← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Zoroaster
Thread ID: 4670 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2003-01-29
2003-01-29 10:46 | User Profile
[url=http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=372767]http://argument.independent.co.uk/commenta...sp?story=372767[/url]
Focus: Part one The human cost - 'Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?' By Robert Fisk 26 January 2003
On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind.
"Just for the record,'' the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see ââ¬â the filth and obscenity of corpses ââ¬â cannot be shown. First because it is not "appropriate" to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war.
That of course was in 1991. The "highway of death", they called it ââ¬â there was actually a parallel and much worse "highway of death" 10 miles to the east, courtesy of the US Air Force and the RAF, but no one turned up to film it ââ¬â and the only true picture of the horrors we saw was the photograph of the shrivelled, carbonised Iraqi soldier in his truck. This was an iconic illustration of a kind because it did represent what we had seen, when it was eventually published.
For Iraqi casualties to appear on television during that Gulf War ââ¬â there was another one between 1980 and 1988, and a third is in the offing ââ¬â it was necessary for them to have died with care, to have fallen romantically on their backs, one hand over a ruined face. Like those First World War paintings of the British dead on the Somme, Iraqis had to die benignly and without obvious wounds, without any kind of squalor, without a trace of sh*t or mucus or congealed blood, if they wanted to make it on to the morning news programmes.
I rage at this contrivance. At Qaa in 1996, when the Israelis had shelled Lebanese refugees at the UN compound for 17 minutes, killing 106 civilians, more than half of them children, I came across a young woman holding in her arms a middle-aged man. He was dead. "My father, my father," she kept crying, cradling his face. One of his arms and one of his legs was missing ââ¬â the Israelis used proximity shells which cause amputation wounds ââ¬â but when that scene reached television screens in Europe and America, the camera was close up on the girl and the dead man's face. The amputations were not to be seen. The cause of death had been erased in the interests of good taste. It was as if the old man had died of tiredness, just turned his head upon his daughter's shoulder to die in peace.
Today, when I listen to the threats of George Bush against Iraq and the shrill moralistic warnings of Tony Blair, I wonder what they know of this terrible reality. Does George, who declined to serve his county in Vietnam, have any idea what these corpses smell like? Does Tony have the slightest conception of what the flies are like, the big bluebottles that feed on the dead of the Middle East, and then come to settle on our faces and our notepads?
Soldiers know. I remember one British officer asking to use the BBC's satellite phone just after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. He was talking to his family in England and I watched him carefully. "I have seen some terrible things," he said. And then he broke down, weeping and shaking and holding the phone dangling in his hand over the transmission set. Did his family have the slightest idea what he was talking about? They would not have understood by watching television.
Thus can we face the prospect of war. Our glorious, patriotic population ââ¬â albeit only about 20 per cent in support of this particular Iraqi folly ââ¬â has been protected from the realities of violent death. But I am much struck by the number of letters in my postbag from veterans of the Second World War, men and women, all against this new Iraqi war, with an inalienable memory of torn limbs and suffering.
I remember once a wounded man in Iran, a piece of steel in his forehead, howling like an animal ââ¬â which is, of course, what we all are ââ¬â before he died; and the Palestinian boy who simply collapsed in front of me when an Israeli soldier shot him dead, quite deliberately, coldly, murderously, for throwing a stone; and the Israeli with a chair leg sticking out of her stomach outside the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem after a Palestinian bomber had decided to execute the families inside; and the heaps of Iraqi dead at the Battle of Dezful in the Iran-Iraq war ââ¬â the stench of their bodies wafted through our helicopter until the mullahs aboard were sickened; and the young man showing me the thick black trail of his daughter's blood outside Algiers where armed "Islamists" had cut her throat.
But George Bush and Tony Blair and Dick Cheney and Jack Straw and all the other little warriors who are bamboozling us into war will not have to think of these vile images. For them it's about surgical strikes, collateral damage and all the other examples of war's linguistic mendacity. We are going to have a just war; we are going to liberate the people of Iraq ââ¬â some of whom we will obviously kill ââ¬â and we are going to give them democracy and protect their oil wealth and stage war crimes trials and we are going to be ever so moral, and we are going to watch our defence "experts" on TV with their bloodless sandpits and their awesome knowledge of weapons which rip off heads.
