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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
During the Gulf War, NBC reporter Arthur Kent was famed for his boyish good looks. Today, liberated from the network, he's free to say that Bush is out of control.
Mar 17, 2003 | Arthur Kent is pessimistic. A few weeks ago, Kent, an independent documentary filmmaker and journalist based in London, thought another war with Iraq could be avoided and a negotiated settlement could be reached with Saddam Hussein. Not anymore. He fears "dark forces" will unleash a conflict that will kill and maim thousands of innocent civilians, give rise to virulent anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism and plunge the world into strife for years to come.
This isn't idle speculation. Kent first reported on Afghanistan in 1980, soon after Soviet forces invaded the country to subdue mujahedin guerillas. A decade later, NBC News sent him to Dharan, Saudi Arabia, to cover the impending war with Iraq. That's where Kent became an instant celebrity when, in January 1991, he reported live on an Iraqi Scud missile attack. With his dashing good looks, as well as his stylish Italian leather jacket, the media dubbed him the "Scud Stud." After the Gulf War, Kent continued to report on the Middle East and Afghanistan. In June 2001, three months before Sept. 11, PBS aired his film on the Taliban's brutal rule, "Captives of the Warlords." A few weeks ago, his show on the History Channel, "History Undercover," interviewed U.N. weapon inspectors about Saddam's arsenal.
So, who are these "dark forces?" Our leaders. Kent harbors no love for Saddam Hussein. He considers him a tyrant who has starved his people for the past 12 years while buying even more weapons. But the 49-year-old journalist fears that the Bush administration's heavy-handed foreign policy toward Iraq will have devastating and long-lasting repercussions. "These people appear to be doctrinaire political fundamentalists," he told Salon during a recent interview in New York. "I think the Bush administration proceeds at its own peril."
In the city for a few days to film shows for the History Channel, Kent strode into the lobby of the midtown Omni Berkshire Place for our interview looking precisely the part of a broadcast TV journalist: navy blazer, a light blue shirt open at the collar and pale gray trousers. Even in the middle of a long winter, he had a slight tan. Only a few gray hairs at his temples hint at how much time has passed since he became the Scud Stud. To have some privacy and quiet, Kent suggests we talk at a corner table in an empty dining room. We barely sit down before he launches into his criticisms of Bush's foreign policies. Clearly, he's agitated about the imminent war.
Kent is a bit of an oddity. In a media world obsessed with packaging stories for mass consumption and high ratings, he has an almost Frank Capra-esque vision of journalism, one where the reporter pursues the truth with single-minded devotion. He grew up in a family of journalists in Alberta, Canada. His father was a columnist for the local paper, the Calgary Herald, and his brother was a TV reporter. From his father, Kent learned journalism was a noble crusade, an effort to present facts in such a way as to either stir readers to action or encourage them to think about issues. In his 1997 book, "Risk and Redemption: Surviving the Network News Wars," Kent says coverage of the Gulf War "galvanized my faith in the very special public service our profession can and should deliver."
Yet his earnestness almost derailed his career.
NBC News executives loved the fact that Kent, with his unruly dark hair and blue-gray eyes, had turned into the Satellite Dish, Arthur of Arabia, the Scud Stud. He was barraged with fan mail, love letters, marriage proposals and invitations for postwar rendezvous complete with topless pictures. Not surprisingly, his reports on Operation Desert Storm boosted the Nightly News' ratings among women.
But NBC bosses were less thrilled about his tenacity in following controversial stories, such as the Pentagon's tight control of media coverage during the Gulf War. When fighting began, Kent and most other reporters were hundreds of miles from the front line in Kuwait. (CNN, then an upstart cable network, hadn't evacuated its camera crew and reporters from Baghdad, so they were able to broadcast the U.S. attack on the ancient city.)
When Kent confronted military officials about censorship, he incurred his bosses' wrath. In his book, he says that Steve Friedman, then the executive producer of Nightly News, warned him, "I think we should stop whining about this censorship thing."
After the war, NBC capitalized on Kent's popularity and considered grooming him to replace Tom Brokaw. But Kent's star was already fading. By summer 1991, NBC, owned by General Electric Co., was cutting international coverage. Kent survived. In early 1992, he was asked to join a new newsmagazine, "Dateline NBC." Kent was an awkward fit; he believed the show was more interested in entertainment than hard news. While his contract to move back to the "Nightly News" was being renegotiated, NBC ordered him to report on the war in Bosnia. Kent refused to go until his contract dispute was settled. NBC fired him. In fall 1992, Kent filed a $25 million breach of contract suit against the network.
The break with NBC turned out to be a lucky one. A year and a half later, NBC settled. With the money, Kent founded his own film company in London, Fast Forward Films. Since then, he's won awards for several of his documentaries, including "A View of Bosnia" (1993), "Return to Afghanistan" (1995) and "A Wedding in Basra" (1998) and the more recent "Captives of the Warlords." Kent now has the freedom to pursue stories he thinks warrant coverage. Besides running his own film company, he writes for the London Observer, the Canadian newsweekly Macleans, and he hosts "History Undercover."
With this independence, Kent can speak his mind. And he did, at length.
Last week when we were setting up this interview, you were optimistic that war on Iraq could be postponed, giving the inspectors more time to assess Saddam Hussein's weapons. Today, your outlook is bleaker. Why?
Most of us have been hoping that somehow this looming catastrophe would not go forward at this pace. Everybody wants to deal with Saddam Hussein, even France and Russia, who are complaining about losing their oil rights in Iraq. They don't enjoy dealing with Saddam Hussein's regime. He's an unreliable tyrant. Almost all governments want to see a regime change in Baghdad, but there are ways of doing it and there are ways of doing it.
The war plan as devised by the Bush administration, pouring in hundreds of thousands of troops, a massive air force and navy, and directing intense firepower on Iraq, as a nation, and the Iraqis, as a people, will result in bloodshed and destruction. Even if Saddam and his inner circle are removed, the consequences in terms of anti-Western and anti-American feeling in the region will outweigh the benefits. We could be looking at a regional war that will rage for years.
Do you see this war evolving into a larger conflict?
Handled improperly, we're almost certainly seeing the commencement of a broad regional war in and around Iraq. Many learned statesmen and leaders have warned that this campaign against terrorism, and the Bush administration's approach to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, could trigger a war of generations, a very long-lasting, ugly war that shifts its focus from region to region and from nation to nation. Some will be low-intensity conflicts, some will be terrorism and counter-terrorism conflicts, and some will be wars, as we're seeing now with the deployment of vast armies in the desert.
