Iraq – Don't Gel Too Soon

BLOGHER COMES OF AGE WITH ITS OWN INTERVIEW WITH BARACK OBAMA

As you know, I am a very loyal supporter of BlogHer and a great admirer of its three founders, who have built a community of respect and honesty, humor and warmth that is a treasure to many of my sister bloggers and to me. At last year’s BlogHer conference much was made of the absence of presidential candidates, even though they’d all been invited AND even though we were in Chicago, where Yearly Kos (now called Netroots Nation) was happening in literally one or two days, and all the Democrats came there. It was if the "little ladies" were just not worth the trouble.

So it’s very exciting to see Barack Obama sit down with BlogHer’s Erin Kotecki Vest and answer questions submitted by the BlogHer community. No headlines, but a broad survey of topics with sound, thoughtful and well-expressed responses. This is a landmark moment and I’m so proud to be a BlogHer and a small part of its universe. Watch it for yourself.

SELLING THE PENTAGON, SELLING THE WAR IN IRAQ, SELLING THEIR HONOR

In 1971, when I worked at CBS News in Washington, the network
aired a documentary called The Selling of the Pentagon. The Museum of Broadcasting website says: "The
aim of this film, produced by Peter Davis, was to examine the increasing
utilization and cost to the taxpayers of public relations activities by the
military-industrial complex in order to shape public opinion in favor of the
military." The Congress tried to cite CBS for contempt – it was
a real drama. In his book The Place to Be, my mentor
Roger Mudd tells the whole story better than I ever could – he was the
correspondent on the award-winning program. Despite all that happened,
there was real satisfaction in knowing that the film had made a difference –
that our defense dollars would go to protect and support our soldiers, not a
military PR campaign.

Ah, but like all good news, it was short-lived. Maybe not too short – we
made it to 2008 — but the whole thing is back – and because it’s about Iraq
and Guantanamo this time, not just some recruiting and appropriations
manipulation, it’s far more malignant.

Sunday, the New York Times reported on the courtship of
those military "experts" who show up on the TODAY SHOW and NIGHTLINE
and CNN to tell us the facts behind our country’s military initiatives.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar
fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as
“military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative
and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11
world.

Hidden behind that appearance of
objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those
analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the
administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has
found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit
ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic:
Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war
policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever
disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But
collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts
represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives,
board members or consultants.

Of course, this one is a little different – these
guys are consultants to the media, and while the Pentagon enables their
"expertise" and offers the heft of the tours of Guantanamo and classified briefings, their money comes from their lucrative consultancies with military vendors, not from the Pentagon directly. But think about it. If we really
were manipulated; if the arguments for the Iraq war were as flawed as we now believe, then these consultants — follow the bread crumbs — are at least partly responsible for the attitudes that permitted the war to take place and discouraged many of those who might have stopped it
I don’t know about you, but when I hear stories
about Abu Ghraib and the things that
were done in our names, and think of how little I’ve done to instigate change,
resting instead on the actions of my youth. I think about all the Germans who
said the "didn’t know" what was going on. I don’t mean that a
few soldiers, none of whose leaders has been prosecuted and who are taking the
rap for things that went way beyond them — are the equivalent of Nazi
Germany. That would be stupid and facile. What I am saying is that
the horrible things that emerged from this war are on all our heads – and that
these guys whose testimony to us via countless talking head interviews
legitimized what was going on, enabled it all.

The reason I started with The Selling of the
Pentagon is that it’s such a lesson. Whatever change we help to
implement won’t last – Abolitionist Wendell Phillips was
right when he said that "eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty." In 1971 the documentary outraged Americans who
demanded change. Today we still recall the events at Abu Ghraib the same
way – with a deep and painful sense of outrage. Once again, on our watch
this time, bad things have been done in our names.
Once again, dissemblers reign. The consequences of their betrayal,
whether the story is true or not, are tragically visible. Once again —
our hearts are broken. Once again – we must share the blame for what
happened there.

Once again, whatever is left of our better angels
looks warily about, frightened, silenced, sad and ashamed.

FIVE YEARS IN IRAQ – A BIRTHDAY – AND MEMORIES OF VIETNAM

The amazing Queen of Spain, Erin Kotckei Vest, wrote yesterday about her son’s 5th birthday and the war in Iraq, realizing that our country has been at war for his entire life. It’s a moving and troubling meditation on the length and malignancy of this war. Take a look.

It was strange to read — someplace between echo and deja vu. My older son was born the night Cambodia fell; I went back to work at CBS News the night Saigon fell (foreign desk – overnight) and his younger brother was born 2 days after the Iran hostages were taken. We always knew how many days old he was because Walter Cronkite ended every newscast with "that’s the way it is, the xyz day American hostages have been held in Iran."

I remember nursing Josh during the horrible last days of the Vietnam war, when they were trying to get orphans out of the country. One evening at the very beginning of the effort, 78 kids died when their plane crashed. To this day I remember sitting in a chair, feeding this weeks-old child, watching the broken bodies of some else’s children flung around the crash site, and just dissolving.

I don’t know if it helps or hurts that this is not the first time; although in so many ways it is the worst. As horrible as the country was during Vietnam, we had our collective rage. As this picture shows, we also had the innocence that placed carnations
in the barrels of National Guard guns as they kept us at bay. And we had each other; the opposition to the war, while fractious and divided, essentially understood its unity and its shared issues. Because we’d had teach-ins and gone home and argued with our parents and had to face down counter-demonstrators at marches we had become somewhat tribal – which was bad in some ways but held us together.

