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COMMENTARY
April 3, 2004
Fallujah
Oh world world world: there are days when it seems almost oppressive. Such we experienced earlier this week when treated to pictures of American bodies dismembered burned stomped upon and strung from a bridge among rejoicing hordes of Saddamites in Fallujah Iraq. There are several things that should be clear in the reader's mind before we continue. The first is that the scenes were a function of the presence of television cameras. This was street theatre of a particular kind. (We've seen it before in Mogadishu Gaza and Karachi; it was more stylized among the inhabitants of pre-colonial Fiji. Kipling wrote about the women doing it to wounded British soldiers in 19th-century Afghanistan. The ladies of Algiers sometimes did it to the French.) But nota bene: being theatre it isn't done without an audience. The "good bits" were shown gloatingly and repeatedly by Al Jazeera and other broadcasters to TV audiences throughout the Arab and Muslim world. More interestingly they were also shown in Western media which had been careful to suppress the grisliest scenes on the morning of 9/11/01 in New York and Washington and which routinely suppress pictures of Palestinian crowds behaving just like those in Fallujah. Their reasoning was previously that by showing such footage Americans could be whipped into a warmongering frenzy or into increased support for Israel. Their reason for reversing themselves and showing such pictures now is that they might inspire the U.S. electorate to vote for cut and run. I think our liberal media understand the middle-American audience about as well as Al Jazeera does; but that is optimistic. "If we try to avoid showing pictures of bodies if we make it too clean then maybe we make it too easy to go to war again." This is what Leroy Sievers the executive producer of ABC Nightline said to the Los Angeles Times Thursday. He was quoted within an article that spells out the liberal media argument for using repulsive imagery but only when it may undermine the foreign policy and ultimately the survival interests of the United States. But these ends are instead couched in moral preening and posturing. The only limitation upon the TV networks appears to be the fear that if they show too much they will get the kind of feedback they got from Janet Jackson's breast. We have a media determined to find imagery that will "define Iraq" in the same way they used pictures of a napalmed girl and of a street execution to "define Vietnam" -- with complete indifference to the larger truth. To put no finer point upon it: How does Western Civilization defend itself against such an enemy within? For we come to the next stage of an unpleasant proposition. In its selective use of explosive imagery the media have a power equivalent to that which the terrorists have in the selective use of explosive devices. There is an overlapping agenda too: for the great majority of both terrorists and journalists consider the Bush administration to be their principal adversary. (On the other hand they differ on the need for the imposition of Sharia law.) The incident in Fallujah was in itself insignificant. Nothing new could be learned from it: for from the moment U.S. troops arrived in the Saddamite heartland a year ago they have faced similar difficulties. The people of the Sunni Triangle did well out of Saddam Hussein's regime and lack the judgement to adapt to Iraq's new realities. While the Americans remain they are though they do not fully appreciate it under a kind of American protection. The Americans will not for instance drop fifty daisy-cutters on the town. I'm not sure a Shia-dominated government of Iraq would hesitate. An American-trained Iraqi constabulary has been unable to keep order in Fallujah largely because they have been trained to show American-style restraint to provocation. But after the Americans leave they will become less and less inclined to do this. So what the youth of Fallujah think they are doing to the Americans they may in reality be doing to themselves. In its recent experience in Iraq and elsewhere the U.S. is finding what the Israelis have long since not wanted to know. Michael Oren is an Israeli veteran and the brilliant author of the definitive history of the Six Day War. When I had coffee with him recently he said: "If you strike back you will encourage terrorism. And if you don't strike back you will encourage terrorism." You let them walk over you or you fight. It's true that fighting makes them even angrier but it helps to wipe them out. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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