1
Few actions of government are more consequential than the decision to go to war.
While public support for such a decision, and for the ensuing war itself, is important for
any nation state, it is especially so – in both theory and practice -- in democracies. It is for
this reason that building and maintaining public support can be as vital a component of
fighting a war as military strategy and strength.
The phrase winning “hearts and minds” is often used to capture this notion of the
importance of public support leading up to and during wartime. It is an apt, if under-
interrogated phrase, in that it captures two crucial elements of necessary support: the
heart (e.g., feelings of patriotism, of confidence, of loyalty to the troops, administration
and cause, of anger or indignation towards the enemy, etc.) and the mind (e.g., an
understanding of the reasons for engaging in war, its cost, its progress, its purpose and
“end game,” etc.).
Ironically, however, and despite its consequence, modern war is in many ways a
classic example of Walter Lippmann’s observation that politics in complex societies is
less about immediate experience
1
and more about the “pictures inside our heads:”
Whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment
itself…the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting
for direct acquaintance…the analyst of public opinion must begin then, by
recognizing the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human
picture of that scene and the human response to that picture working itself out
upon the scene of action. (1922: 4,11)
For this reason, the mass media play a crucial role in the process by which hearts and
minds are won or lost during wartime. This point is lost on neither supporters nor
opponents of particular military interventions, leading to at least the possibility of an
1
This is of course most true in wars such as those engaged in by the United States since the start of the 20
th
Century – that is, wars fought on foreign, usually distant soil.
Convention