The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Saturday, March 24, 2007

News & Views 03/24/07

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ


FILM: “I Know Shut Up”

It could have been a moment out of the reality show Cops. Men in uniform break through the door of a house and take "wrongdoers" into custody. All we viewers know is that there is "good intelligence" that some brothers live here, and they're involved in bomb-making for a terrorist cell. Menace hangs in the air. We see captured men on their knees in the yard. Are they terrorists? One man, his hands tied behind his back, loses patience. "I am journalist," he complains in broken but perfectly understandable English. "You mistake this." His captors tell him to shut up, and the tied-up man parrots back what he hears, anger seeping into his voice. "Shut up, shut up. I know 'shut up.' Always 'shut up' in Iraq." At which point he is taken out of his house, dumped in a truck, and whisked off to a detention facility with his brothers. This haunting moment stuck with the man behind the camera, Michael Tucker. The year was 2003. Tucker was filming in Baghad during the early months of the US occupation for what would become the critically acclaimed documentary Gunner Palace. Tucker was embedded with the soldiers so when the journalist was turned over to military police, his story thread ended. But something about the man haunted Tucker, as it will anyone who sees Tucker's new film co-directed with his wife Petra Epperlein.

……….. What is America doing in Iraq? Though no one says it explicitly, what Yunis is describing is a concentration camp, where innocent civilians suffer indefinite imprisonment under horrifying conditions with no semblance of due process. At the South by Southwest film festival where I saw The Prisoner, director Michel Tucker called it a conspiracy of indifference. That revelation alone is reason enough to see the film, but another is the presence of "the good soldier," Benjamin Thompson. A twenty-something reservist who worked in real estate before he was deployed, Thompson, like Yunis, struggles to maintain his humanity in an inhumane place. His story is ultimately a hopeful one, that a few "good soldiers" are able to make a difference.


Silence is Golden

You never really appreciate something until you lose it. I never really paid any attention to the bliss of silence, until I lost it. It’s not that I don’t care for the loss of electricity; It’s not that I don’t care for the loss of security; It’s not that I don’t care for the loss family get-togethers, or any of the ordinary things you would take for granted living in the Baghdad of my memories, like taking a walk. No, all these things I do miss; but silence, I miss most of all. Every politician drives around in a security convoy, with sirens screaming and weapons gleaming, and there are very many politicians in Iraq today, take my word for it. Every police car patrols with its siren sounding. Army and MNF Forces usually use sirens. It has become common for young men to use sirens and sport weapons, simply as a means to open a route through traffic congestion at check points; no one dares stop or question them for fear of their belonging to “such” or “such” group. The loss of state-supplied electricity has made private generators a necessity. Every 50-100 homes are supplied with power from a generator, situated “around the corner” or “down the road” from where you live. The noise generated by these machines has contaminated our very lives. (Not to mention the smoke and fumes that are killing us).


COMMENTARY


Another Casualty: Coverage of the Iraq War

The primary reason why reporting from Iraq is dangerous for all journalists is the horrific security situation. Iraqi journalists reporting from the streets are in perpetual danger. If any of the countless militias does not want a certain story made public, it will make sure that the journalist has filed his or her last story. Not to mention the scores of reporter deaths which have been the combined handiwork of the Iraqi government, occupation forces and/or criminal gangs. Despite President Bush’s assertion that life in Iraq is improving, a senior Iraqi journalist was found dead in the capital on March 3, 2007. On the same day the body of the managing editor of Baghdad’s al-Safir newspaper, Jamal al-Zubaidi, was found shot in the head. The United States continues to claim that its military operations in Iraq bring freedom and democracy. But such freedom apparently doesn’t extend to Iraqi journalists. Several journalists critical of the United States or the U.S.-backed Iraqi government have been killed. For instance, on March 4, 2007 gunmen killed prominent journalist Mohan al Zaher in his home. That Sunday, his column concluded with the lament, “...if this is the democracy that we (Iraqis) dreamt of.” His earlier articles questioned U.S. policies in Iraq.


VIDEO: Songs Of Pain

0 comments: