It's indeed a CNN war

After the outcry over America ignoring Kobani, some are now critical that Kobani gets too much attention. Some wonder whether Iraq has been sacrificed to win a CNN war in Kobani.

It's too late for that frankly. It's indeed a CNN war that was imposed on the coalition by the TV audiences. People live this world thru CNN and even the US president can't change this fundamental fact of our reality.

# The Telegraph
West waging a 'CNN war' in Syria as Isil makes gains in Iraq () {

By = Sofia Barbarani, Erbil and Richard Spencer
Date = 25 Oct 2014

(...)

The world's attention has been focused on the medium-sized Kurdish town of Kobane, on the Syria-Turkey border, whose accessibility has provided countless opportunities for telegenic news coverage of American air strikes, which have multiplied in size and number. But Kobane is a secondary focus of the war that has been waging in Syria for more than three years; and that war is itself supposed to be secondary in strategic heft for America and its allies, including Britain.

Analysts and some Iraqis now wonder whether President Barack Obama's declared strategy in the Middle East has been abandoned in favour of pursuing a short-term agenda dictated by the news agenda: that the "CNN factor was at play", as Ben Barry, a former British Army brigadier, put it after compiling a detailed analysis of the military situation in Iraq.

Isil may even have drawn the West into a trap – pouring second-grade but eager foreign recruits into the battle for Kobane, while pursuing their more important goals next door, he said.

"Kobane is right against the border," he told The Telegraph. "It may be that Isil deliberately took the decision to attack there to draw US air power away from Anbar."

(...)

Mr Barry, who analysed the state of the war for the International Institute of Strategic Studies, said strikes in Syria were running at twice the rate of those in Iraq, despite the insistence that the latter was the prime strategic target.

(...)

The Americans were facing one of the toughest challenges of modern times in Iraq, he said – compared with the easy win of hitting Isil in Kobane. "My suspicion is that the CNN factor is at play here," he said.

The Americans would claim – perhaps rightly – that it is important to match propaganda with propaganda, and that losing Kobane now would be a disastrous blow to morale.

It is that town that the West now wants to win. Iraq will have to wait – if it can.

Source = http://fw.to/u5TADkH }