War is an accelerant of change, not least in the media. In the last century, every major war has helped a new medium prove itself as essential for communication. The popular experience of the Second World War was shaped by radio (famously Edward R. Murrow’s live dispatches from the Blitz in London), Vietnam by television (with Walter Cronkite’s dismay at the Tet offensive being a pivot point), and the first Iraq War by cable news (CNN becoming addictive for its 24-7 coverage).
For me — and not for me alone — the second Iraq War was the age of blogs. The first “web log” (an online diary accessible by search engines) was created in 1994 by a Swarthmore College student Justin Hall, who coded the HTML by hand. Even before 9/11, the new medium (now shortened to “blog”) was rising in popularity thanks to the development of easy-to-use hosting systems such as LiveJournal and Blogger. Most weren’t political, but rather digital daybooks revolving around personal concerns (parenting blogs) or obsessions (such as beloved celebrities). Talking Points Memo, created by Joshua Micah Marshall in 2000, was an early pioneer, notably for a bracing skepticism towards Republican Party propaganda.
Political blogs found their purpose once George W. Bush and his administration decided to use the justifiable outrage at the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for an ambitious remaking of the Middle East by military means. The run-up to the Iraq War and subsequent failure of Bush’s larger political project was enormously polarizing. Blogs became the perfect medium whereby this debate played out, especially important because much of the mainstream media had been cowed by nationalist fervor into going along with White House propaganda.
