This Week: Iraq

Quote of the Week

Off the Front Page: Death in Iraq

Insurgency? Or Resistance? Iraq Propaganda Watch

 

Greetings,

Several of you responded to my offer last week of making presentations. Thank you! I look forward to coming to your neighborhoods in the near future. It'll be fun! The rest of you, just keep me in mind for when you need some help strategizing, have an issue that you want to creatively explore, or simply want to liven up your agenda or your classroom. You know where to find me!

I was surprised when I did a little survey in preparing this issue and discovered that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has mostly been keep off the front pages for many months, now. Really, almost since 2003. So, this week I put a couple of articles on Iraq in the pages of Nygaard Notes. There is much, much more that could be said, and I hope to say a lot of it in coming weeks. But, for this week, a remarkable report on casualty levels, and another look at wartime propaganda.

For no more war,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week

I think many United Statesians have the impression that a bomb goes off in Iraq every 2 seconds, and the bombs are all due to "sectarian violence." That is, Iraqis killing other Iraqis (that's the "violence") because they disagree with their religious beliefs or practices (that's the "sectarian" part). While there is certainly a high level of violence between Iraqis, and religious affiliation has a lot to do with it, it's more complicated than that. Most of that violence is now in the form of assassinations, small-arms fire, car accidents, execution-style killings, and so forth. Yet the violence that seems to get the most news coverage in this country is the bombings—car bombings, suicide bombings, roadside bombings, and other types.

Since they are so newsworthy, it's worth considering who the bombs in Iraq are aimed at. Here are two comments—from two very different sources—on that subject.

The first "Quote" is from an interview with sociology professor Michael Schwartz of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was interviewed on May 26, 2006, and was asked about the nature of violent attacks reported from Iraq. Part of his long answer went like this:

"The situation is quite complicated and made more complicated by the fact that even by U.S. statistics, of the approximately 700 attacks in the month of March, which is the last month I saw numbers for, about 650 attacks were directed at the U.S. military and 30 or so were directed either at the Iraqi police or military, and only 20 were directed at civilians. So you're talking about less than 10 percent of all the attacks are directed at anyone except the U.S."

Now, here's a "quote" from the New York Times of yesterday, August 17th:

"The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total of the war... An analysis of the 1,666 bombs that exploded in July shows that 70 percent were directed against the American-led military force, according to a spokesman for the military command in Baghdad. Twenty percent struck Iraqi security forces, up from 9 percent in 2005. And 10 percent of the blasts struck civilians, twice the rate from last year."

Off the Front Page: Death in Iraq

Opinion polls consistently show that the U.S. occupation of Iraq—which many polls refer to as "the situation in Iraq"— is one of the top issues on the national priority list of people in the United States. (It's sometimes second to "the economy" and occasionally to "terrorism.") Despite this fact, it's surprisingly rare to see the word "Iraq" in a headline on the front page. In fact, it's relatively uncommon in recent months to see news from Iraq on the front page at all.

A great example of this devaluation of Iraq news appeared just this week. Buried on page 10 of the New York Times (All The News That's Fit To Print!) on Wednesday, August 16th was the news that the killing in Iraq is the worst it's ever been. By far. If this isn't front-page news, I don't know what is. Yet I couldn't find it on a single front page I looked at, anywhere in the country.

One of the article that squeezed the Iraq war toll news off the front page in my local paper that day was "Country Star Faces Charges of Killing Bear In Pen," a sad story about "tame bear named Cubby" that was shot illegally.

On the same day, the Washington Post ran a short article headlined: "Iraq War Deaths Total Number ...". This was actually only the "Total number of U.S. military deaths and names of the U.S. troops killed." That tragic and senseless number is 2,604. For those who do not have their calculators handy, that means that the number of Iraqis who have died in the past month is 32 percent higher than the number of U.S. occupying forces that have died in the past three-and-a-half years.

It's almost embarrassing to quote these numbers, as I fear that readers may think that I am somehow "comparing" the value of human lives by adding up numbers, or saying that the deaths of the U.S. soldiers is excessive. That's not at all what I am saying. What I am doing is calling into question the journalistic mirroring of the U.S. military's practice of counting only the deaths of "our own" and calling it a "Total Number." Intentional? It doesn't matter; it amounts to propaganda in any case.

Since the report of Iraqi deaths was buried, meaning that many people neither saw it or heard about it, I'll pass along just a few quotations from the story in the Times, which was headlined "Number of Civilian Deaths Highest in July, Iraqis Say."

First, some grisly "figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue:"

* The total number of civilian deaths in Iraq in July: 3,438

* Compared to previous numbers: A 9 percent increase over June, nearly double the toll in January.

* Average number killed per day: "more than 110."

Nygaard Arithmetic: If these numbers were applied to the U.S. in proportion to our population, it would mean that 41,400 United Statesians were being killed each month, or about 500,000 each year.

Finally, just a few of quotations from the article (A good one. Too bad it wasn't on the front page!):

"[T]he morgue and ministry numbers almost certainly reflect severe undercounting, caused by the haphazard nature of information in a war zone." Still, these underreported numbers are "reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new government has failed."

The numbers "seemed to bolster an assertion many senior Iraqi officials and American military analysts have made in recent months: that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping toward one..."

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, chose to blame the Iraqi government for the escalating violence. "I think the time has come for these leaders to take responsibility with regard to sectarian violence, to the security of Baghdad at the present time," said the ambassador. The possibility that the U.S. occupying forces might consider "taking responsibility" for violence in Iraq was not raised in the article.

