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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The pictures of killed and captured American troops reveal the dreadful truth about war -- one the docile "embedded" press corps won't touch.
Mar 24, 2003 | After days of watching the same images of the Baghdad skyline, a still life with the occasional eruptions of American missiles and thick billows of smoke, or of coalition troops rumbling through the desert, often in the grainy/greenish hues of "night vision," Sunday brought us something new, courtesy of Al-Jazeera. We were shown briefly, before Al-Jazeera decided to exercise discretion, American bodies in an Iraqi morgue and American captives paraded before the cameras. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quick to accuse Iraq of violating the Geneva Conventions that forbid humiliating prisoners of war or subjecting them to what the conventions call "public curiosity," though it was unclear whether Iraq was in violation simply by inviting news media to videotape the troops (the media might have been committing an ethical breach, but that is another issue); in any case, American media have videotaped rows of Iraqi POWs, their hands cuffed behind them. Does that qualify as humiliation or public curiosity?
Assuming that the Iraqis hadn't executed any POWs -- and we really don't know whether they did -- one suspects that the real transgression here, in Rumsfeld's mind, is not against the POWs but against the rigid control of images by the administration. What Al-Jazeera provided was unauthorized. It was a peek behind the backdrop to the stage the administration had carefully constructed. No more stand-ups in Kuwait City or reporter "embeds" telling us breathlessly either how the troops were moving or how ready they were for combat. This was the other side of war -- the ugly side, the real side.
When the administration concocted the idea of placing reporters with military units, it was overcoming nearly 30 years of antagonism to the media, dating back to Vietnam. The reporters then roamed freely, documenting the chaos, the brutality and ultimately the futility of that ill-fated mission, and the military blamed them when public opinion turned against the war. As a consequence, from Grenada through Afghanistan, the military kept the press at a distance for fear they would undermine not necessarily the military's efforts on the battlefield but its public relations campaign at home.
It was something of a surprise, then, when the administration decided to provide what seemed to be full access to the battlefield, permitting the public to see the war in combat boots. It wasn't that Bush and Company, perhaps the most tight-lipped administration in American history, had suddenly gotten the religion of openness. It was that they realized while our troops were fighting the Iraqis, our reporters would be fighting Al-Jazeera and other new cable outlets. This was to be a war of images -- a war in which what the public saw and subsequently thought would be every bit as important as what our soldiers did. It was a war the administration knew it had to win.
With this in mind, the idea of embedding journalists with troops was a masterstroke. The White House certainly knew that reporters would bond with their units and identify with them. In effect, the press would serve as P.R. flacks for the operation, especially since one of the stipulations in granting the media access was that every interview would be on the record. So much for any of the soldiers criticizing the prosecution of the war. This was coverage that was virtually certain to be uncritical and supportive, essentially cheerleading, which, with a few exceptions, like the piece by embeds in Monday's Wall Street Journal on Iraqis who are "furious about the continuing military assault against their country," is exactly how it has turned out in these first days of battle. But the administration wasn't just relying on proximity. It also felt confident enough to embed the press because it knew this current generation of reporters, unlike the skeptical Vietnam generation, was not likely to challenge the conventional wisdom. This bunch was reliably docile. It was one of this claque, after all, that actually asked President Bush at a recent press conference how his faith was sustaining him in these troubled times. These guys were patsies.
Just how compliant the administration expected the journalists to be is illustrated by what seemed to be their second duty after their primary one of boosting the war. They were to bear witness to the notorious weapons of mass destruction that were the alleged causus belli, since the rest of the world thought the American military command itself was about as trustworthy as Vic on "The Shield" procuring evidence of drug dealing. But it wasn't just a matter of seeing the weapons being displayed. To be honest, there probably isn't a single reporter out there who could tell a canister of chemicals from a can of beans. It was a matter of experiencing them if need be. In last week's New Yorker, Hampton Sides described how he went to Kuwait City for training, largely to learn how to protect himself from biological and chemical attacks, before taking his assignment with the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 1st Marine Division. It was while undergoing that training that Sides had an epiphany as to why the military was really permitting embedding. He realized that the reporters were to serve as the canaries in the coal mine. They would provide the proof of the WMD, even if they had to endanger or even give their lives to do it. Sides turned in his credentials, got on a plane and headed home to his wife and children.
