News
March 26
Almost as disturbing as the beginning of American hostilities in Iraq is the unwavering lack of criticism that largely marks American media coverage. As the first waves of American troops streamed across the Kuwaiti border, I watched, glued to CNN's live coverage. I watched as a blurry and flickering image of what appeared to be a tank jolting across a non-descript landscape was hailed by CNN commentators as "historic war coverage."
I listened as reporters, waxing in self-congratulatory tones presented the war, nestled in the camouflaged bosom of the military, to the American public. I watched as the glossy televised drama, drooling with adolescent adulation of awesome military might, usurped responsible reporting. Boys will be boys, and boy, do they love their toys. I wondered how these "imbedded" media sources could extricate themselves from the requisite Pentagon approval to present critical and objective coverage to the American people.
By the next day, I had had enough, though I feared my hesitations were only isolated musings of an over-active, liberal mind. I switched over to another foreign, English language news service, only to hear my concerns were echoed abroad. Presenting a pastiche of American televised headline news announcements, a British journalist commented on the very same lack of skepticism inherent in the American media.
This new policy that has "imbedded" the news media in military units is perhaps the Pentagon recalling a lesson from another era. In order to salvage public opinion for war, the public must have a stomach for war. It is important to recall that Vietnam, in many regards the first televised war, did much to dampen the public appetite with often graphic images of combat diffused into every American living room. But this is not to suggest some profound change in the desire of the government to control public perception of war: it is in part the instinctive desire of any military to monitor intelligence. But the media and the public seem increasingly willing to accommodate these changes in wake of Sept 11.
While the largely emotional arguments have twisted public opinion in favor of war, the media has followed suit. The spurious argument of the Bush administration conflates the Iraqi's military arsenal and the al Qaeda attacks, leaving most Americans erroneously convinced of Iraqi complicity with the fundamentalist terrorism. Those who have questioned the legitimacy of this war or criticized the blundered diplomacy of the current administration are severely criticized.
This was evidenced last week by Senator McCain's rebuttal of Senator Byrd's remarks, and in the criticism leveled against Senator Daschle. The frustrating irony in the uncritical call for war lies in the years of complicity and silence that marked the decades of American-Iraqi relations. Before the recent months of media shock and awe villainization of Saddam Hussein, many of us were full aware of the reality of the Ba'ath regime.
The evidence of Hussein's cruelty and the Ba'ath party's rise to power are well documented in a number of sources, many published before the first Gulf War. These sources openly line the shelves of America's libraries, including those of Tufts University. Simply put, the tactics of Hussein's regime make the Gestapo look like playground bullies.
Distressingly, America was not only silent in face of the Ba'ath ascendancy, it aided and abetted its worst atrocities. Where was the barrage of condemnation then? Now, after 12 years, Iraq has languished under sanctions whose greatest effects have been felt by its people, and most poignantly, its children, and average earnings are one-tenth what they were during the 1980's.
Yet in a fit of shameless hypocrisy, America has become the self-styled "liberator" of Iraq after years of neglect and injury to that nation. Ironically, when the Iraqi military power was at its height, we were silent, for the simple reason that that very power served our aims, the containment of Iran. Now, a dwindled Iraq is the object of American invasion, leading one to wonder whether there are other motives in this administration's push for a "preemptive" war. This is a subject unlikely to be tackled by CNN's "historic" coverage.
Americans have forgotten Iraq's pretext for the first Gulf War was not hatred of the United States but territorial ambition guised under long-standing grievances against Kuwait. Americans forget, or choose to ignore, that it is entirely possible that after years of America turning the other way as Saddam brutally suppressed Kurdish uprisings, he just might have thought he would get away with an invasion of Kuwait.
We forget and choose to ignore the meeting between the American ambassador to Iraq and Hussein, on the eve of the 1991 invasion of Kuwait, which in the most objective terms was an ambiguous exchange. And we forget the words of one CIA operative: "Saddam is a son of a bitch, but he's our son of bitch." Needless to say, America has chosen to ignore the shadowy constituents of the present administration, a triad of America's worst: religious fundamentalists, energy interests, and hegemonic policy makers, some of whom who were once cozy with the Ba'ath regime. I doubt their photograph together is one either Donald Rumsfeld or Saddam Hussein is eager to hang on their office walls.
The shamelessness of the press was further compounded on Saturday morning, when CNN broadcast an audio interview of no less than the parents of slain American serviceman. Having only a day before lost their son, their boy, they were understandably less than coherent, as the father called for all protesters to rally behind the president.
Any viewer with half a heart can only stand mute in the face of such tasteless manipulation of unimaginable grief. I did not observe such interviews extended to the families of Iraqi victims or refugees entering Jordan. But then, as the Defense Secretary pointed out in the most Orwellian terms imaginable, this is the most humane bombing campaign, and the focus of the networks seems to imply that the only losses thus far have been among the willing members of the coalition.
On the eve of Bush's ultimatum, I sat in Raleigh-Durham International Airport awaiting a flight back to Boston. After bidding farewell to Southern hospitality during a customary search, I founded myself in a crowd of marines hailing from the nearby base in Lejeune. Far from being grizzled and burly, the troop I found myself embedded in was young, rowdy and brash. The terminal took on the feeling of a boisterous high school cafeteria. As one of them bent down close to me to shoulder his pack, I wondered if his smooth face had ever felt the razor's edge. He was on was on his way overseas, yet despite the uncertainty that lay ahead, the most pressing thing on his mind was the fact that he would be flying for the first time.
As if echoing some dark chapter from the 1950s, in a fit of collective amnesia the fickle American public has been led yet again to tilt at windmills. Clamorous of the early triumph despite the caveats of senior military officials, little is mentioned about the juggernaut ahead: Baghdad, where Saddam has no doubt prepared for a final hurrah in his inimitably deadly style.
Even as these words are written, the immaculate image of this "just war" is being frayed by the inevitable chaos of hateful war. Even if all goes according to plan, what kind of victory lies ahead for the United States? There is no room for America on the moral high road when, after backing a vile and insidious dictator into a corner, we point to his inevitably atrocious actions as just cause for having gone to war.
The Bush administration's flagrant disregard for rule of law, both at home and abroad, and the blatant contempt for diplomacy has contorted America's presence abroad into the world's leading bully. The crowning irony is that as the United States destroys a government founded on secular, Pan-Arab nationalism, we have only cemented the increasing appeal for the creation of an Islamic ideology far more violently opposed to the United States.
Benjamin Perriello is a graduate student in the Classics department.