Since the occupying forces refuse to do so, it is "the United Nations" that "has been tracking civilian casualty figures" in Iraq. In addition to the July numbers, they also reported that "3,149 violent deaths had occurred in June." According to the Times, "The statistics were significantly higher than previous civilian death tolls, and indicated that the news media had drastically underreported the level of violence in Iraq. The United States government and military have declined to release overall figures on Iraqi civilian casualties, or even say whether they are keeping count."

But, more importantly, those two sentences about death figures reveal A) Why it's a bad idea for the media to rely on the U.S. government for its casualty figures, and B) Why the U.S. government consistently seeks to demean and weaken the U.N.

It's a strange thing to have the Times, the most important member of the news media, report that the news media has not done a good reporting the numbers that it is now reporting. That should be a story in itself, and one worthy of the front page, as well.

Insurgency? Or Resistance? Iraq Propaganda Watch

One of the most basic principles of public relations is to control the use of symbols, including language. The world of PR is a world of symbols and emotions. And the name of the game is to make sure that the words and symbols associated with one's product provoke a positive emotional response in the target audience. We think of these sorts of tactics being used in the commercial marketplace, but it's become standard practice in the political world, as well, and we can see it at work in the media every day.

Think of the occupation of Iraq as a "product" to be sold to the U.S. public. Now think of the language used to report on it. First of all, "occupation" does not have a nice ring to it, so the U.S. military cannot be an occupying force; they become "Coalition forces." And nobody in their right mind would "resist" liberation, which is what the "Coalition forces" are doing, so there is no "resistance" to the (non-existent) occupation; what we have is an "insurgency," which in turn is made up of "terrorists" who "hate America." Let's look at how this works, using an example from this week in the nation's newspaper of record, the New York Times.

The lead headline on the front page of Thursday, August 17th read like this: "Insurgent Bombs Directed at G.I.'s Increase In Iraq; Grim Military Reports; Attacks on U.S. and Iraqi Forces Soar, Wounding More Americans."

The very first paragraph of the story claims that the increase in attacks "offer[s] more evidence that the anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen..." And there's your problem.

Hating Who We Are? Or What We Do?

Are the people attacking U.S. targets actually "anti-American?" Or are they "anti-occupation?" That's a pretty big distinction, and an important one. If they are "anti-American," then they are attacking "G.I.'s" because of who they ARE and where they come from. If one believes this, then I imagine it would be quite easy to also believe that the source of the attacks is purely due to factors inside of "them" that express themselves as some sort of irreconcilable hatred of "us." And what can one do if that is the case? Well, since Americans can't stop being Americans, the answer must be to somehow destroy those who are "anti-American."

On the other hand, if one were to say that the attackers are "anti-occupation," that would have an entirely different meaning. For one thing, it would imply that the attacks on "Americans" must have a relationship to something that the "Americans" are DOING, as opposed to who they ARE. So what? Well, calling an end to the occupation of Iraq is something that could be done, unlike changing the identity of "Americans."

In order for this argument to make sense, one has to accept the idea that a significant number of those attacking U.S. forces are rational human beings, and not simply hate-filled sub-humans. And there's two more reasons for we United Statesians to constantly work on our deeply-embedded racism: 1. So we can think clearly, and 2. So it's not so easy to go to war.

Insurgency? Sez Who?

Now let's look at the word "insurgency," which has become the term of choice for the media to use when referring to the Iraqi perpetrators of violence. Is that an accurate term?

What is an "insurgency," anyhow? I went to three different dictionaries (Webster's, Oxford English, and the online Dictionary.com) and checked out both "insurgency" and "resistance." Here's what I found.

Here are some definitions for insurgency, or insurgent, according to:

Dictionary.com: "an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict" or "rising in opposition to civil or political authority or against an established government"

Webster's: "rising in opposition to governmental or political authority; insubordinate"

OED: "a person who rebels or rises in active revolt against authority."

And here are some definitions for "resistance," according to the same sources:

Dictionary.com: "An underground organization engaged in a struggle for national liberation in a country under military or totalitarian occupation."

Webster's: "the organized movement, often underground, of resistance to a government or occupying power regarded as oppressive and unjust, as in France during the Nazi occupation."

OED: "Organized covert opposition to an occupying or ruling power;"

As you can see, the difference between the two terms has to do with legitimacy and justice. An "insurgency" assumes that the government or authority is legitimate ("constituted" or "established") and the opposition is not ("insubordinate" or "against authority.")

"Resistance" flips that around. Suddenly the government or authority, rather than being "constituted" or "established" becomes "totalitarian", "oppressive, or "unjust.." Suddenly "occupation" is equated with the ultimate symbol of evil—the Nazis—and opposition to it makes all the sense in the world.

Sure enough, I did a database search of a recent month in the major newspapers, and found what I expected: When I searched for the phrase "Iraqi resistance," there were almost zero examples, except for a couple of direct quotes from people in the resistance, or sympathetic to it. When I searched for the words "Iraq" and "insurgency," the database came back with an error message that said: "This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents."

Next I looked for the words "Iraq" and "occupation forces" and/or "occupying forces" and the very few examples returned were almost all from non-U.S. media. Again, the few references in the domestic press were all direct quotations, or they appeared in letters to the editor.

So, is this nit-picking at a bunch of inconsequential details? I don't think so. The almost-universal choice by the media to use certain words instead of other ones to characterize the forces at work in Iraq may be the result of conscious propaganda or may simply be a reflection of widely-shared beliefs. But, whatever the reason for the choices outlined above, they have a profound effect on our understanding of what is actually going on in that country.