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Visual images are extremely powerful, particularly in this media-saturated age of round-the-clock coverage. It is possible, in fact, that the United States' current emphasis on "zero casualty" missions is a response in part to the power of the images from Mogadishu and a fear of a collapse in public support should similar images appear again. This article argues, however, that such a view misunderstands the way images influence public response, assuming that they can be read in only one way, and forgetting that all visual images displayed by the news media are accompanied by words. The interpretation of even powerful images is neither inevitable nor predetermined.

Dauber approaches the question of civil-military relations from the perspective of argument studies. Viewed as an argument formation, the Weinberger Doctrine functions as a template that privileges technical argumentation in considerations of possible uses of force. As a result, public forms of argument, centered more on the value of the potential intervention than the methodology, becomes more difficult. The acceptance of the Weinberger Doctrine in the public forum, therefore, independent of whether or not the various services officially subscribe to the doctrine, produces a situation where civil-military relations are distorted. The military side of the ledger, determining the possible cost of an intervention, trumps the civil side, determining whether the cost is worthwhile. The result is an argument within which it is almost impossible to successfully defend interventions on purely humanitarian grounds.

Terrorist attacks today are often media events in a second sense: information and communication technologies have developed to such a point that these groups can film, edit, and upload their own attacks within minutes of staging them, whether the Western media are present or not. In this radically new information environment, the enemy no longer depends on traditional media. This is the "YouTube War." This monograph methodically lays out the nature of this new environment in terms of its implications for a war against media-savvy insurgents, and then considers possible courses of action for the Army and the U.S. military as they seek to respond to an enemy that has proven enormously adaptive to this new environment and the new type of warfare it enables. ; https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1615/thumbnail.jpg