The current administration, in my mind, has made it so much more painful to try to bring change; the worst part being that they should have learned enough from Vietnam not to do it this way!!! Not original but as I read Erin’s heartfelt post, about her son and about all those in her family serving or having served in Iraq I got angry all over again. Last time it was arrogance on the part of people like Robert McNamara, but they did not have a Vietnam to look back on and strive to avoid. They had the model of World War II, the post-war failures that led to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe for so long, the Marshall Plan and all the other "good wars" and American generosity that informed the very bad decisions they made. These guys today have had all Vietnam to instruct them and still did this to us.

That’s why this election is so important. If we had had decent leadership five years ago we might be funding decent learning disabilities programs and well-baby clinics and alternative energy research and, if necessary, wars we DO need to fight instead of burdened by a debt that could very well still be with us when Erin’s birthday boy is in college.

HOW WE LOOK TO THE ARAB WORLD: CONTROL ROOM AND AL JAZEERA

OK so I’m three years late. Thursday morning I watched CONTROL ROOM, the 2004 documentary about the Al Jazeera news network. Only it’s not really about Al Jazeera, it’s about perceptions of the United States. About the early days of the Iraq war and how they looked through the eyes of the most watched network in the Arab world. And it’s pretty disturbing. As the New York Times said "Whatever your opinions about the war, the conduct of the journalists
who covered it and the role of Al Jazeera in that coverage, you are
likely to emerge from ”Control Room” touched, exhilarated and a
little off-balance, with your certainties scrambled and your
assumptions shaken."

Precisely. Many Al Jazeera staffers speak English. They’re articulate and thoughtful — and angry. Think about it this way: remember how it felt to see American soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu or to follow the captivity of Jessica Lynch and her fellow war prisoners? Listening to interviews with reporters and translators from Al Jazeera is like listening to American journalists who had to film that horrible day; they are deeply in pain, angry and scornful of the declared mission.

Dominant within the film are likeable American spokespeople who just don’t have the words or perceptions to get past that rage. Nobody really looks like a villain – just naive. One in particular:
Lt. Josh Rushing, a young Texas Marine serving as a liaison officer. He became a "star" in reviews of the film, was then forbidden by the service to speak about the war, and left the Marine Corps to work for — Al Jazeera English. You can see the relationships growing, and the struggle of this basically decent young man to represent his country and be truthful and honorable.

The toughest part of the film for me, after all my years as a journalist, was the death of one of the Al Jazeera journalists hit by an American rocket. The tears in the eyes of the staff and crew brought back memories of lost reporters during Vietnam, and a camera crew lost in a helicopter crash when I worked at CBS. We’d met the dead journalist earlier, joking about how hard it would be to work in a flak jacket and helmet. There was sadness for him, and an awareness that events like this would only raise the level of hostility within much of the network’s staff.

As I watched, charmed and provoked by the comments of what essentially felt like my peers and colleagues, yet with a perspective I did not share, I was as unsettled as that Times review promised. These people speak to the entire Arab world and there are some real haters there and yes they run the statements of Bin Laden and more, but there are issues past that. In addition to their power and reach, many share great portions of our values and ideas. One wants to come to the US and move his kids from "the Arab nightmare" to "the American Dream." Another rages at the looting in the streets of Baghdad – predicting that zealots will push all moderates out – that "people like me" will have no place in the Arab world.

In other words, beyond the basic fact that Al Jazeera broadcasts much that is contrary to the best interests of our country and probably to my well-being as Jewish person, there lies another set of facts. All that we feel and shout to one another in newsrooms and control rooms here in the US, our assumptions and common ground – there’s another huge universe out there that we need to understand – who don’t automatically share our values – at least not all of them. And if we don’t learn how to deal with them, their assumptions and anger and dreams, we face a journey that will make our days in Iraq seem simple indeed. Here’s a preview:

ANTI-TERRORISM ADS IN MIDDLE EAST

There is a new anti-terrorism campaign running on TV networks across the Middle East. I have no idea if its reach is worthwhile but it is encouraging so, assuming that most of you don’t get all the newsletters and links that I receive, I’m telling you about it here. The first ad seems remarkably understated and the second quite melodramatic but it’s interesting that they exist. I do tend to be a bit of a Pollyanna about such things so include here some of what AP has said about the campaign – but watch a sample on the link below before you read on.

[Click here to view]

According to AP: “The U.S. government refuses to say clearly whether it’s involved in the commercial, which began airing this summer on Al-Arabiya, Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. and several Iraqi channels at a time when violence was raging in Baghdad and between Hezbollah and Israel. . . .A Los Angeles warehouse district filled with 200 cast members stood in for the market during the ad’s filming earlier this year, according to a statement by California-based 900 Frames, which helped produce the commercial. During the filming, 900 Frames said that the group behind it, the Future Iraq Assembly, wanted to remain anonymous. The group, which also is behind a series other of Iraq-specific ads, describes itself as an independent, non-governmental organization, comprised of a number of scholars, businesspersons, and activists. The Assembly’s site gave an e-mail address but did not respond.

If anyone is in a position to know more about this or to live in that part of the world and have perspective to offer, I hope you will do so. The news has been so terrible and the prospects of our position in that part of the world so dreadful that it is encouraging to see people stepping up to take responsibility for trying to put the fire out -at least for those in Iraq. What do you think? I’m especially interested in what my friend Lori at Sand Gets in My Eyes, living in Saudi Arabia, thinks and what ad maven Liz at Mom-101 has to say — and in YOUR ideas.

TOO SAD, TOO TRUE

As usual, Ms. Sweetney is onto whatever a person should be onto in the morning. This is a remarkable editorial — maybe a it too long but worth watching. I started to write a long essay to go with it and decided I sounded like a parody, SO I’m not going to say any more. Except that I totally would have missed it without Tracey – I NEVER watch that show. Maybe I should start…..