They didn’t have to waste a ‘study’ or whatever amount of funding it cost to come to these conclusions:
Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq? The short answer, according to a pair of Harvard economists, is yes.
In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the authors are quick to point out numerous caveats to their findings, based on data from mid-2003 through late 2007.
……their results show that insurgent groups are not devoid of reason and unresponsive to outside pressures and stimuli. “It shows that the various insurgent groups do respond to incentives and shows that a successful counter insurgency strategy should take that reality into account,” says one of the paper’s coauthors, Jonathan Monten, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
……Evidence From the Insurgency in Iraq” concludes the following:
In the short term, there is a small but measurable cost to open public debate in the form of higher attacks against Iraqi and American targets.
In periods immediately after a spike in “antiresolve” statements in the American media, the level of insurgent attacks increases between 7 and 10 percent.
Insurgent organizations are strategic actors, meaning that whatever their motivations, religious or ideological, they will respond to incentives and disincentives.
The study mentioned some caveats, such as the exclusion of Baghdad, the ‘cost’ of public debate, or whether or not an increase in attacks were based on ‘dissent’ or ‘timing’ of media reports.
In any case, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that every time the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, or any other media outlet sympathetic to the terrorist cause, publishes anti-military smears or perfunctory vilification, you can bet that Islamic terrorists get a lot of mileage out of it.
Just watch the Ayman Al-Zawahri videos.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 03/17/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.