We Can’t Handle the Truth
Three distinct cases from April and May concerning the current military operation in Iraq have raised questions about the control and dissemination of information in wartime conditions.
Item 1: The Pentagon has had a policy of not allowing any publicity for the return of soldiers’ bodies from Iraq and Afghanistan. In two separate recent incidents, those images finally became public. In one case, a contractor on a plane carrying the coffins home took a picture of the soldiers carefully attending the flag-draped coffins; she sent the image to a friend, who then sent it to the Seattle Times, which published it. In the second case, Russ Kick – who runs a site called The Memory Hole – filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get copies of photos the Pentagon had taken of the coffins and their reception at Dover Air Force base; in what the Pentagon is now calling a mistake, he received the photos and posted them to the site. Both the Seattle Times and Memory Hole images soon spread to other newspapers, online news sources, and TV networks.
Item 2: Nightline decided to devote its May 1 program to reading the names and showing the pictures of the over 700 American soldiers killed in action in Iraq. Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns a handful of ABC affiliates and which has donated substantial money to the Republican party, charged that Nightline was trying to make the President look bad and refused to air the program.
Item 3: American soldiers serving as prison guards in Iraq – specifically in Abu Ghraib, formerly one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious torture camps – took photos of themselves humiliating prisoners, including stripping them naked, attaching wires to their bodies and threatening them with electrocution, and forcing them into sexually suggestive positions. These photos were passed along to military police and eventually made their way to CBS. CBS sat on the photos for two weeks at the Army’s request before airing them as part of a special report on 60 Minutes II. It has since come out that an army report completed in February has identified over 50 incidents of abuse toward prisoners, that at least two prisoners were killed by their guards, and that there are dozens of ongoing investigations into the action of American military personnel and contractors.
In all three cases, a significant number of people argued that the media was wrong to spread the information it did. In the first two cases, the arguments ran across two main lines: that the images exploited the sacrifice of the dead soldiers for the benefit of ratings/reader-hungry media companies, and that by emphasizing the casualties, the images reduced support for the war among Americans and thus made the military’s job harder and reduced support for President Bush. In the third case, the main argument I’ve seen is that the images in question have given a huge propaganda victory to those actively working against the U.S. in Iraq, which will make it difficult if not impossible to accomplish the goal of creating a stable, U.S.-friendly democracy in Iraq.
It should surprise no one that I disagree with all of these arguments; I’ve stated my general presumption in favor of transparency a number of times on the site. And in all three of these specific instances, I am glad that at least a glimmer of transparency prevailed. A democracy at war is always engaged in a perilous balancing act between its ideals and what it sees as necessary actions for victory. The standards of freedom that we embrace in peacetime, and for which we fight so fiercely, can often seem to be the equivalent of fighting with a hand tied behind our back. It is inevitable that there will be some compromise of ideals, but we can’t simply turn our back on the notion that we are a democracy, and that as citizens we have a responsibility to be informed about the consequences of the decisions made in our name and to decide if we want to continue to support those decisions. Those caskets don’t go away just because we don’t see them. Those soldiers and Marines are no less dead if no one broadcasts their name. We should acknowledge and honor their sacrifice.
Further, we should not assume that being confronted with the consequences of war will necessarily influence us to oppose it. The Democrats made the 1864 election a referendum on the Civil War, sending one of Lincoln’s generals against him with a promise to end the war. Lincoln was re-elected. Franklin Roosevelt was given a fourth term in 1944. If Americans believe in the battle being fought, we’ll honor the fallen and fight harder. It’s only if we have other reasons to question the wisdom of the fight that the costs would provoke outrage against our leaders.
That’s probably what makes the Abu Ghraib prison photos such a contentious issue for some. There’s nothing positive or honorable about these images, and the global shock and outrage they’ve provoked will certainly cause a surge in anti-American feeling in the Middle East. But this is where the old cliché about not blaming the messenger is incredibly apt. The moral and practical responsibility for whatever damage this does to American interests and the American military rests with the people who committed these acts and those who created the environment in which these acts were possible. As citizens, we need to know about these things precisely because we need to hold our leaders accountable for them. If we don’t, we inadvertently allow them to continue. Indeed, since these images became public, a separate report from the New Yorker has brought to light the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba about conditions in Abu Ghraib. Subsequent media reports have revealed that neither President Bush nor General Richard Meyers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have read the report; that no one in Congress was informed of the situation; and that a number of other investigations and inquiries are underway. The renewed scrutiny has spurred a belated look at government decisions from the last several years; we know we can not count on purely internal reviews to identify and solve problems. Public outrage spurs action; at least now we have a chance to do something about the problem rather than letting it fester. Without that opportunity, we simply can’t function as the kind of society we say we want to be. Knowledge is power, but knowledge is also painful – but it’s a pain we can not afford to avoid.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.