I have supported this war effort from the beginning. I think this war is a necessary evil. So far as I can tell, President Bush and the military have done a pretty extraordinary job in taking out bad guys while harming as few innocents as is humanly possible.
How do I know, though? Fox News tells me all is going great, and they have pictures of Iraqis thankful that we've come to lift the boots off their necks. That's great. They've got retired military guys with fancy screenwriters breaking down our smashing success into bite sized chunks for us to digest. They've got reporters out with the troops showing their progress.
Yet every minute I'm watching I am increasingly aware that we are absolutely NOT getting the whole story. They are shielding us carefully from the most central purpose and reality of war. What else are we being shielded from? And why?
It might upset Grandma to see true coverage of a war. Fine, then watch some damned Andy Griffith Show reruns. If you don't want to know what's really happening, then don't watch the news.
What would be the effect of showing the true blunt carnage of the war? Answer: don't know, don't care. Do it anyway. Maybe it will cause more people to turn against the war and the Bush administration when they see a field with hundreds of charred remains of Iraqi soldiers. Maybe seeing Americans blown apart by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint will stiffen our collective backbones, and increase support for being as tough as we have to be.
Put out the information, then let the people decide for themselves how they're going to interpret the facts. Fox News has the motto "We report. You decide." Well, then do the reporting so that we CAN decide for ourselves. You do your job so that we can do ours.
Article comments
1 - Brian Flemming
Thank you, Al.
Well said.
My guess is that the same thing is going on here as was going on in the run-up to the war. The media is doing the bidding of the government.
The government knew they needed the public to feel that this war was payback for 9-11. So starting in September 2002, an overt (not covert) propaganda campaign was begun from the White House--say 9-11 and Iraq in the same sentence as often as possible. The White House microphone can command enough attention on its own that they can get a message like this out. And they did.
There is no other way to explain that the number of people who believed Saddam Hussein and 9-11 were directly connected skyrocketed up to 50% and more. You couldn't find a single CIA analyst (or even a neoconservative Dept of Defense ideologue) to tell you he honestly believes that the Iraq campaign is even a smart way to make a dent in al Qaeda (let alone support the bizarre Saddam/9-11 assertion).
Yet the public believed it. The media delivered the message the White House wanted delivered without any significant questioning of it. It would not have been inappropriate to do a lead news story on 'Why does the American public believe in a Saddam/9-11 connection?" I mean--it's a phenomenon. That belief is something nobody acquainted with the facts believes. Yet the public started to believe it in large numbers starting at exactly the same time the Administration made a final decision to push for war (September 2002, just before the mid-term elections, in which painting the Democrats as soft on security was a main tactic). And the media showed no desire to acquaint the public with the facts.
Now the media is simply doing the bidding of the government. The government would like support for this war. Dead bodies tend to remind people of what a horror war really is. Maybe support would fall.
After all, there is pretty convincing evidence that people who actually see war tend to be less enthusiastic about jumping into it.
Colin Powell, George H.W. Bush, and Brent Scowcroft represent the three most significant voices arguing against this unilateral war (before it started). All three have significant combat experience. They have seen dead bodies.
President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz--the four most powerful U.S. officials behind this war, by all accounts--have never seen a dead body in combat, because they've never seen combat. And they couldn't be more excited by this war.
Additionally, of the 32 signers of that famous letter from the Project for the New American Century-- the letter urging adventurous military action that helped turn President Bush's thinking toward the neoconservative side--guess how many of those have combat experience? Out of 32 of them? One. (Three others, like Bush, ducked Vietnam by getting into the reserves.)
31 of these 32 hawks have never seen a dead body in combat.
With these kinds of figures, would YOU show dead bodies on TV? It seems like when people see them, they don't like war any more. But when they don't see the bodies--they love it.
