The War the Mass Media Forgot: Iraq
Yesterday, March 19, 2021 was the 18th anniversary of the Iraq war. CNN, which did so much to promote public acceptance of it — I’m looking at you, Wolf Blitzer — had nothing about it on their homepage. Perhaps that had written something in a more obscure location, but a Google search failed to turn up something. Because the war continues to kill American soldiers — eleven died in 2020 — the anniversary remains newsworthy.
It is difficult to know how many Iraqis were killed in the war. While a few estimates place the death toll at 600,000 or less, many estimate that well over a million Iraqis have died. If one counts not only deaths but amputations, disfiguring burns, orphaned children — about 800.000 — widows, a vanishing Christian community, and displaced persons, the numbers mean that Iraq has endured a humanitarian catastrophe almost beyond imagination.
What stories did CNN run instead of a story about Iraq:
- A story about Donald Trump’s personal jet that stands unused on a dusty runway.
- A story about George W. Bush, the architect of the war, claiming that he felt sick to his stomach while watching the capitol hill riots. The reporters praised Bush effusively for this rather commonplace observation as if Bush had just uttered the wisdom of the ages.
I would not mind CNN ignoring the anniversary of the war or for continuing to waste pixels on Trump, a man who has been out of power for months now, if they did not devote so much effort to rehabilitating the image of George W. Bush. This story is only the latest one attempting to give W. the glow of a wise elder statesman — even though he *knew* the WMD story was bogus even before the war started.
In addition to remembering the war’s victims, we should also recall members of the press who contributed so much to convincing Americans to accept the war:
· NYT’s Judith Miller’s bogus WMD stories and the editors who let them be printed, often on the front page even though the editors must have known that she had a conflict of interest: she had written a book about WMD, so she got paid to write articles that effectively publicized her book. Then, too, there was the unctuous David Brooks, who vigorously supported the conflict, one he later described as a “humiliation.”
· Those hair-raising WMD stories aired by 60 Minutes. Only Bob Simon had the courage to dissent.
· MSNBC, which canceled Phil Donahue’s show because he opposed the Iraq war but did NOT cancel shows with lower ratings than his. On the other hand, kudos to Rachel Maddow for opposing it.
· Robert Scheer, who was fired by the Los Angeles Times, apparently for his opposition to the war.
· The Nation, which likes to brag about opposing the war before it started, which is technically true. What their writers do not often say is that their opposition emerged only toward the end of the pre-war period, making them ineffective in galvanizing resistance to it. During these earlier months, the publication ran cover story after cover story on the Enron scandal.
Notice the pattern: those supporting the debacle that was and is the Iraq war still had their jobs, leaving them only on retirement. David Brooks still appears on talking head shows and is frequently interviewed by NPR. Wolf Blitzer kept his job, as did Leslie Stahl. Those who opposed the war often lost theirs.
Warmongering pays.