Come to think of it, I recall the head of an Albanian refugee, chopped neatly off when the Americans, ever so accidentally, bombed a refugee convoy in Kosovo in 1999 which they thought was a Serb military unit. His head lay in the long grass, bearded, eyes open, severed as if by a Tudor executioner. Months later, I learned his name and talked to the girl who was hit by the severed head during the US air strike and who laid the head reverently in the grass where I found it. Nato, of course, did not apologise to the family. Nor to the girl. No one says sorry after war. No one acknowledges the truth of it. No one shows you what we see. Which is how our leaders and our betters persuade us ââ¬â still ââ¬â to go to war. 29 January 2003 04:35
2003-01-29 16:58 | User Profile
There are excellent reasons not to go to war against Iraq - reasons that have, for the record, convinced me - but "corpses smell," "weapons kill and mutilate," and "carrion flies are nasty" are NOT among them. The notion that if that the ugliness of war were shown on TV, everyone would be a pacifist, is one near and dear to the hearts of a certain kind of leftist. And it's as fatuous notion as you're likely to find. Frank depictions of dismemberment and the feasting of carrion animals are as old as the Stele of Vultures and the Iliad, and have continued through the Bayeux Tapestry, Shakespeare and Saving Private Ryan. They have not - nor were they intended to - turn anyone into a pacifist. I repeat, there are compelling rational reasons to oppose the war with Iraq. The hysterical hand-wringing and bedwetting of Fisk add nothing to the debate. Keep in mind that this is the man whose sympathies for the Afghan refugees who stoned him have given our pundits a new, contemptuous verb: "to fisk."
2003-01-29 17:20 | User Profile
I disagree.
Gulf War I - the coverage of it - was a farce. It was Big Media's refusal to even chafe at its restraints; kicking April Glaspie under the rug, declining to mention the 100,000 Iraqi casualties we'd inflicted from a safe remove to instead gnaw on their fingertips worrying if the 'Scud Stud' would be at risk covering the war from an Saudi rooftop, televising the actual opening salvos like a fcking Super Bowl halftime show - I actually heard Tom Brokaw oohing at ahh*ing at the pretty colors! - was the beginning of my own personal awakening...at least insofar at who was running my country now.
We'd just gone to war against an enemy of Israel for either vanity purposes, or to defend a country so insignificant it hasn't warranted mention in world news for any reason before or since the war.....and our fearless investigative media smiled, offered an insincere thumbs-up, and said nothing that wasn't in the script provided to them before the first shot was even fired. No one suggested Israel had a thing to do with it other than being hated for just living, the poor dears.
PS: Zionist Jews the world over despise Robert Fisk, and they want you to as well. By encouraging the rest of us to snicker at him, you're carrying water for John Podhoretz and David Horowitz. I'll support Fisk, warts and all.
2003-01-29 17:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Jan 29 2003, 11:20 ** I disagree.
Gulf War I - the coverage of it - was a farce. **
For once, I agree with IR. The media coverage overseas, and in relation to military operations, has been a farce, nothing less than a wanton display of shameless, truckling sycophancy.
Fisk's report is useful in that a lot of the war-whooping is based on liberating the Iraqi people. Well, this is what liberation involves: killing, maiming, widowing, and orphaning, not to mention the destruction of property, services and the environment.
Fisk has his flaws (all reporters do), but he at least goes to ground and gets the facts. That's more than you can say for practically every American reporter nowadays.
Best, P
2003-01-29 17:34 | User Profile
**PS: Zionist Jews the world over despise Robert Fisk, and they want you to as well. By encouraging the rest of us to snicker at him, you're carrying water for John Podhoretz and David Horowitz. I'll support Fisk, warts and all. **
So I oughtn't comment on Fisk's bleating Third Worldism because Zionists don't like him either? Tell me, do you carefully pore over Neocon writings in order to find out what not to think? If so, you are letting them define your politics are surely as any house goy in National Review.
2003-01-29 17:39 | User Profile
Originally posted by Hereward@Jan 29 2003, 12:58 ** The hysterical hand-wringing and bedwetting of Fisk add nothing to the debate. **
My father still has deep regrets over the death and destruction he helped deliver from his B-17 sixty years ago. He's convinced that this war was justified and necessary; and while I refuse to argue this point with him I honor both his service and his regrets. Fisk is outraged by the human costs and the injustice; this is to be admired in my book.
Keep in mind that this is the man whose sympathies for the Afghan refugees who stoned him have given our pundits a new, contemptuous verb:ÃÂ "to fisk."
Keep in mind who these pundits are and what they support, as mentioned by Il Ragno.
2003-01-29 18:09 | User Profile
....do you carefully pore over Neocon writings in order to find out what not to think? If so, you are letting them define your politics are surely as any house goy in National Review.
I make up my mind on a case-by-case basis without consulting an ideological playbook. If that means I'm inconsistent, then I'm inconsistent. But I'll stick to the script only if and when I agree with the script.