2 - uglyamerican
It's like on the A-Team, when Mr. T and the guys would get into a firefight, machine guns popping, cars blowing up, and none of the bad guys would be dead. They'd be hanging from trees with dazed looks on their faces, and little birdies flying around their noggins. If they start showing little Mohammed with his testicles blown off, and little Johnny coming home in a body bag, support for this police action, and for President Cokehead, will go right down the crapper. Monkeyboy needs to keep his little war on to keep Joe and Betty Sixpack distracted long enough to carry him through the next Supreme Court Gift, er, I mean election. So, we'll get the sanitized, feel good, support our troops, they really need us to boost their morale crock of poopy, and geriatric former generals with pointers pontificating endlessly and saying nothing, and Fox Aryans talking about the "WMD SMOKING GUN", 3 hours after suspected Sarin is found to be Pesticide. As the famous actor and Scientologist Tom Cruise said, "Show me the bloody!"
3 - Eric Olsen
Al, take a look at my Blood and whatever post, there were bodies American and Iraqi on ABC. Koppel made a point of airing his disagreement with Charles Gibson about the appropriateness of showing bodies: he essentially made your argument, Gibson said it was disrespectful. I don't know who's right.
4 - san
Al, in all seriousness, if you're willing to accept the media is feeding you a line, are you perhaps willing to accept the government is feeding you a line?
5 - MASTER G
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html
6 - Doug
If I hear or read of one more idiot (either pro or anti war) talk about our 'deomocracy' I will puke. We do not live in a democracy, we live in a republic (just recite the Pledge of Allegiance...if you can remember it). For all the anti-war protestors who keep griping that they are not being heard...you are being heard BUT since you are all in the minority, no one is paying attention. See, that's how a Democratic Republic works...majority rule. As for the uneducated dissenters who insist that Bush lost the election...go back to school and study your government and American History. Bush won the election according to the laws and procedures established under the law...even Gore conceded.
7 - Brian Flemming
Doug,
See, that's how a Democratic Republic works...majority rule. As for the uneducated dissenters who insist that Bush lost the election...go back to school and study your government and American History. Bush won the election according to the laws and procedures established under the law...even Gore conceded.
You have two contradictory statements there. One--majority rules. Two--minority rules if it works out that way.
As Salon recently pointed out:
A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000. Were it not for the overrepresentation of sparsely populated, right-wing states in both the presidential electoral college and the Senate, the White House and the Senate today would be controlled by Democrats, whose views and values, on everything from war to the welfare state, are very close to those of western Europeans.
When the point is made that Bush is acting like he had a mandate, when in fact someone else had more votes and only a partisan vote in the Supreme Court put him in the White House...well, that's accurate.
The power that this small group of right-wingers has right now is NOT due to the majority of people in the U.S. supporting their ideas.
Whether that means the president is "illegal" is a different question. But that he arrived in the White House as a result of procedures that an outside observer would have trouble squaring with "democracy" is pretty certain. And it is a mistake to assume that the will of the majority is the reason the Senate and White House are captive of the Republican Party at present.
Is it a result of the rules? Yes. But of the will of the majority? Hardly.
8 - Doug
Brian, I refer you back to the definition of a republic and to the election process in the United States. As far as" A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader..." well, first of all Al Gore and Ralph Nader are not ONE candidate, so 'majority' doesn't really apply here as election are concerned with the votes each candidate accumulates. Next they didn't stand for the same things. Finally, that's the same kind of 'split' that occurred when Clinton won his first election...A majority of people voted for either Perot or GHW Bush.
Your point referring to Bush "...acting like he had a mandate...", well he certainly didn't have a mandate based on the election results. However based on opinion polls the majority of Americans support the war in IRaq, so he could certainly claim a mandate there.
So there are no contradictory statements.
The election was conducted in accordance with the laws of the U.S., why would an outside observer have any difficulty understanding that? Gore's challenge, which many constitutional law authorities felt was illegal in the first place, is what created the whole thing rolling. The U.S. Supreme Court, if you recall, chastised the Florida Supreme Court for it's ruling. So in the end the U.S. Supreme Court simply upheld the law.
In our country, the electoral college is the body that elects the POTUS...not the people. That's why we live in a Republic not a Democracy. Again, if you feel that's a contradiction then maybe you just don't understand how our government works.
9 - Al Barger
I don't claim to really know just why the networks cover the war in the ways that they do. I doubt that it is kowtowing to the Bush administration. They certainly don't support him much of any other time, give or take some of the Fox people.
My best guess is that the networks are playing to the sensibilities of their audience. A large majority of the public has ended up in support of taking out the Baath party regime in Iraq. I suspect they fear alienating their audience by giving them cross-messages that they don't want to hear, ie that we are in fact killing people.
