There was a very good, but also very disturbing doco on sbs tonight, essentially following the journey of a British reporter through the middle east seeking some answers to what influence warporn propaganda videos made by Jihadists had. Not very much, he found, with many young people in countries like Syria using the net more for cyberdating than consuming the hateful snuff films of Al Qaeda and a host of other Jihadist sects and groups. There was much to reflect on, not least the parallel that the production values and style of the warporn mirrors some of the triumphalist warporn that first started showing on CNN in Gulf War I, and the ubiquity of the use of the technological standards of the intertube generation, Microsoft software and YouTube, for intentions far removed from the utopian dreams of those for whom “information wants to be free”. But the show concluded that it was more the constants of death and destruction on the satellite tv stations rather than the efforts of Jihadists which reinforce the implication of war and everyday life and culture in the middle east. There again there were mirror effects – people ranting and raving at each other on Al-Jazeera in a format straight out of Fox News. Perhaps most confronting were the images of war and children shown on a Syrian satellite tv’s kids program. It’s as if Play School were reporting from the front. But, then, the death of children is a reality in places like Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. One other theme was the diversity of opinion that the interviewees had. All within a particular frame, but then, what else would you expect?
In contrast stands the continued lack of diversity of opinion on the debate over Iraq in the West. It’s too often taken as a given, in public debate, or what passes for it, in this country, that an American withdrawal would be disastrous for Iraqis. The case that it may not be is put well by Harvard academic and Pulitzer Prize winner, Samantha Power, in the LA Times. Barack Obama’s plan is looking a lot more thoughtful than first met the eye, or at least as distorted through Howardian eyes.
Many of those who say U.S. troops should stay in Iraq to prevent genocide are the same people who for political reasons refuse to acknowledge the gravity of the calamity unfolding on our watch. The same people who modeled a war on best-case scenarios are now resisting ending a war by invoking worst-case scenarios. But after years of using the alleged needs of the Iraqi people to justify U.S. political postures, it is long past time to use the leverage we still have to actually advance Iraqi welfare.
Of more concern is the tortureporn contained in the TV show ’24′. Many of the invading troops in Iraq are fans of this show, and several of the torture techniques used on the show turned up at Abu Ghraib, causing a US general to complain to the producer of the show about its influence on US troops.
Indeed it was a great (and bloody hard to watch) documentary. Combined with Insight’s look at Iraq tonight (also on SBS, advertisements and all), I don’t know what to think, except that the reality of the consequences of the invasion of Iraq are equal to or worse than any of the pre-war warnings given by those against the US military strike.
As for the continuance of the US occupation, I cannot decide. On the one hand, if the Americans stay, they force the armed groups to keep their heads low and thus limit the amount of bloodshed to the merely unbearable. On the other hand, the US occupation fuels the continuing instability and Iraq’s inability to reach the end game.
Ideally a non-partisan UN or regional Arab force would take the place of US troops and a domestic political process could be shepherded through. But it’s not going to happen. For one thing, the US has zero intention of leaving. For two things, the UN are not militarily capable of such a tall order.
(How do the British produce all these documentary makers? Who funds them. Who trains them?)
I didn’t know that, silkworm, not having watched the show.
I’ve just posted this link on another thread, but Glenn Greenwald has a great post on “the cult of contrived right wing masculinity” in America which contributes so much to the celebration of war:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/06/cult/index.html?source=rss
I caught a couple of episodes a while back, at the insistence of a major fan, and was surprised at the level of realistic machismo torture that the show seemed to pivot around.
I’m yet to be convinced that 24 isn’t some of US govt propaganda device aimed to keep the populace inert and rather much alarmed.
I ain’t seen 24, but if it’s gruesome torture and hard core violence the viewer wants, then the doco Kim posts about here would trump anything else tonight. But the viewer doesn’t want violence without happy vengeance, I suppose.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5705
WBB – the prob is not that 24 is gruesome per se, its that the show makes torture ‘excitingly utilitarian’ as silkworms quote above, seems to confirm.
Speaking of getting nasty to defend ourselves against nastiness, here’s an intriguing and counterintutitive take on taking on terrorism.
