INDIANAPOLIS — United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth compared American journalists to “Pharisees” in our coverage of the Iran war, adding, “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on.” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., posted on X on April 14 that “Democrats and the media are rooting against the Commander in Chief and the mission they are carrying out.”
To quote the iconic hit man Jules Winnfield from the 1994 classic movie “Pulp Fiction”: “Allow me to retort.”
The legendary Hoosier war correspondent and columnist Ernie Pyle has always been my polaris. He attended Indiana University. When my father became editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student during its quonset hut era, he worked at Pyle’s old desk.
Historian Ray E. Boomhower observed in a 2017 article, “Pyle’s column offered a foxhole view of the struggle as he reported on the life, and sometimes death, of the average combatant.” It was Pyle who wrote, “There are no atheists in the foxhole.”
Pyle arrived at Omaha Beach a day after the 1944 D-Day invasion. In his first column, he observed, “I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France. It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.”
Pyle wrote about walking through the eerie silence of pockmarked, body-strewn battlefields after the fighting had moved on. He reported about pilots, generals and quartermasters, but his affinity was for the self-described “God-damned infantry.”
“I love the infantry because they are the underdogs,” Pyle wrote from Tunisia in May 1943. “They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end, they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.”
Following in Pyle’s footsteps were waves of journalists who revealed the brutal truths about our leaders of war. New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Bright Shining Lie” exposed the corrupt and incompetent commands of the American and South Vietnamese militaries and their inability to adapt to a popular guerrilla movement.
There was the 2003 Errol Morris documentary, “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara.”
McNamara describes Lesson No. 8, which states that even though the United States is the strongest nation in the world, it should never use that power unilaterally. “If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better reexamine our reasoning.”
These journalists exposed the lies and duplicity of the American White House and military. President Lyndon B. Johnson was told from the beginning that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but the U.S. spent more than a decade trying, costing the lives of 58,000 American troops and millions of Vietnamese.
There is no doubt about the American military’s tactical brilliance and dominance in Iran. What is missing is the matching strategic acumen.
Just like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who believed Ukraine would collapse only days after his 2022 invasion, President Donald J. Trump thought he could sack Tehran just as he had Venezuela in a matter of days. He didn’t believe the mullahs would close the Strait of Hormuz, which is the most war-gamed scenario at the Pentagon and think tanks across the globe. Putin and Trump are now grappling with asymmetrical drone warfare, which didn’t exist in 2022.
When Trump announced a ceasefire last Friday, Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted that the president posted 13 times in an hour, claiming “total victory.” He added, “Iran has agreed never to close the Strait of Hormuz again.”
Friday night on Air Force One, Trump said of Iran’s nuclear program: “We’re taking it. I don’t call it boots on the ground. We’ll take it after the agreement is signed.”
On Saturday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered the attack on two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, closing it once more. Iran’s navy, described by Hegseth as “destroyed” seized two ships in the gulf.
Our tactical military brilliance is betrayed by a serious lack of judgment and strategic foresight in the White House and Pentagon, while Congress has been missing in action.
Pyle, too, knew the limits of American power and leadership.
“It’s all right to have a good opinion of yourself,” Pyle explained, “but we Americans are so smug with our cockiness, we somehow feel that just because we are Americans, we can whip our weight in wildcats.”
Pyle wrote of the “God-damned infantry” that would be needed in tens of thousands of numbers to defeat and secure a nation: “In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory — there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.”
When a sniper’s bullet killed Pyle on Ie Shima, on April 18, 1945, he had an unfiled column in his pocket, intended to celebrate the end of the war in Europe.
“It is to the boys who were my friends for so long,” Pyle wrote. “My one regret of the war is that I was not with them when it ended. For the companionship of two and a half years of death and misery is a spouse that tolerates no divorce.
“Such companionship finally becomes a part of one’s soul, and it cannot be obliterated.”
Brian Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: The Iran War through the Ernie Pyle prism | Opinion
Reporting by Brian Howey, Columnist / South Bend Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
