Category / War
Journalistic Kids These Days
David Halberstam on Iraq: “Halberstam, who has written about other presidential administrations and war decisions, isn’t sure he will write about Iraq. ‘Part of me wants younger people to write it,’ yet there is the challenge of figuring out ‘how we have gotten it so wrong and why the Democrats behaved so poorly,’ he said.”
This is a good point. Where are today’s David Halberstams? Why is Seymour Hersh digging up all the dirt (again) while the Believer staffers devote their precious resources to Modest Mouse? For that matter, while this is a start, if Ben Kunkel is hot shit and n+1 represents a new world order, why isn’t he in Tehran right now digging up dirt?
Well, That Didn’t Go Very Well, Did It?
From this morning’s press conference with President Bush:
THE PRESIDENT: Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq — hold on for a second —
Q They didn’t do anything to you, or to our country.
THE PRESIDENT: Look — excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where al Qaeda trained —
Q I’m talking about Iraq —
THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That’s where — Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where they trained. That’s where they plotted. That’s where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.
I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That’s why I went to the Security Council; that’s why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences —
Q — go to war —
THE PRESIDENT: — and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.
Q Thank you, sir. Secretary Rumsfeld — (laughter.)
Other mysteries: 1. Did the hand gestures confuse Bush? 2. Who is “the new guy?” 3. The next time anyone asks me a tough question, can I say “I’ve got lunch with the President of Liberia right now” to get out of it?
Even More Abu Ghraib Photos
Carrie and others have alerted me to this Salon article (specifically, this archive) of additional cruelties being meted out on Iraqi prisoners, captured by photographs.
Richard Nash writes in to let me know about David Griffith’s A Good War is Hard to Find, a book of essays written in the spirit of Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. Sontag’s original New York Times Magazine piece can be found here. Near the end of her life, Sontag wrote:
The pictures will not go away. That is the nature of the digital world in which we live. Indeed, it seems they were necessary to get our leaders to acknowledge that they had a problem on their hands. After all, the conclusions of reports compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other reports by journalists and protests by humanitarian organizations about the atrocious punishments inflicted on ”detainees” and ”suspected terrorists” in prisons run by the American military, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, have been circulating for more than a year. It seems doubtful that such reports were read by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice or Rumsfeld. Apparently it took the photographs to get their attention, when it became clear they could not be suppressed; it was the photographs that made all this ”real” to Bush and his associates. Up to then, there had been only words, which are easier to cover up in our age of infinite digital self-reproduction and self-dissemination, and so much easier to forget.
The pictures will not go away. But don’t tell that to the major U.S. media outlets. As I write this, no mention of these photos can be found anywhere on the main websites of The Washington Post, the New York Times (save this Associated Press article about Iraqi officials urging calm, as if one is supposed to react to this savagery as if one has just perused a mildly scandalous article), the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and MSNBC. At a time in which journalists should be asking questions about how extant these cruelties are and how frequently they run, at a time in which they should be speculating on how this will irrevocably alter our perception among Muslims, they remain stone-deaf, when it is clear with these new images that what we saw before was a watered down run of the real horrors. Much as the Danish cartoons were kept from the public in order to “protect,” this wholesale blackout and the encouragement here not to discuss or vent or begin any sort of discourse coming to terms with the divisiveness that suspends invisible in the air is supposed to “protect” us from what’s really going on. We are supposed to keep our heads in the sand and keep our four ventricles beating at a healthy, low-carb pace. But don’t worry. There’s Häagen-Dazs in the freezer for desert!
I’m amazed at the audacity of anyone having the temerity to tell us how to think and feel, as if the Iraqi population, seeing their peers treated like animals, and the American public, seeing their soldiers commit ineffable barbarities, are inchoate herds of sheep. The whole point of being a functioning adult member of American society is to question everything, especially one’s own viewpoints and especially the entreaties that come from the top tiers, Republican and Democrat.
More Abu Ghraib Photos
Here. These were, of course, kept secret from the public. Disgusting. Definitely NSFW. I’m ashamed to be American. And I think I’m going to roll into a ball. Because if these photos don’t get America horrified, I don’t know what will.
NPR, of course, is silent about these images this morning.
I’m looking at CNN’s website and there’s a tiny link to the right when this should be the top story.
Nothing at the Washington Post or the New York Times. Or even my hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle.
In short, the American media is thoroughly bought and paid for at a time when Americans absolutely need to bear witness to the inhumane and cruel actions that Americans — yes, that would be us — have inflicted upon the Iraqi people. They need to understand that these images were kept from them by a government all too determined to “protect” them from the knowledge that war is well beyond hell.
I can’t imagine what kind of atavistic asshole you have to be to turn away and ignore these images and walk into work with that bullshit skip in your stride, that Starbucks cup in your hand, and say to yourself just how great it is to be an American.
[UPDATE: Transcript from Australian news program containing more details on the video and link to video itself. Utterly atavistic. (Thanks for the lead, Tayari!)]
[UPDATE 2: Brian Sawyer writes in to note that the images are now the front-page story on CNN and Google News. The San Francisco Chronicle? A Valentine’s Day pillow fight at the Ferry Building is apparently more important than these new photos. See screenshot below.]
