…The intensity of the bombardment was genuinely shocking to behold – there was the same sense of ordinary life being overwhelmed by hellish violence that characterized September 11. Despite everything we had seen, BBC anchor Maxine Mawhinney felt able to declare the following day:

“It’s difficult to verify who’s been hit, if anyone.” (BBC1, March 22)

Taking a look inside a hospital was o­ne option to explore. When the BBC’s Hywel Jones managed it he commented o­n o­ne small, wailing boy with head injuries: “It’s impossible to verify how he received his injuries.” (Ibid) In fact doctors with the International Red Cross were quickly able to verify that patients’ injuries had been sustained from blast and shrapnel – the Iraqi regime claimed three deaths and 207 hospitalised civilian casualties.

If the reality of the horror can’t be challenged, it can at least be kept well out of sight. Steve Anderson, controller of ITV News, responded to complaints that the horrors of war are being sanitised:

“I have seen some of the images o­n Al-Jazeera television. I would never put them o­n screen.” The BBC’s head of news, Richard Sambrook, agrees that such pictures are not suitable for a British audience.

The images in question were indeed horrific – a young Iraqi boy with the top of his skull blown off with o­nly torn flaps of scalp remaining – too much for the British public to bear, we are told. Instead we are trained to admire the Jeremy Clarkson side of war: the muscular curves of Tornado bombers, the cruise missiles ripping at the sky: “This is seriously hardcore machinery going in” (BBC1, March 22), as o­ne BBC ‘military expert’ drooled.

At the extreme end of the spectrum, even honest debate is being censored. Sir Ray Tindle, chairman and Editor in Chief of Tindle Newspapers Ltd, owner of 130 weekly titles, relayed his orders to editors o­n the eve of war:

“When British troops come under fire, however, as now seems probable, I ask you to ensure that nothing appears in the columns of your newspapers which attacks the decision to conduct the war.” (Andy Rowell, ‘Anti-war reporting banned in UK papers’, PR Watch, March 23)

Normal ‘free press’ service will be resumed, it seems, immediately a “ceasefire” is agreed “when any withheld letters or reports may be published”. Tindle’s papers, in other words, will be ‘liberated’ at the same time that Iraq is ‘liberated’. Then, if Baghdad lies in ruins, the deserts drenched in blood, it will be good to know we are free to discuss whether somebody should have tried to stop it.

On Patriotism

Virtually all politicians and almost all the media are demanding that we now support our armed forces in their action. BBC and ITN reporters, for example, have taken to repeatedly asking protestors: “Is there any point in protesting now that the democratic decision has been taken to go to war?”

The answer is provided by a top secret US Defense Department memorandum from March 1968, which warned that increased force levels in Vietnam ran “great risks of provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions” (The Pentagon Papers, Vol. IV, p. 564, Senator Gravel Edition, Beacon, 1972). Fears of “increased defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities” were very much o­n the minds of military planners as they decided whether to massively escalate the assault o­n Vietnam, or back off, after the Tet offensive. They backed off.

While we feel sympathy for the plight of our troops – we grieve for all who die in this war – we agree with the respected political commentator, George W. Bush, who said recently of military responsibility:

“It will be no defence to say, ‘I was just following orders’.” (The Scotsman, ‘Bush orders Saddam to flee’, March 18, 2003)

We also note the view of Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials in 1946, who said:

“The very essence of the Nuremberg charter is that individuals have international duties which transcend national obligations of obedience imposed by the state.” (John Pilger, Disobey, March 13, 2003)

We are all human beings – no o­ne is granted special exemption from moral responsibility, least of all people engaged in killing. Our TVs have been full of soldiers and airmen declaring innocently: “I’m just here to do a job and to do it to the best of my ability.”

But killing and mutilating people in a cynical and illegal war are about far more than just doing a job. Why do we imagine that signing a contract and agreeing to abide by certain rules in exchange for money means we are relieved of our responsibility as moral actors? What does our promise to do as we are ordered mean when we are ordered to incinerate innocent men, women and child? Which is more important – our agreement, or the burning to death of innocents?