2003-01-29 18:37 | User Profile
A good policy, il ragno, and one I agree with. But your accusation that by mocking Fisk I'm "carrying water" for the Zionists is pretty damned offensive. I remember leafing through Dr. Suess Goes to War, a compilation of his cartoons from the WWII era. He drew not one but several cartoons stating that opposing America's involvement in the war put you on the side of Hitler and Mussolini. Your reasoning is not far different. And weisbrot: my father served in WWII (Pacific Theater) and Korea. He feels that after WWII we should have taken Patton's advice, rearmed the Germans, and kept driving East. David Hackworth, the most heavily decorated combat vet living, who came to oppose Vietnam while he was still fighting it, supported Gulf War I. On the other hand, he opposed our activities against the Serbs in the Balkans. The point is that people who not only know what war really looks like on TV, but those who have seen it and participated in it personally, do not automatically - or even usually - become the sort who n"ever again agree to support a war." Fisk's assertion that to know war is to be against all war is not only fatuous, but demonstrably false. From my readings of his other journalism - my readings, not what the Zionists supposedly instruct me to see in them - Fisk's worldview is characterized by similar fatuity and wrong-headedness.
2003-01-29 18:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by Hereward@Jan 29 2003, 14:37 **And weisbrot: my father served in WWII (Pacific Theater) and Korea. He feels that after WWII we should have taken Patton's advice, rearmed the Germans, and kept driving East. **
Your father was right, as it turned out. My father shares his view, as do I. My thoughts are also that we should have stayed out altogether, or at least that we chose the wrong allies in the case of Russia and possibly the wrong enemy in the case of Germany.
The point is that people who not only know what war really looks like on TV, but those who have seen it and participated in it personally, do not automatically - or even usually - become the sort who n"ever again agree to support a war." Fisk's assertion that to know war is to be against all war is not only fatuous, but demonstrably false. From my readings of his other journalism - my readings, not what the Zionists supposedly instruct me to see in them - Fisk's worldview is characterized by similar fatuity and wrong-headedness.
I don't think Fisk is advocating that objective journalism would or could change the mind of professional soldiers. He probably couldn't change the mind of the neoconservative pundits, driven as they are by ethnic rivalry. Fisk is writing to the common man, just as are those pundits; and he has much more exposure to the effects of war than any of these pundits (and most of our current armed forces, for that matter). I have some disagreements with Fisk that might fall under the topic of "worldview", but to this point I've not seen any braver or more clear-headed exposures of the treatment of the Palestinians or the motivations for the coming war in Iraq.
Kathy Kelly will be in the news over the coming weeks, I'm sure. You'll get a real bang raging at her anti-war activities. Suit up.
2003-01-29 20:10 | User Profile
Fisk serves the same function as Chomsky or Cynthia McKinney, as a thorn in the side of organized Zionism. As such, I won't jeer him. I don't see how I can afford to.
Moreover, on this particular topic he happens to be right. I'm no Christian but I can still recognize - and grieve over - man's inhumanity to man. Just because Western Man has pissed away his birthright and no longer has dominion over his own lands is hardly due to any reticence over waging war. One could make the case our downfall has been watered & fertilized by waging one or two wars too many, particularly on behalf of an enemy too clever to have ever fired an overt shot at us.
But if Western Civilization, at the end of the day, boils down to chuckling at some sobbing Third World wretch holding the mangled remains of her father, then include me out. Spitting on somebody else's suffering is not why I'm here.
2003-01-29 21:15 | User Profile
Noam Chomsky? Malicious Jewish intellectual straight from the pages of Culture of Critique? You have apparently let Chomsky's dislike of Israel blind you to his rather more intense hatred of Anglo-Saxon America. And if you read his stuff or listen to him, this hatred is not based just America's activities since WWII, but for its whole history, root and branch: from the Indians to the slaves to the Mexicans (though really, I suspect, mostly for the unforgivable insult of obliging Ma and Pa Chomsky to become wage-slaves; that's too good for anyone names Chomsky, or anyone with a name like Chomsky) . I would go so far to say that he attacks Israel mostly because it's America's client. If it remained what it had began as - a Soviet client - he would find very harsh things to say about the PLO.
2003-01-29 21:36 | User Profile
Again, you misunderstand. They are temporarily useful.
It's like the WSJ says about Mexicans: they're doing the dirty work whites can't, or won't.
When the Jews decided Germany had to be destroyed, they encouraged coalition efforts to achieve the goal. They could not have attained the desired result without one.
If you imagine it's going to be any different for us, you're wrong. All the lusty Viking battle hyms on Earth aren't going to change that, no matter how loud you sing them.
2003-01-29 21:54 | User Profile
OK, that makes more sense; but I nevertheless have very grave misgivings about "using" any member of the most expert group of "users" in history. It's like moderate socialists, trade unionists, etc. making common cause with the (largely Jewish) Communists back in the '30s: they may have composed a minority of the "movement," but they had a way of hijacking the whole enterprise to further Uncle Joe's goals.