[R-G] Spinning Media Gears for a Faraway War

[Nicholas Morcinek]

SPINNING MEDIA GEARS FOR A FARAWAY WAR

By Norman Solomon     /     Creators Syndicate


     BAGHDAD -- From the 12th floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel, the
view is much like the panorama of any large metropolis. Along wide
streets, cars are in constant motion. The cityscape is filled with
tall buildings and residential neighborhoods. Nothing seems out of
the ordinary -- except that if all goes according to plan, my tax
dollars will help to turn much of this city into hell.

     As autumn began, a prominent New York Times article cited
"senior administration officials" eager to sketch out the plan:
"Officials said that any attack would begin with a lengthy air
campaign led by B-2 bombers armed with 2,000-pound satellite-guided
bombs to knock out Iraqi command and control headquarters and air
defenses."

     That kind of flat language makes for comfy reading. We don't
need to be disturbed about the specter of war in a faraway place.
But what if the place is not far away?

     Looking out at Baghdad's skyline, I think about the terror
likely to descend on this city. For some people underneath the
missiles, their last moments will resemble what happened at the
World Trade Center a little more than a year ago.

     Quite appropriately, the media response to 9-11 included
horror, abhorrence and 100 percent condemnation. The power to
destroy and kill did not in the least make it right.

     But now, day by day, the power to destroy and kill becomes
more self-justifying as reporters and pundits acclimate to the
assumptions of official Washington.

     This has happened before. When war appears on the horizon, and
especially after it begins, a heightened affliction seizes most
news outlets. The media spectacle becomes steady regurgitation of
what's being fed from on high. And right now, the nation's media
diet is stuffed with intensifying righteousness.

     War gets attention. But already, with sanctions, the U.S.
government has led a more insidious assault on Iraqi people for
more than a decade. How do we grasp 5,000 children a month dying as
a result? The grim statistics, even when reported and attributed to
such sources as U.N. agencies, haven't made much noise in the media
echo chamber.

     On a Saturday morning in September 2002, at the Al-Mansour
Pediatric Hospital in Baghdad, mothers sat as usual on bare
mattresses next to children languishing with leukemia and cancer.
The youngsters are not getting adequate chemotherapy; the U.S.-led
embargo continues to block some crucial medications.

     Walking through the cancer ward, I remembered the response
from then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when, during a "60
Minutes" interview that aired on May 12, 1996, CBS correspondent
Lesley Stahl asked: "We have heard that a half a million children
have died. ... Is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think
this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is
worth it."

     Easy to say, or accept, when others do the suffering and
dying.

     Consequences of the sanctions have been ongoing. The State
Department continues to veto some crucial shipments of basic
medical supplies to Iraq, including such items as special
centrifuges for blood separation, plasma freezers and fusion pumps.
After three visits to southern Iraq, most recently in September, an
Austrian physician named Eva-Maria Hobiger says in heartfelt
imperfect English: "By the support of these machines, the life of
many sick children can be saved. It has to be called a crime when
innocent and suffering children are the target of policy."

     Now, as with years of sanctions, top officials in
Washington -- making a "very hard choice" for all-out war --
evidently figure "the price is worth it." Geopolitical talk and
strategic analyses dominate media coverage, while moral dimensions
get short shrift.

     I doubt that an American would find it easy to look the
mothers and patients in the eyes at the Al-Mansour Pediatric
Hospital. And I wonder what their lives will be like if, as
expected, the missiles begin to explode in Baghdad. I don't want to
think about that. It's much easier to stick with comfortable
newspeak about "a lengthy air campaign led by B-2 bombers armed
with 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs."

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Norman Solomon's syndicated column -- archived at
www.fair.org/media-beat/ -- appears weekly in the San Francisco
Examiner and other newspapers.