We Wouldn't Discuss American Deaths With Headlines Like "Bride and Boom!"

[unhappycamper]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/wedding-guest-drone-strike-deaths



American media's tasteless coverage of wedding drone strikes in the Arab world.

We Wouldn't Discuss American Deaths With Headlines Like "Bride and Boom!"
—By Tom Engelhardt | Fri Dec. 20, 2013 2:37 PM GMT

The headline–"Bride and Boom!"–was spectacular, if you think killing people in distant lands is a blast and a half. Of course, you have to imagine that smirk line in giant black letters with a monstrous exclamation point covering most of the bottom third of the front page of the Murdoch-owned New York Post. The reference was to a caravan of vehicles on its way to or from a wedding in Yemen that was eviscerated, evidently by a US drone via one of those "surgical" strikes of which Washington is so proud. As one report put it, "Scorched vehicles and body parts were left scattered on the road."

It goes without saying that such a headline could only be applied to assumedly dangerous foreigners–"terror" or "al-Qaeda suspects"–in distant lands whose deaths carry a certain quotient of weirdness and even amusement with them. Try to imagine the equivalent for the Newtown massacre the day after Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School and began killing children and teachers. Since even the New York Post wouldn't do such a thing, let's posit that the Yemen Post did, that playing off the phrase "head of the class," their headline was: "Dead of the Class!" (with that same giant exclamation point). It would be sacrilege. The media would descend. The tastelessness of Arabs would be denounced all the way up to the White House. You'd hear about the callousness of foreigners for days.

And were a wedding party to be obliterated on a highway anywhere in America on the way to, say, a rehearsal dinner, whatever the cause, it would be a 24/7 tragedy. Our lives would be filled with news of it. Count on that.

~snip~

After all, by the count of TomDispatch, this is at least the eighth wedding party reported wiped out, totally or in part, since the Afghan War began and it extends the extermination of wedding celebrants from the air to a third country–six destroyed in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and now the first in Yemen. And in all those years, reporters covering these "incidents" never seem to notice that similar events had occurred previously. Sometimes whole wedding parties were slaughtered, sometimes just the bride or groom's parties were hit. Estimated total dead from the eight incidents: almost 300 Afghans, Iraqis, and Yemenis. And keep in mind that, in these years, weddings haven't been the only rites hit. US air power has struck gatherings ranging from funerals to a baby-naming ceremony.

[Demeter]

1. Everyone treats drones as toys--Obama, W, Kerry, Cheney

It's all cute and clean and video warfare, so unlike any warfare before...it's not real to the wagers of war.

But it's all too real to the victims. Whether they were the intended targets, or not.

[unhappycamper]

3. Yup.

A Raytheon Hellfire missile takes no prisoners.

[Victor_c3]

5. I forget where I saw this, it may have been while I was still in the Army

but there was a situation in Iraq where a group of combatants was trying to surrender to a helicopter. However, since the helicopter couldn't really deal with processing POWs, the crew was ordered to slaughter them.

Nice, huh?

[KoKo]

2. If a video incited Benghazi attack...one wonders why NYPost

would feature such a headline This is supposed to be funny? Is the average NYPost reader 14? (yeah, i know its pretty much a conservative trash tabloid these days)...but, still, what would be the reasoning to do a headline like that unless the underlying purpose is propaganda to incite blowback?

Will there be an outcry the size of the one against the Duck Family patriarch? Or, will it be left to only the Muslim immigrants and communities to to deal with the outrage that this headline would and should produce.

Agree with Tom...imagine if this had been headline for Newtown in the Yemen Post.

[Victor_c3]

4. Isn't the NY Post the same "news"paper that put a picture of a man pushing someone onto the subway

moments before they were hit and killed about a year ago?

I live in one of the bedroom communities that feeds into NYC and I see the Post quite a bit around here. It is a really trashy paper, that is for sure.