Where does the argument for unconditional support for our troops lead? Consider the words of the dissident Spanish chronicler, Las Casas, recording the actions of Spanish troops o­n the island of Hispaniola in the 16th century:

“There were 60,000 people living o­n this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.” (Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial, 1990, p.7)

By the media’s logic if we had been Spanish in 1508 we should have supported ‘our’ Spanish troops. British troops are not Spanish conquistadors, but the point is that the issue is not black and white – we can’t just be told to shut up and stop thinking the moment the shooting starts. Because it’s not black and white, it needs to be discussed. Tolstoy described well the reality of the call to mindless patriotism:

“Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power. And as such it is recommended wherever it is preached. Patriotism is slavery.” (Tolstoy, Writings o­n Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence, New Society, 1987, p.103)

Beyond all the facts, evidence, arguments and counter-arguments, there is a simple truth that conflicts with the primitive idea that mass violence is either necessary or effective as a solution to anything. It was elegantly outlined by the 12th century philosopher Je Gampopa:

“It is not anger and hatred but loving kindness and compassion that vouchsafe the welfare of others.”

If we took this idea seriously and acted upon it, the swamp of hatred that breeds the mosquitoes of terror would soon dry up. Anger and hatred are powerless in the face of authentic human kindness. Much of the world now understands that violence and hatred are not good answers to violence and hatred, that the fog of war is not a good antidote to the ignorance of arrogance and greed. Alas, there remain centres of ruthless power which understand what war is good for – it’s good for business, for frightening and controlling people into submission, for getting what you want that other people have.

But a bloody US/UK ‘victory’ means disaster for the Iraqi people and an explosion of hatred around the world. At home, war means the further entrenchment of the fossil fuel fundamentalists, military elites and other greed-driven cynics leading the world to social and environmental ruination. A continuation of the current global protests means something else – it means the possibility that we might at last wake up from the nightmare of history to a world dominated by human concern for others rather than human suffering.

From Suzanne to David Edwards at Media Lens:

Many thanks for how courageously and profoundly you tell the truth. I've featured you today in “A Media Lens Masterpiece Painting the Big Picture.” 

There's an aspect to what's going o­n that we don't talk about much. Many societal costs don't readily get into our balance sheets about whether to wage war. I thought about this when Bush was o­n television recently, addressing an enthusiastic audience of military personnel. The more he emphasized killing and destruction the louder they cheered. We have brainwashed a whole swath of our population to be happy killers.

The same day, I listened to a call-in radio show (in Los Angeles) talk about the life-long repercussions of post-traumatic stress disorder for those not-so-happy anymore, afflicted soldiers. A pioneer in that field, Jim Dwyer, whose clinic treats 1200 vets a month, was interviewed in yesterday's L.A. Times. Some choice excerpts:

“…the fight to fit back in. It can be a lifelong struggle. Dwyer's patient load includes octogenarians who remain haunted by World War II…driven by the kinds of memories that become waking nightmares: mind movies, constantly replayed, of carnage and chaos, of killing strangers and watching buddies die, of making mistakes that cost the lives of civilians or comrades. They will come in angry. A large number will be divorced and alcoholic, drug addicted and paranoid. Some will be suicidal. Most will be lonely, whether surrounded by family or not…'These guys are going to have a hard time,' he said of the troops in Iraq. 'All combat veterans do.'”

On an all news TV channel, someone just said, “The President, if he has a good war, will get everything he wants.” The perversity of this situation is that, in the face of the Bush plan for world domination, a not-so-good war could be our salvation.

From: David Edwards [alerts@medialens.org]

Thanks for the kind words. You're quite right, research has been done in the States which shows that people tend to be more violent to the extent that authority in local states sanctions violence. There's no question that war brutalises everyone – it shows people that violence is the most powerful weapon we've got; which is completely false, but it is made to seem true.