Donahue, for example, got cancelled shortly before the start of the war, even though his ratings were starting to pick up. The explanation I heard that rung true to me (whether it actually was true or not) was that MSNBC feared that his liberal schtick would cause their network to become identified as the voice and pulpit of the the anti-war movement, and they didn't want any part of that. This makes sense purely from a business perspective, no matter what the personal political beliefs of the network brass.
10 - Brian Flemming
Doug,
I'm not trying to depose the guy.
As far as I'm concerned, both of the following are true:
1. Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush.
2. Without the support of his brother and the Florida Secretary of State (i.e., co-chair of his Florida campaign) and some seriously shady actions that disenfranchised voters who likely were supporters of Gore, Bush wouldn't have won Florida's electoral votes.
I'm not denying that the Supreme Court is the law of the land. And I'm not trying to get Al Gore installed as President. I think I have a pretty good basic grasp of "how our government works."
But the notion "George W. Bush was elected" only passes technical muster. Technically, Saddam Hussein got 100% of the vote in Iraq's last election. I think there were problems with that election, too. I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions. And that's why I would never say, "Saddam Hussein was elected."
11 - Brian Flemming
Al,
Hey, it turns out you and ANSWER have some common ground. I just got their latest email newsletter, and they pretty much have the same view you do of the TV coverage:
Having slaughtered and maimed thousands of Iraqi people, the U.S./British invasion forces are celebrating the use of their massive, overwhelming and brutal military power to crush resistance to their invasion of Iraq. The images portrayed in the U.S. media conceal the reality. While hospitals are overflowing with civilians and soldiers, the streets of the country are littered with incinerated bodies, destroyed homes and families buried alive. (See "Amid Allied Jubilation, a Child Lies in Agony, Clothes Soaked in Blood," Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK):
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=395117 )
I'm sorry to say that, according to docRussia's logic over here, this means you're a socialist.
Not my logic, understand. I make no such accusation.
12 - Al Barger
are you perhaps willing to accept the government is feeding you a line?
Yes San, it is indeed possible that a politician will be trying to feed us lines. I'm not involved in third party politics for the purpose of showing my trust for the rulers of the realm.
The fact that politicians tend to lie does not, however, mean that the country doesn't need to be defended. Dubya might come up with overly convenient explanations for some questionable business relationships. This does not, however, mean that Saddam Hussein's regime was not evil and dangerous and badly in need of eradication.
I don't support the war just because Dubya says to. I support it because in my own independent judgment, this was a necessary evil. Saddam has to be gone, and other Arab and Muslim radicals have to know that we're not to be trifled with.
In fairness to the president, however, I must say that this seems so far to be the most trustworthy administration in my lifetime. Nobody gets to be president without having some ability to slip and slide around truthfulness a little, but I have yet to see any absolute flat-out lies from him.
Partly I will give credit for this to liberals. You ride his ass. George W Bush simply could not get away with 1% of the outright lying that WJC did, even if he wanted to. I would appreciate a moratorium on the absolutely baseless accusations (particularly about Florida), but y'all do keep him honest.
Also though, Dubya sure seems to be much more of a straight shooter than most people at his level of politics. It probably has to do with that religious stuff that liberals seem to despise so much.
While hospitals are overflowing with civilians and soldiers, the streets of the country are littered with incinerated bodies, destroyed homes and families buried alive.
Now I question a lot of this. I've not heard any estimates of civilian casualties of more than a few hundred, which are all unfortunate, but minimal in context. How many buried families and destroyed homes constitute being "littered"? Also, how many innocent people in, say, just the next year will not be killed by Hussein's thugs because of what we've done?
Moreover, the blood of dead civilians is on the hands of the late Baath regime. THEY are the assholes here. They were the evil ones that forced the situation, and we're the good guys who are settling it.
Now I'm glad that there are lots of dead Iraqi soldiers. I feel bad for the conscriptees out with guns at their backs, but I'm happy to hear that we've seriously thinned out the Republican Guard and Fedayeen, and various hardcore types. That's what we're there for.
I just wish I could really trust the supposed media watchdogs for an accurate representation of the facts.