If I was a general in the US Army, I might try to absolve myself of responsibility for the actions of a small number of those in my command by blaiming television (I’d like to see some references to back this statement up though). Why not, blaiming society, rap music, violent computer games etc. etc. is standard modus operandi for those in civilian life who can’t take personal responsibility or prefer to see their own failures as collective.
wbb, today on the repeat of Late Night Live Phillip Adams did a long interview with Joshua Key, author (as told to Lawrence Hill) of The Deserter’s Tale: Why I Walked Away from the War in Iraq. If what Keys said was anywhere near true, there doesn’t seem much point in the Americans sticking around.
During training they were told constantly that Iraqis were sand niggers, rag heads and terrorists. Afghans were terrorist pieces of shit.
On duty in Iraq in 6 months he did some 200 house raids without finding a single bit of evidence of terrorist activity. They raided at night, 95% of the time simply blew the door away, carted off every male taller than 5ft and ransacked the place, looting whatever took their fancy.
On foot patrols some of the guys learned the Arab for “Show us your tits” and “Show us your pussy” which they then called out to Iraqi women.
That’s the relatively innocuous stuff. The really rough stuff is almost as bad as the SBS doco footage Kim linked to.
It will be said that Keys is making it all up to support his refugee application in Canada, but he sounded pretty genuine to me.
As Adams said, sooner or later you’ll get the movie of the book.
At the end of the piece Nabs linked to it said the war on terror was going quite well because there had been no more incidents on US soil after 9/11. If only the Iraqis could say the same. Ironically it occurred to Keys that many of the homes he raided were “very nice”, nicer than what he grew up in back in Oklahoma. That’s before their saviours arrived, of course.
btw if anyone wants to listen to the audio of the Late Night Live segment it starts at 25:30 into the audio.
Thanks Brian. It’s staggering the way the US army approached the occupation. Rumsfeld certainly went in with the army he had, not the army Wolfowitz must have dreamed about when he first envisioned taming the East.
I think Wolfie was signed up to Rumsfeld’s “twenty-first century army” thing, wbb. He was a student of Albert Wohlstetter’s, who was one of the strategists whose thinking inspired the logic. Though you’re probably right that he’s now got his regrets.
On what Brian was saying, the story on Dateline tonight was interesting. The contrast between the approach of the Aussie troops in Afghanistan and the Yanks was instructive – the former giving gifts, the latter charging in to people’s houses without warning. Also the point that the shift to a US from a British commander risks a return to the tactics which re-emboldened the Taliban and increased their support in the first place.
Well, there might be some contrast between US and non-American troops behaviour, but it would be wrong to think that, just because thee British etc don’t commit as many beatings, rapes and murders as the Yanks, they are somehow a force for good. Crimes committed by troops are understandable in the context of the criminal actions of their political masters. When hopelessly bogged down in Vietnam for instance, troops’ discipline eroded and atrocities were committed.
Which brings me to this idea that somehow a TV show was somehow responsible for giving bad ideas to US torturers! I think that is disingenuous to the CIA, Pentagon and other organisations who have meticulously worked on developing torture techniques for decades. In other words, the general’s rebuke was “that stuff you’re showing on TV is too medieval – these days we’re more sophisticated”.
the idea that the Abu Ghraib incidents are somehow an aberration is perhaps what they want you to think (if only all those thousands of photographs taken by American soldiers were exposed to the world). Other reports and evidence of Occupation troops’ behaviour (British as well as US) shows violence and humiliation is pretty standard policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I wasn’t saying “US bad, British good”, Will, but there is a difference in strategy and tactics which is a fact and deserves analysis.
And there is plenty of that analysis already out there.
It is argued that the Brits learned the hard way, through long periods in Northern Ireland, and their way of doing things influences how Australians do things.
Yes, though, there’s a fair bit of it around pointing out that they didn’t learn the lessons of Northern Ireland the right way too.
One interesting aspect of Kim’s SBS doco was the one place where a commercial market in Jihadist warporn existed.
That was in the street markets of the Shiite parts of Baghdad (and perhaps other Shiite areas of Iraq as well).
Thus, Shiite Baghdadis sustain the one identifiable commercial trade in depictions of Humvees and Bradleys getting greased and Grunts picked off by sniper fire.
This is somewhat ironic, given that war apologists point to the politicians whom these customers voted for as the validation for the COW’s Big Mesopotamian Adventure.