Iraq Roundup
James Robbins on why the current uptick in violence in Iraq is nothing like the Tet offensive, despite what Thomas Friedman says (and President Bush agrees might be a possibility).Cliff May on how the War on Terror is highly ambiguous - partially due to the nature of the fight and partially due to the nature of its press coverage.
One reason these questions can be elided is that in Iraq, the media have adopted the strange practice of not naming the perpetrators of killings — unless the perpetrators might happen to be Americans. As the scholar Michael Rubin has pointed out, the use of the passive voice in the media has become routine. For example, a recent McClatchy story read: “Nearly 2,700 Iraqi civilians were killed in the city in September.”
“Well, who killed them?” Rubin asks. “Baathist insurgents or Iranian-backed militias? If the public read that Iranian-backed militias killed nearly 2700 civilians, we might be less willing to reward their murderers.”
Another example, this one from the New York Times: “Most of the 500 municipal workers who have been killed here since 2005 have been trash collectors.” Rubin notes: “Again, someone did the killing. Why hide it? It's important to know what we are up against.”Not identifying the killers makes it hard for people to direct outrage against them — and easy to direct it against Americans. Has there ever before been a war in which journalists have given such a gift to their country's enemies?
posted by JM @ 4:36 PM
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