Foreign policy experts were harsh in their assessments of President Clinton's quick shift of US Somalia policy after the broadcast of images from the Rangers' fight in Mogadishu. Clinton's willingness to negotiate, rather than continue efforts to capture the warlord Aidid, was criticized as weakness, sending the wrong signals. "We have no interest in denying anybody access to playing a role in Somalia's political future," the President was quoted the week after the attack on the Rangers. That shift was exactly wrong, commented former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who argued that failing to strike back virtually guaranteed that the wrong lesson would be learned. The world's other mischief-makers will have no fear, Kissinger warned, unless the United States reduces Aidid's "power base so that it's apparent that when you tackle the US in the brutal way in which it has been done there is a penalty."[34] Kissinger offered a realpolitik perspective on the tactics of "mischief-makers." Futurist Chuck de Caro offered a media-oriented perspective--the Somalia crisis, amplified through global TV imagery, enabled other "mischief-makers" to create TV news images for their own purposes [35] : A tenth-rate tin-pot Haitian dictator using global TV as a C3I mechanism judges the likely reaction of the United States in the wake of . . . the video of Rangers being killed and mutilated in Somalia. He optimizes his mil-pol moves to retard US intervention by having a handful of rabble go to a dock [and] mug-angrily-on-cue for global TV. He thus turns away a US warship (albeit on a UN mission) with nothing more than the video of an alleged angry mob that generates the perception of imminent bloodshed that is projected and amplified by TV. Matters are made worse by the perception of the US LST retreating from the scene. US policymakers and military leaders failed to convey to the public the reasons for shifting US goals and missions in Somalia, or the possible consequences of the changing relations with the UN and with the warlords. There had been insufficient warnings to foreshadow the growing Somali hostility to the UN, or the buildup to events of this magnitude.[36] Media stories failed to link the complexities of US-UN disagreements, Somali warlord politics, tensions between military peacekeepers and non-governmental aid organizations (many vigorously pacifist), and shifting US missions. The Administration offered no credible news frames for the secret operations of the Rangers, offered no immediate public eulogies to redeem their losses, and failed to link the hunt for Aidid to the larger relief and stability operations.[37] When the Rangers' mission turned into open, bloody conflict with Aidid's Mogadishu militia, there was no public opinion foundation for what happened or why. Rather than representing the gun battle as the climax of a policy that had gone astray, but was now being put back on track, the Administration was left without a coherent explanation of the catastrophe and seemed to have no clear policy goals in Somalia. The horror and seeming pointlessness of the Rangers' deaths challenged the US Somali presence in the public's mind.[38] If the Clinton Administration was unprepared for the images of the debacle in Mogadishu's streets, it quickly used them to restore some stability.[39] "Penalties" and "reducing power bases," Kissinger's realpolitik levers of power, become less significant than perceptions of these things. The critics of the Administration's response to the Somali CNN war were right about its negative effects on US reactions. When events went bad, the Clinton Administration lacked credible news frames for the images and perceptions. Faced with the darker side of CNN war, it was unready to defend policies and events which formed no coherent story. The outcome of the Rangers' fight was militarily insignificant; the TV images and lack of a media plan to explain Administration policies made the losses politically overwhelming. Yet planning explanations of policies and actions using the guidelines for persuasive and credible news frames is not enough. Events in CNN war do not unfold as monologues, but in dialogues, with allies, neutrals, and opponents. Preparing for CNN wars requires a readiness to hear and respond to the voices and images of others, shaping messages into cogent harmony with perceptions of these dialogues. Just as greatness in battle requires an instinctive eye for the interplay of terrain and opposing forces, campaigns in CNN war require a coup d'oeil for the images juste, an instinctive ability to incorporate compelling images in support of political and military goals. History and recent events offer suggestive examples of such operational art. More Winning CNN Wars Media Coverage and Public Perception Introduction The Psychology and Sociology of Visual Persuasion Somalia and CNN War Image Exploitation Signs, Symbols, and Presidential Semiotics Perspectives on CNN War The Pentagon and the Media To Win CNN Wars Footnotes Back to Cry Havoc #33 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com