| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Friday, May 02 2003 |
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| The day I came back from Baghdad my daughter asked me what color the U.S. soldiers' uniforms were. I told her tan and green. She asked about the Iraqi uniforms, I said some were black and some were green. "Which team were you going for mommy", she asked. "The U.S.A. of course," I answered.
That a six-year-old would see war like a game in which people take sides is understandable. But how do well-educated, mature, rational adults end up as little more than sideline cheerleaders?
The conversation with my daughter made me realize that many of us in the news media were subtly manipulated into taking up pom-poms during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I cannot imagine that anyone would not want his or her country to win, but war is not an Olympic event or a national championship. War (in this case) was an unfortunate response to the failure of diplomacy-the inability of allies to agree on the terms of a strategic coalition.
It is obvious that three different media wars were being fought: There was the war seen by the Arab world on Al-Jazeera TV and other Middle Eastern media. There was the war watched by the American public-a good segment of it on what in some circles became known colloquially as Al-Jafox TV-and then there was the war followed by the majority of the world in newspapers and outlets such as BBC World Service and Televisa in Mexico.
We expect Al-Jazeera to be one sided. But we live in a democratic system with an independent news media. And yet, questioning the decision makers or giving other points of view has become unpatriotic. Were we in the media fooled into calling a pre-emptive attack on a country without the support of most of the world "a liberation by a coalition of the willing?" Will it still be called liberation if protest against the U.S. escalates, and more civilians are shot expressing their rage at the U.S.? The history of this war has not yet been written.
I have to hand it to the Pentagon; it was a brilliant move to switch the focus of the war from disarming Saddam Hussein, to liberating the Iraqi people. A tyrant vs. American heroes makes a good script. One that's hard to criticize. It was a smart move to increase the terror alert to orange and get people into a "let's get them before they get us" mode, then lowering it to yellow, as if our government took care of a threat. If a terrorist threat ever existed, it still does and not necessarily from Iraq.
It was also brilliant strategy to allow hundreds of journalists to be embedded with the troops and limited to reporting only from their unit, in the name of national security.
In retrospect, I feel fortunate to have been able to cover the war independently from the military, and although I went to Iraq after the worst of the fighting, I was a witness to history in the making. I was there for the devastation left in our wake, while many reporters were going home. For them, the fireworks were over. Nothing else mattered. I was able to see and hear first hand of the brutality of Saddam Hussein as well as the death and destruction caused by the war. I saw how some Iraqis seemed grateful to be rid of Saddam, while others called the U.S. presence an occupation. I saw overcrowded hospitals with civilian casualties and children with severe wounds.
I was also able to see with my own eyes how U.S. smart bombs hit their targets-and also, how they missed and hit residential areas. Just about all ministries and government buildings were destroyed except for the oil ministry, which was intact and guarded by troops. Yet museums were looted of the treasures of civilization.
When the time comes to look back at the events surrounding the military operations in Iraq, we will realize that the U.S. media became another casualty of war. American news operations, particularly television, seem to have forgotten that our duty is to be objective and independent, to report the facts, question decision makers, and resist censorship. The words fair and balanced should be more than an empty promotional slogan. We should do more than soft-pitch the effects of war, or devastation caused by a lack of diplomatic solutions. Patriotism must allow intelligence about the world outside our borders, it must also allow our liberties inside them, and it must even allow for feelings of ambivalence. |
