Hypocrisy?
On Larry King I just heard Colonel Cornum, an ex-POW from Desert Storm, say that the Iraqi practice of letting Arab television stations film American POW's is "abhorrent." Rumsfield has expressed similar opinions on this incident, saying that Iraq is violating the Geneva Convention by "humiliating" these POW's, i.e. allowing these POW's to be photographed. I find such opinions very interesting since we have been watching malnourished, dirty, ragged Iraqi soldiers being handcuffed and rounded up and munching on food packets on ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/Fox News nonstop for the past two days. And let's not forget about the hundreds of "enemy combatants," not POW's according to this administration, being held indeterminately in Guantanamo Bay. Of course, I'm not saying that we should treat the Iraqi soldiers like royalty. I just think that we should be more self conscious about our own behavior before we start condemning the Iraqis, especially when we have almost no international support in this war. The Coalition of the Willing doesn't count as international support since only Britain and Australia are actually sending troops to this war, with Australia only committing a couple of thousand soldiers. Even the British people do not support Tony Blair in this war as far as I can tell from all the turmoil in the streets and the Parliament.
Personally, I think it's a good thing that these American POW's were shown on TV. First, they are less likely to be tortured, killed or "missing" once everyone in the world has seen them. More importantly, I think it's important for us the American people to see the bloody consequences of war because unlike in the Vietnam War, the American press has made this war appear remarkably sanitary. We need to be harshly reminded that war is more than specks of lights darting across a green screen, that the evil Iraqi soldiers (most of whom are hapless conscripted peasants anyways) are not the only ones dying in this war.
Finally, I find it ironic that with all this freedom of press that our news organizations enjoy and all the high tech equipment at their disposal, the most memorable, powerful, and visceral footages from this war have come from Al-Jazeera. All I ever see on the US networks are flashy 3-D maps, fuzzy night-vision images, American soldiers rolling through the desert triumphantly in their tanks, and press conferences where the Secretary of Defense and the generals proclaim how successful the war has been going. These are not war footages. They are a cross between government propaganda and reality programming. In contrast, the Al-Jazeera footages actually show the unpleasant realities of war: crumbled buildings, maimed civilians, dead soldiers, theirs and ours.
BTW, why the fuck is Miss America on tonight? And I thought the Oscars last night was irrelevant.
On Larry King I just heard Colonel Cornum, an ex-POW from Desert Storm, say that the Iraqi practice of letting Arab television stations film American POW's is "abhorrent." Rumsfield has expressed similar opinions on this incident, saying that Iraq is violating the Geneva Convention by "humiliating" these POW's, i.e. allowing these POW's to be photographed. I find such opinions very interesting since we have been watching malnourished, dirty, ragged Iraqi soldiers being handcuffed and rounded up and munching on food packets on ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/Fox News nonstop for the past two days. And let's not forget about the hundreds of "enemy combatants," not POW's according to this administration, being held indeterminately in Guantanamo Bay. Of course, I'm not saying that we should treat the Iraqi soldiers like royalty. I just think that we should be more self conscious about our own behavior before we start condemning the Iraqis, especially when we have almost no international support in this war. The Coalition of the Willing doesn't count as international support since only Britain and Australia are actually sending troops to this war, with Australia only committing a couple of thousand soldiers. Even the British people do not support Tony Blair in this war as far as I can tell from all the turmoil in the streets and the Parliament.
Personally, I think it's a good thing that these American POW's were shown on TV. First, they are less likely to be tortured, killed or "missing" once everyone in the world has seen them. More importantly, I think it's important for us the American people to see the bloody consequences of war because unlike in the Vietnam War, the American press has made this war appear remarkably sanitary. We need to be harshly reminded that war is more than specks of lights darting across a green screen, that the evil Iraqi soldiers (most of whom are hapless conscripted peasants anyways) are not the only ones dying in this war.
Finally, I find it ironic that with all this freedom of press that our news organizations enjoy and all the high tech equipment at their disposal, the most memorable, powerful, and visceral footages from this war have come from Al-Jazeera. All I ever see on the US networks are flashy 3-D maps, fuzzy night-vision images, American soldiers rolling through the desert triumphantly in their tanks, and press conferences where the Secretary of Defense and the generals proclaim how successful the war has been going. These are not war footages. They are a cross between government propaganda and reality programming. In contrast, the Al-Jazeera footages actually show the unpleasant realities of war: crumbled buildings, maimed civilians, dead soldiers, theirs and ours.
BTW, why the fuck is Miss America on tonight? And I thought the Oscars last night was irrelevant.
posted by Gary at
9:51 PM
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