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As I pointed out in "The Satanic Is The Guilty" The Roots of Modern War Propaganda" (Nygaard Notes #184), there is a "lesson of Vietnam" that has been learned well by the warmakers of subsequent U.S. governments. And that lesson I think is best summed up by social scientist Harold Lasswell in his 1927 book entitled "Propaganda Technique in the World War." He puts it like this: "The justification of war can proceed more smoothly if the hideous aspects of the war business are screened from public gaze."
As I wrote in that issue (in December 2002, three months before we attacked Iraq) "this Bush administration can be expected to enforce the unprecedented restrictions begun in the [1991] Gulf War of keeping journalists away from combat zones, while the public will be fed computerized images of 'smart bombs' doing their job with no blood or gore to disturb the dinner hour."
We've gone from "smart bombs" to "precision guided munitions," but the prediction of "sanitized" war reporting has so far been accurate. Since the attack in 2003 every effort has been and is being taken to "screen from public gaze" not only "the hideous aspects of the war business" in Iraq, but whole categories of aspects, hideous or not. We don't even get computerized images now. Essentially the only reports of "violence" in Iraq that make it into the newspapers are reports of violence by "the enemy."
Drawing Down the Troops
In Mr. Bush's State of the Union address of January 31st, he promised that "As we make progress on the ground [in Iraq]... we should be able to further decrease our troop levels..." Such a promise is to be expected, and two recent articles in the press illustrate why.
On January 31st the Wall Street Journal reported on a just-completed Wall Street Journal/NBC News opinion poll that showed that "Two-thirds [of United Statesians] say it is time to reduce troop levels in Iraq, while just 28% support maintaining existing troop levels." Furthermore, the Journal said that "on Iraq, Mr. Bush's most important policy initiative, 45% of Republicans say it's time to reduce troop levels, up from 32% a year ago," adding that "Those sentiments haven't been lost on Mr. Bush, who has signaled his intent to reduce troops..."
That same day, January 31st, the New York Times (All The News That's Fit To Print!) ran a major (1,400-word) story headlined "Iraqi Official Says Foreign Forces Could Fall Below 100,000 This Year." Not only that, says the article, but "an overwhelming majority [of U.S. troop] could be out in two years."
Note that no one is promising less violence and suffering for the people of Iraq this year. The promises are simply about reductions in troop levels. But won't that mean less suffering for Iraqis? Not likely. Fewer troops on the ground = more bombs from the air.
The "Secret" Bombing of Iraq
Independent journalist Seymour Hersch, writing in the December 5th, 2005 issue of the New Yorker tells us that, "A key element of the plans [to reduce troop levels], not mentioned in the President's public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower." Hersch adds that "military experts have told me...that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what."
Ten months earlier, back in February of 2005, independent journalist Dahr Jamail wrote the first widely-distributed article (that I know of) on the subject of what might almost be called the "secret" air war being conducted as part of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Writing in the online news portal "Electronic Iraq," Jamail referred to "the oftentimes indiscriminate use of air power by the American military," which he claimed was "one of the least reported aspects of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." My recent investigation bears out his claim that "The Western mainstream media has generally failed to attend to the F-16 warplanes dropping their payloads of 500, 1,000, and 2,000-pound bombs on Iraqi cities--or to the results of these attacks."
A database search of the English-language media for the words "Iraq" and "air war" for the month ending February 16th, for instance, yielded only a single article. A similar search of NPR transcripts for the SIX months ending February 16th also yielded but a single reference, and that was not an independent NPR investigation, but an interview with Seymour Hersch on the Weekend Edition program.
The U.S. air strike that killed the 12 innocents in Baiji on January 4th did receive coverage in the U.S. press, perhaps because a Washington Post special correspondent happened to be present when the bodies were carried out of the rubble. Since it's now so dangerous for U.S. reporters to leave their hotels--and almost never do they leave Baghdad--such on-the-scene reporting of the consequences of the U.S. air war is extremely rare, and likely will continue to be rare. And, as Hersch reports, "The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War." So the likelihood of the ongoing air war appearing on your front page is very low, absent some serious media work by grassroots peaceworkers.
In the week following the Baiji bombing there were, as usual, almost no references in the U.S. media to the U.S. air war, but there were various references to U.S. air "strikes," which were said to be increasing in frequency and intensity, although the numbers were reported differently in different media, making one wonder where, exactly, the numbers were coming from. The Boston Globe, for instance, claimed that "US and British forces carried out eight air attacks in January 2005", while the Washington Post said the number at 25. The monthly number of air strikes at the end of 2005 had gone up, maybe to 50 (Boston Globe) or maybe to 54 (NY Daily News) or maybe it was 120 (Washington Post). Whatever. The variations reveal the casual nature of reporting by the corporate media on what should be a huge news story.
Whatever the actual numbers, UPI reported on January 1st, citing a London Sunday Times story, that "the tempo of [U.S.] air strikes is expected to increase" in 2006 to a number even greater than the highest estimate for December, which was 150. And, as the Knight Ridder News Service reported on January 10th, "Since Iraq doesn't have a working air force, U.S. jets are expected to provide air cover for Iraqi troops for at least several more years."
Casualties that result from these missions are not included in the Daily Airpower Summary released by the U.S. military. But here is Stonybrook University sociologist Michael Schwartz, writing in the online publication TomDispatch: "If the U.S. fulfills its expectation of surpassing 150 air attacks per month, and if the average air strike produces the (gruesomely) modest total of 10 fatalities, air power alone could kill well over 20,000 Iraqi civilians in 2006." To this, Schwartz notes, we must "add the ongoing (but reduced) mortality due to other military causes on all sides..."
The prospect of more than 20,000 Iraqi civilian deaths for "several more years" is the prospect to which we now turn. |
