the motivation behind that child-like
behavior is the naked attempt to diminish the value of Mr. Obama's stock in the
eyes of an electorate that is wooed in this election season by his Democratic
Party and by an opposing Republican Party which happens to be supported both by
the Wall Street Journal and the New York Daily News.
The problem, however, is the fact that information of any
kind that's pushed into the public domain is consumed not only by the American
electorate but also various groups the world over. In fact, everywhere on the
Planet, people see that information and hear it, including groups such as the
Sunny Arabs who are needed by America 's
military to maintain the gains it has made. Note also that the Americans made
those gains fighting against ISIS , not alone
but shoulder to shoulder with their Iraqi comrades.
The information that's in the public domain is also seen and
heard by an enemy that knows how to use it to improve its own military
performance and messaging effort. The net result is that the people who
criticize the Obama administration for not doing enough to defeat ISIS are the very people who undermine his effort. They
do this much damage by providing moral aid and comfort to the enemy, and by
providing him with propaganda material he can use to woo new recruits.