The Pentagon's most dangerous enemy,

[JohnyCanuck]

The web is covered in stink today because of a reporter for the Associated Press, Julie Jacobson, who photographed the death of a Marine whose legs had just been blown off. The kid was Joshua Bernard, a Lance Corporal of 21 years. When the photo appeared, Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense furiously tried to get the AP to quash the photo. It didn’t, to its everlasting credit. To quote one of many accounts on the web:


“Gates followed up with a scathing letter to Curley yesterday afternoon. The letter says Gates cannot imagine the pain Bernard's family is feeling right now, and that Curley's ‘lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put out this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right—but judgment and common decency.’

snip

Why then is he so angry at having the war photographed? Easy: Spin control. Spin is so very important in war these days. While America is only barely a democracy, still, if the public, the great sleeping acquiescent ignorant beast, ever gets really upset, the war ends. The Pentagon is acutely aware of this. It remembers its disaster in Asia. The generals of today learned nothing military from Vietnam—they are fighting the same kind of war as stupidly as before—but they learned something more important: Their most dangerous enemy is the America public. You. Me. Defeating the Taliban isn’t particularly important, or even desirable. (No war means fewer promotions and fewer contracts). But while the Taliban cannot possibly defeat the Pentagon, the American public can.

snip

Then there are the enlisted men. In these hobbyist wars, and to an extent even in peacetime, it is crucial to keep the enlisteds from thinking. In some three decades of covering the military, I saw this constantly. If I went to Afghanistan today as a correspondent, I could argue in private about the war with the colonel. If I suggested to the troops that they were being suckered, the colonel would go crazy. Next to keeping the public quiescent, keeping the troops (and potential recruits) bamboozled is vital. If a high-school kid saw what awaited, if he saw the cartilage glistening in wrecked joints, he wouldn’t sign.

Do I think that the press should publish such photos? Not yes but hell yes on afterburner. Every time an editor covers for the Pentagon, every time papers refuse to show the charred bodies still…slowly…moving, the dead children, the…never mind. The effect is to ensure that more kids will die the same way. And the press almost always does exactly this. We are a trade of whores and shills. Except that whores give value for money. The press kills our children.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Gates.shtml

[mike_c]

1. kicking and recommending...!

Excellent article. Thanks for posting it!

[Parker CA]

2. K&R!!!

[Ruby the Liberal]

3. And reinstate the draft. Let them think twice about the cost of lives.

[Hissyspit]

4. I posted the photo in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6491981

[JDPriestly]

5. I finally watched Frost and Nixon last night.

Great movie. It has a brief cut of film from Nixon's War in Cambodia.

If we knew what was happening in Afghanistan, if we knew what happened in Iraq, the wars would have already ended. The only reason that Americans are not very angry about these wars is that we are not seeing the devastation they cause, the human suffering and loss. It is being hidden from us. That is immoral.

[ljm2002]

6. That was an excellent piece...

...well worth reading. He has some hard-won perspective on the issue, and gives a very convincing case why photos like this one should be published.

It is understandable that the family objected to it. But it was never their decision to make. The tragedy of their son's death is one of the costs of war, and journalists are under obligation to inform us of such sad realities.

[DCKit]

7. I remember, as a child, watching the parade of death and destruction that was Vietnam.

It is EXACTLY the reason the Pentagram doesn't want film or photographic evidence of our young people dying in wars of aggression and conquest.

[Hawkowl]

8. Essential for democracy

Without a completely free press, reporting the actual conditions, deaths, and maimings of war, we have no democracy.

[Kaleko]

9. Grrrreat gutsy article.

Rec'd.

[amborin]

10. K&R

[JohnyCanuck]

11. Kick n/t