Wired On Friday: From embedded reporters to the mini-series timescale of its advances to the glossy, heart-wrenching visuals from both sides, this Iraqi conflict has mirrored the first Gulf War as a TV war, fought in our living rooms.
But, in 1991, even the most rapt spectator had to leave the TV occasionally, if only to go to work. These days, if we want, war can follow us to work. A medium that didn't even exist in that last battle, the Web, is stepping in to fill in the gap. It's where people go to find out more about the scenes they've witnessed third-hand.
In doing so, they may stumble into another, more virtual battle: a guerrilla campaign for hearts and minds online that has, perhaps, precipitated the greater fight it now documents and has certainly consolidated and assisted the powers that drive it. They'll find the warblogs.
Warblogging was a term coined to describe the rush of personal Web journals (weblogs, or blogs) that sprang up after September 11th. Created in the rage and horror of that moment, these sites quickly became a powerful voice online, commenting on the news after the attack almost minute by minute.
The warblogs were not afraid to express their views on their websites - encouraging the war on terrorism and taking to task those whose support wavered. These new writers took the older, more liberal first adopters of the Web by surprise - and the old guard responded by dismissively calling them warbloggers. But in an exercise in verbal aikido that they were to repeat with many of their most damning liberal critics, the warbloggers took the name to heart, claiming it as their own. They were proud to be warblogs.
In the interconnected way of the Web, a pyramid of warblogs sprang up. The most popular clustered around the most consistently smart and prolific writers, such as established conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan (http://www.andrew sullivan.com/), prolific Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (http://www.insta pundit.com/), and humourist James Lileks (http:///www.lileks .com/).
But these sites used as their source material the circulating comments, quips and links of a constellation of other more obscure blogs, encouraging others to join the discussion by starting their own warblog.
Over time, the warblogs built up a concrete, self-reinforcing, and remarkably consistent point of view with their own language and repeated targets. And with an influence disproportionate to their relatively small readership (bigger by far than most personal sites, tiny compared to most media websites), the language of the warblogs has been fed back into the American mainstream. "The axis of weasels" (France and Germany, of course), "fisking" (to minutely pick apart journalists' writing, in the same brusque manner as London Independent journalist Robert Fisk), and the world of the Anglosphere are all terms largely popularised by the warblogs.
Not all opinions have crossed over to the mainstream media, however. When new readers visit the warblogs for the first time, they'll be faced with some rougher, shocking views - more shocking even than their creators, with their canny eye for controversy, might have meant it to be. The United Nations is a dangerous "transnational" organisation, as is the International Criminal Court. Often quoted warblogger Steven den Beste calls for the "cultural genocide" of Islam.
When European discontent rises, warbloggers report happily that the Swedish have a lower standard of living than American blacks. In the comments attached to another warblog, Little Green Footballs, Rachel Correy, the activist run over by a bulldozer in the West Bank, is called "Squishy the Hippy Chick" and a possible "Wheel chock for an F18". And, of course, before anyone in the mainstream media was seriously considering a US-led war on Iraq, warbloggers were calling for a military campaign against the "Islamofascists", wherever they might be.
It's been occasionally difficult for Europeans, watching the actions of the Bush administration from afar, to comprehend many of its more strident actions. While the link between the warbloggers' rhetoric and that of Washington is separated by more than just a few hyperlinks, reading the warblogs reveals some of the rawer attitudes that lie behind both. And, in the way the Web has of bypassing the middle-man, it also shows the views of the constituency that supports these actions in the US.
It's a demographic often seen on domestic US media but whose image is rarely exported abroad. The strongest parallel, perhaps, is with American talk radio - the immensely popular, right-wing political stations that fill much of the midwest's AM dials. When they are heard in Europe, the pundits that frequent this world - like Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage - seem like aliens. The best reaction most who disagree with these figures can muster is that their listeners must be "hicks"; couch-potatoes; the uneducated, politically unsophisticated and the dispossesed.
Warblogs are not like that. They have an audience of intelligent, quick-witted, coherent commentators who positively enjoy taking on their liberal critics. Many are academics; most are the epitome of policy wonks; and they're well-off and smart enough to drive a Weblog and win over a large Web audience.
Until now, they have been preaching to the converted: but as the group most concerned with tracking the war on Iraq since before its inception, they're also now in a position to be the first-stop for new Web visitors searching for war news. The warbloggers have become the default bloggers of war: they write the most, and most frequently, on this conflict, because it's at the very heart of what they hold dear.
In a time since September 11th, which has involved culture shock after culture shock for both Americans and the world around them, meeting the warbloggers might be yet another division between the two hemispheres. Or it may serve to explain much of what has seemed hidden and bizarre about the US government's actions.
There are many who would rather not see what the warbloggers have to say. With an administration determined to introduce many warblogger ideas to a surprised and concerned wider world, it's hard to ignore them anymore. And perhaps it's best that we do not. It's not going to make them go away.
