Are We Going to Win This War on Terrorism or Not?

(source of graphic)

Reader Benoit Balz points out, in the Q Tips below, the Pentagon friendly propaganda put out on Sunday morning by that Tea Party-animal himself, Jeff Brady. Brady is covering the recent deaths of 8 soldiers in Afghanistan and its impact at Ft. Carson in Colorado. He reports:

"A few days earlier at a press conference, Major Daniel Chandler said the affected unit over in Afghanistan is keeping its spirits up. He said surviving soldiers know their dead colleagues helped to win that particular battle. [Chandler] 'There were a lot of heroes on that day and they're really rallying around themselves and morale in the 4th brigade combat team is high and it's getting stronger.'"

Later in the story Brady talks to a college student whose father was in the army. Brady tells us, "She chose to focus on the sacrifice the soldiers made. [Student] 'I'm more thankful than anything...I'm thankful that somebody at least went over there and did it.'

Brady raps things up by talking to a priest in the area - the rightwing Father Carmody - who tells Brady, "People around here want to make sure that they didn't die in vain, and what I mean by that is, 'Are we going to win this war on terrorism or not?'"

I realize that it must be difficult for any news organization to cover the issue of US military personnel killed in combat. There is the tragedy of young people being violently killed and there are considerations to make for the feelings of the families and friends of those who have died. But could NPR ever - even just once - not use the trite and empty rhetoric of heroics, sacrifice and gratitude to talk about the war dead? Has NPR ever interviewed surviving family members who denounce the leaders and policies that have squandered the lives of their loved ones? When was the last time you ever heard members of Gold Star Families for Peace or Gold Star Families Speak Out interviewed on NPR? Have you ever heard on NPR from men or women who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan and then have become resisters of conscience?

It is worth reading the comments under the story at the NPR site. This one really nails it:

"WE SHOULD NEVER 'QUIETLY MORN' THE SNUFFED OUT LIVES OF EIGHT YOUNG AMERICAN SONS, BROTHERS, FATHERS - WE SHOULD SHOUT OUT OUR RAGE AND FRUSTRATION WITH A WAR WE CAN'T WIN AND A PAST PRESIDENT WE CAN'T INDICT - GET OUT NOW"

Unfortunately, hoping for such an angle from Jeff Brady (or NPR) is pretty hopeless; when covering an antiwar protest of over a thousand people, he gave all the coverage to a tiny contingent of pro-war counter demonstrators.

Tampering with a Crime Scene

Sometimes there's silence when war crimes are being covered up - and sometimes there's just plain old disinformation. This morning Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, reporting on Bush's trip to Iraq opts for the latter:

"In many ways the Iraq War defined Mr. Bush's presidency....more than 4200 US service members have died, not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis..."

Imagine the firestorm of criticism that would result if NPR reported that "hundreds of US service members have died." And imagine how galling it would be if NPR continued to do this not once but over and over. The outrage would be immediate and well deserved.

And yet, NPR reporters feel completely comfortable reducing the Iraq death toll by a factors of ten. In June of 2007 John Ydstie silently accepted the low figure of 75,000 deaths "on both sides of the Iraq War," and in August of 2007 Robert Siegel used the comforting rhetoric of "tens of thousands of Iraqis" having died in the war. And sometimes it's simply deafening silence or distortion when reality intrudes on the fantasy of Iraq that NPR and the US government is trying to sell. As Media Bloodhound points out, NPR is right in the mainstream on this coverup of the slaughter that the US has wreaked on Iraq - but that doesn't make it any less criminal...

As always, for more on the well researched Iraqi civilian death toll take a look at Just Foreign Policy.

Breakfast of Champions

Today's menu on Morning Edition was remarkably similar to yesterday's menu. There's more patriotic feasting on the war dead and their relatives served up yet again with gobs of syrup. But wait, today's offering had a bit of a twist: a bit of pungent sausage starts things off. Renee Montagne was waiting tables and though it was the same old rotten sausage as before, we got a a real Support for the Troops™ treat!

Montagne: "We begin in Bangor, Maine where American soldiers have stopped as they head overseas...At the terminal in Bangor the outbound soldiers have a last chance to call loved ones. It's also an opportunity for a group of volunteers to show their support for the troops™....Bill Knight and his fellow volunteers have greeted more than 670,000 troops in the years since the Gulf War began. He's a veteran and he remembers soldiers being heckled when they returned from Vietnam; now he says he's there to give soldiers top notch treatment.

If this tasty brunch left you hungry, don't worry; at NPR's Homeland Buffet it's all you can eat, all the time.

Schmaltz and Schlock

It's kind of interesting to look up the meanings of schmaltz ("mawkishness, oversentimentality") and schlock ("of low quality or value"). Then take a listen to NPR's piece this morning on mothers who have met in Section 60 at Arlington Cemetery where war dead of Afghanistan and Iraq are buried. Here's a sample of the report where Ari Shapiro plays it up as reporter-counselor-chaplain-sensitive guy:

Shapiro: "You must all feel like you know each others' kids by now?"

[general positive reaction] One of the women says, "My husband said, 'Isn't it so sad that we never got to know Brian, and we never got to know Justin and Dylan and Eric' and I said but I feel like I know them so well."

[to which Shapiro replies]: "And if it hadn't been for Brian and Justin and Dylan and Eric and Nicholas, you all would never have met each other."

[Group reacts sympathetically, agreeing]

Shapiro concludes: "I mean what a gift they could give to you that you all now have this group these connections...."

Honestly, I hate posting when the NPR vultures settle in on the war dead, because I don't want to offend anyone who has lost a loved one in a war. It's a horrible thing, but this syrupy grief voyeurism and pseudo-counseling is really shameless. Listen to the piece and ask yourself if there even one provocative question? (e.g. "How does it feel when you hear someone like Scott McClellan now confessing that the war was sold on misinformation and was unnecessary?" or "Do you ever think about the families of the one million Iraqis or the tens of thousands of Afghanis killed in this war?") There is not a single challenging question.

It's telling to see what a news organization can do with its resources (e.g. McClatchy painstakingly putting together the big picture of the torture state that the US has become) and to compare it to the fare that NPR offers.