General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" [View all]calimary
(80,693 posts)War "coverage" has been so antisepticized, so tidied-up, that nobody understands the true nature of the beast that is war, and what it does to the human body, to limbs and organs, skin and bone, to combatants and non-combatants alike. Nobody gets it. And we're not supposed to! Otherwise, nobody'd want to go over there to face those horrors for real.
PLEASE DON'T FORGET the Herculean efforts bush/cheney went to - to muzzle news coverage of Iraq. Absolutely NO coffins were EVER to be shown or photographed, absolutely NO coverage was permitted of the return of our fallen troops to Dover AFB - the first place on American soil most of the dead make their return. People were FIRED for taking photographs and publishing them or leaking them online. FIRED. You could lose your job if you tried to get the word out. Your boss was thoroughly cowed under the national security goons and would let you go in a heartbeat if you didn't conform.
That's the one thing that really touched me about Barack Obama as President. One of the FIRST things he did, when he was newly installed as our Commander-in-Chief, was to get his ass straight over to Dover AFB late one night, to greet the flag-draped coffins of soldiers who'd been sacrificed to that meat-grinder over there. He granted permission if anyone wanted to cover it, and nothing was hidden - even in the dark of night. And it was very simple. Very little fanfare. Just the CiC standing there on the tarmac to pay respects to the returning war dead. Every one of them. We NEVER, EVER saw bush/cheney do that. We weren't supposed to know about icky messy things like dead soldiers' bodies, or throat-gripping lines of flag-draped coffins - that kept coming and kept coming month-after-month. Outta sight, outta mind. BASTARDS.
I know one thing about the GOP. They LEARN from history. They fully and completely got it about not showing the costs of war to the masses - because the masses will be horrified and stop supporting the war-making. It was well-known back a few years - that when CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, widely hailed as "the most trusted man in America", had finally seen enough and turned against the Vietnam War, the war was lost. Because the people saw it at their dinner tables every evening, watching the network newscast and the correspondents out in the rice paddies and death and the carnage and the destruction, and the mournful elder anchor back home in New York, who spoke for them all - and turned against the war. It was key to America's changing view of Vietnam and what triggered the anti-war movement's call to action and helped grow its momentum. And it prompted then-President Johnson to concede - "if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country."
Cronkite never shied away from telling hard truths. Recall his half-hour Report From Vietnam on Feb. 27, 1968, in which he declared the Vietnam War a stalemate. It was a verdict the veteran war correspondent didnt relish delivering, but Cronkite, who had recently returned from reporting on the Tet offensive, now believed that the war was unwinnable and indefensible. He felt conned by Lyndon Johnson, Brinkley writes, and sickened that his network had swallowed the Pentagons spin.
The aftershock of Cronkites reports was seismic, Brinkley adds. President Johnson reportedly said, If Ive lost Cronkite, Ive lost the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/books/review/cronkite-a-biography-by-douglas-brinkley.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
So... taking careful note of this event, that turned the public decisively against Vietnam, the GOP knew that as long as the public got to SEE stuff, it'd know too much and would be harder to control or manipulate. Therefore, their takeaway was - DON'T SHOW THAT SHIT!!! Paint a happy picture! Tell 'em to Go Shopping! No muss, no fuss! War is cool! War is great! War is a cakewalk! Won't even cost you any money! War makes you BRAVE and BAD-ASS! USA!-USA!-USA! Nothing to see here! All is well!
That's why maybe we should see a whole bunch more of this nitty-gritty, not ONLY the beheadings, but everything our poor troops will face over there. Their heads aren't the only body parts at risk. Just ask Tammy Duckworth. Ask Max Cleland. Ask our own Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, who even now is still walking around with shrapnel in his body from when HE was in Vietnam. Can we get realistic about war? It's NOT for the faint-hearted. Frankly, in my opinion, it's not for ANYBODY.