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April
9, 2003
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
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Eldar
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April
8, 2003
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Gagne
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Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
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Larry Kearney
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M. Shahid
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7, 2003
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Fisk
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Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
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War and Art
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Wars and the Color Line
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War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
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The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
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A Drowning in Salem
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Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
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War and Occupation
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The Meaning of Victory
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April 10,
2003
The Unseen War
The
Images They Choose and Choose to Ignore
By ROBERT JENSEN
It was the picture of the day -- the toppling
of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad -- and may end up being
the picture of the war, the single image that comes to define
the conflict. The message will be clear: The U.S. liberated the
Iraqi people; the U.S. invasion of Iraq was just.
On Wednesday morning television networks
kept cameras trained on the statue near the Palestine Hotel.
Iraqis threw ropes over the head and tried to pull it down before
attacking the base with a sledgehammer. Finally a U.S. armored
vehicle pulled it down, to the cheers of the crowd.
It was an inspiring moment of celebration
at the apparent end of a brutal dictator's reign. But as Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has pointed out at other times, no
one image tells the whole story. Questions arise about what is,
and isn't, shown.
One obvious question: During live coverage,
viewers saw a U.S. soldier drape over the face of Hussein a U.S.
flag, which was quickly removed and replaced with an Iraqi flag.
Commanders know that the displaying the U.S. flag suggests occupation
and domination, not liberation. NBC's Tom Brokaw reported that
the Arab network Al Jazeera was "making a big deal"
out of the incident with the American flag, implying that U.S.
television would -- and should -- downplay that part of the scene.
Which choice tells the more complete truth?
Another difference between television
in the U.S. and elsewhere has been coverage of Iraqi casualties.
Despite constant discussion of "precision bombing,"
the U.S. invasion has produced so many dead and wounded that
Iraqi hospitals stopped trying to count. Red Cross officials
have labeled the level of casualties "incredible,"
describing "dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of
women and children" delivered by truck to hospitals. Cluster
bombs, one of the most indiscriminate weapons in the modern arsenal,
have been used by U.S. and U.K. forces, with the British defense
minister explaining that mothers of Iraqi children killed would
one day thank Britain for their use.
U.S. viewers see little of these consequences
of war, which are common on television around the world and widely
available to anyone with Internet access. Why does U.S. television
have a different standard? CNN's Aaron Brown said the decisions
are not based on politics. He acknowledged that such images accurately
show the violence of war, but defended decisions to not air them;
it's a matter of "taste," he said. Again, which choice
tells the more complete truth?
Finally, just as important as decisions
about what images to use are questions about what facts and analysis
-- for which there may be no dramatic pictures available -- to
broadcast to help people understand the pictures. The presence
of U.S. troops in the streets of Baghdad means the end of the
shooting war is near, for which virtually everyone in Iraq will
be grateful. It also means the end of a dozen years of harsh
U.S.-led economic sanctions that have impoverished the majority
of Iraqis and killed as many as a half million children, according
to U.N. studies, another reason for Iraqi celebration. And no
doubt the vast majority of Iraqis are glad to be rid of Hussein,
even if they remember that it was U.S. support for Hussein throughout
the 1980s that allowed his regime to consolidate power despite
a disastrous invasion of Iran.
But that does not mean all Iraqis will
be happy about the ongoing presence of U.S. troops. Perhaps they
are aware of how little the U.S. government has cared about democracy
or the welfare of Iraqis in the past. Perhaps they watch Afghanistan
and see how quickly U.S. policymakers abandoned the commitment
to "not walk away" from the suffering of the Afghan
people. Perhaps we should be cautious about what we infer from
the pictures of celebration that we are seeing; joy over the
removal of Hussein does not mean joy over an American occupation.
There is no simple way to get dramatic
video of these complex political realities. But they remain realities,
whether or not U.S. viewers find a full discussion of them on
television.
Robert Jensen
is an associate professor of journalism at the University of
Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective, and author
of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream
and the pamphlet "Citizens of the Empire." He can be
reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Today's
Features
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
David Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
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