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TechnoratiAbstract Quality Journalism for War
They were, the newspaper reported, the latest of 706 Americans "who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations." There wasn't enough room for any numbers, names or ages of Afghans who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.
That's the way routine death stories go. But of course no amount of newsprint or airtime can do more than scratch the human surface. Reporting on life is like that, and reporting on death is like that: even more so when the media lenses are ground with ideology, nationalism and economic convenience.
But real grief isn't like that. It twists and burns and has only names and adjectives unworthy of itself. That doesn't stop many journalists or politicians from claiming to describe what's beyond description.
A week before Peter K. Cross and Steven T. Drees were buried in a three-square-inch box on page A9 of the national edition, the New York Times editorialized about the war that killed them and 704 other members of the U.S. military. Years from now, media researchers and historians will view the date of that lead editorial, June 23, 2009, as a time when the American deaths in Afghanistan had not yet reached four digits and when the uncounted Afghan deaths were a lower uncounted number.
Beginning with its headline -- "Afghanistan's Failing Forces" -- the editorial was replete with erudite lamentation (not to be confused with grief). The war has been managed so badly. Two authoritative sentences bookended the editorial: "The news from Afghanistan is grim." And, "There is no more time to waste."
The words in between were consistent with a grand tradition of press demands for more effective warfare. ("President Obama was right to send more American troops to fight. ... The Taliban must be confronted head-on. ... Building an effective Afghan Army is critical...") Peering into their computer screens in Manhattan, the editorialists would have been more concise to simply write: "Let's you and them fight."
Some who went into battle have a very different perspective. "As an infantry rifleman in the Marines Corps, I saw so much of these wars through nightly patrols," says Rick Reyes, a former Marine corporal who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We worked with translators whose sole interest in supplying us intelligence was to earn money and other forms of aid. We gathered information that often proved faulty. During a raid, we would ransack homes, breaking windows, doors, families, lives, chairs and tables, detaining and arresting anyone who seemed suspicious. In one case, we detained, beat, and nearly killed a man, only to realize he was merely trying to deliver milk to his children."
Reyes speaks of a routine with "unconscionable acts of violence" and awful harm to civilians, whatever the differences in terrain: "These patrols were all the same, whether I was in the desolate desert terrain near Camp Rhino, the U.S.-led coalition's first strategic foothold in Afghanistan, or stationed outside Basra in Iraq."
When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard from Rick Reyes on April 23, he did a lot to shatter illusions with six minutes of testimony:
But the conventional wisdom of press and state insists that the U.S. war effort must do more than go on -- it must escalate -- in the name of human decency. The political rhetoric in Washington is close to 100 percent humanitarian, while the new supplemental infusion of U.S. spending for Afghanistan is 90 percent military.Inside a contrived news frame, destruction can nurture life. In media myth, we can be well-informed and ignorant of war's realities. Along the way, the benefits of numbed quiescence and muffled dissent are vastly overrated.
10 Comments so far
Show AllIt is very difficult to affect or navigate the reality of the law that Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny when people do not have enough accurate information to cause a survival response. People need more access to the truth. In our world, propagated ignorance is not bliss, it's malignant.
Great job, Norm. excellent writing and analysis.
The n.y. times, washington post and the other cheerleaders for imperial war are gonna have a lot to answer for if we ever get out the other side of this dark night. In fact while i have been suggesting they should be in the dock along with the war crimes perpetrators they love so much, there are times when it does seem they should go on trial first. yeah i know none of this will happen. I'm making a moral judgement. The military and the politicians are kind of trapped inside the bubble of war blinded inability to think at all. But the enablers down at the fourth estate have no such excuse. Many of them know perfectly well where to find reality and truth. they are just too cowardly and self serving to go there. Or whatever. I do not really know why they are doing this, talking about military strategies while the actual stuff that is happening, what corporal Reyes is trying to tell them, the unbearably brutal reality on the ground, and under it, never gets into the pages of their papers, or on prime time tv.
Waterboard Cpl Reyes!
I'm sure all the assembled warmongers were very moved by Cpl. Reyes' testimony. There sat Kerry, looking almost embarrassed that Reyes drew a connection between his statement about the ongoing atrocity we're committing in Afghanistan and the hoary senator's testimony 40 years ago about our massive war crime in Vietnam. Doesn't the humble Hispanic realize he's referring to one of the senate's most aristocratic members? Well, let's get thru this.
Everything Reyes says applies as well to the unconscionable crimes we've committed in Iraq, to absolutely no accountability. And Obama wants to Surge in Afghanistan because it's "the right war." None of these senators will utter a syllable to stop him. War is our business, possibly our ONLY business, if you consider the Pentagon and related military industry budget. It's all we have left to export. There's too much profit in it to get all weepy and reflective about some Marine corporal's personal views, just because he's seen first-hand what it's actually about, in both our ongoing criminal enterprises.
Move along now, Corporal Reyes, and thank you for your candor. We've already "rethought" Afghanistan, and it's a big green light from where we sit. Time to make everything a thousand times worse under the pretense of Doing What's Right. More bombs to drop on innocent civilians, more of them to rape and kill, another country to thoroughly destroy, and several million more rationalizations to pump out to a complicit media to make ourselves feel good all over. This is our business. Go to a monastery if you don't like it.
Sioux Rose
EPHRAIM: Very well stated.
Pretty weighty to hang philosophies and claims on the word of one man.
Sioux Rose
HENRY8: What did wife # 5-6-7 say to you to teach you a thing or two about the living?
AS IF the U.S. has a genuine threat or enemy in Afghanistan. AS IF this isn't about resource acquisition and geo-political strategies across the world "map." AS IF the programming to be a man, be hard, show no emotion, follow orders, respect authority, prove yourself in the military, and all the other macho demonstrations of prowess does not begin at a VERY young age. AS IF the vast majority have the guts or courage to stand apart when they KNOW it's wrong, when they SEE the outrage of gunning down civilians. Miraculously a few do fly over this martial hornet's nest, like this gentleman testifying, like Watada, and a few true brave men (and women). Your own indoctrination and how it blinds you is obvious to everyone but you.
Check out other Winter Soldier videos, there's lots of testimony about the atrocities committed and the lack of effect our efforts have.
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier
Well is'nt it just dandy, our whole country has made the marketing of death, torture, extortion, rape, and instruments and methods of domination into the only novelty we now can market worldwide. Our whole nation is a prison, and even the most priveleged of us are mere trustee's of a system guided by the needs of undead, inamate "corporations" that have no human experience to draw an empathic ethical connection from.
This is a lose-lose proposition for the top and the bottom rungs of our society there is no aristocratic agenda to illuminate the firmament, just "winners" of our shlock-o faschist game-show of a culture. Then of course there are the rabble. Only just barely contained by our police state. A mass of little tyrants who tax us all with their citations. good work ruling class! Now you and your children are as screwed as everyone else....
Finally we know that our system has no victors, just a heirarchy of victims. with each tier torturing the level directly below. On top of this structure are the "elite" , are they pretty? are they profound? no, they are sad, alcoholic, over medicated mediocrities, like all the poor shmucks below them.
When will the elites realize the we are all the MIDDLE, the top is the center and the bottom is the center and the bottom is the center. we have been decentralized, maybe we always were. New breakthroughs in physics display unequivically that there is no "top" but only a vast network of centers all radiating from within.
Over this ontological reality is a mask of power, and all of our militarism poverty and repression is the product of this error in our perceptions.
We are killing ourselves, now more effectively then ever. Every leader knows the score.
A politics of love must find it's place in our world, but as long as it is the killing machine that is making all the money, we are trapped.