When I first saw this grainy video on CNN a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see them lead with a story that made the war effort look like a war effort, but I was quickly reassured. They showed 20 seconds of the grainy video of men walking so they could talk about the photographer's bag, which looked like an RPG. Then they showed a few more seconds with the entire screen blacked out. No one mentioned the children of a good Samaritan who died, their heads hanging innocently out of the front window in plain sight. Instead, Don Lemon spent the segment apologizing for the military representative he was supposed to be interviewing. The point was made that journalists in that area of Baghdad aren't supposed to walk around without informing the US military presence, placing the weight of the blame on the victims themselves.
I would prefer it if the television media would leave this issue alone. When you leave out the majority of a story, it becomes something else, which might explain why republicans and democrats often complain about seeing the world differently (and for that matter, moderate democrats and anti-war liberals).
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Bread and butter, including Malcolm Gladwell, after the jump:
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According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, this video is "clearly not helpful." I disagree. So what is the real issue here? The tone of the pilots brought a few things to mind.
1.) These pilots sound familiar: they sound like every dork in ankle-high sweats with pockets full of fritos that I've ever played Halo against on a Wednesday. After the first assault: "Look at those dead bastards," "Nice," Good Shoot'n" "Thank you." One voice quietly begged the sad, bullet-riddled victim to grab for a gun so he could fire, with the same language one uses to beg the ball to "get in the hole" playing Golden Tee Golf.
2.)This issue sounds familiar: In December, 2004, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a column for The New Yorker called "The Picture Problem: Mammography, Air Power, and the Limits of Looking." He describes in detail the difficulty of breast cancer screening, which tends to miss tumors that cause the most harm and tumors that can't be seen in areas of dense breast tissue while, at the same time, revealing benign cell growth that doesn't warrant harmful radiation-treatment. After drawing parallels to the failed targeting of Scud missiles in the first Gulf War and the ambiguous pictures used to justify this war he concludes, "If screening doesn't screen, it ceases to be useful." "We have put ourselves in a position where we see more and more things that we don't know how to interpret."
Instead of trying to cover up this video or explain it away, we need to start addressing these issues. With mammograms, the small percentage of successful treatments justifies their continued use, but with high-resolution imaging on drones and helicopters, the issue isn't as simple--these aren't benign cells, these are human beings, children for God's sake. This isn't about the "rules of engagement," this is about the interpretation of images, and I doubt this is the first time these pilots have failed spectacularly at this task while still enjoying themselves (it should be noted, that some soldiers on the ground showed an admirable commitment to human decency). If Gates doesn't think this is helpful, should we just forget about all the innocent Iraqis that don't have Reuters lobbying for them?
The military can do anything it's charged to do--I hear it all the time--so let's start talking about ways of getting it done, or advocating for an effective exit strategy in Afghanistan.