The American media is awash in images of cheering Iraqis welcoming their
American “liberators.” Our visual lexicon will forever contain toppling
Saddam statues along with images of a falling Berlin wall, crumbling Twin
Towers, an Iwo Jima flag raising and a small naked Vietnamese girl running
from a napalm attack.

Network anchors are obsessively telling us we’re witnessing history. And we
are. It’s just not the history they’re telling us we’re watching. What we
are seeing is the ultimate triumph of the image ­ with the pivotal battles
of war playing out in the theater of informatics. Welcome to the
post-modern media war.

Last week’s toppling of a Central Baghdad statue of Saddam Hussein marked
the tuning point in the Iraq invasion. Pundits were tripping over
themselves to compare this new image, to the destruction of the Berlin wall.
But, in reality, there’s one main difference. The German people tore down
the Berlin wall. Saddam’s statue was pulled down by an invading army.
Ultimately, who pulled the statue down is unimportant. What’s important is
the image of the statue falling.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN'S WAR

Marshall McLuhan once said that World War Three would be an information war.
We’re certainly seeing that. From a military perspective, the US invasion
plan initially didn’t make much sense ­ with US forces recklessly pushing
forward, without securing their supply lines or any territory along the way.
If the battle in Baghdad proved to be drawn out, American troops would have
found themselves in a very precarious situation. But the plan was never
really to fight a drawn out battle ­ it was to create the illusion of
victory. Once the illusion was created, reality would soon follow suit.

Here’s how it worked. US forces charged forward and put Ted Koppel in the
Baghdad Airport before the area is secured ­ creating the TV image of US
forces “in Baghdad.” Next, on April 9th, they made a bloody stab into the
heart of Baghdad. The cost in civilian lives of that incursion was
staggering, with the International Red Cross complaining that they were
overwhelmed and could no longer accurately count casualties. The point of
this move was not to secure territory per se, but to secure an image ­ the
now famous scene of a toppling Saddam. The US was careful to not knock out
electric power across Iraq ­ so that once the images were broadcast around
the world, Iraqis with satellite dishes quickly saw them too. The image
said the war was over. And within moments, the government of Iraq, such as
it was, dissolved into oblivion. As word spread that US troops were in
Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers peeled their uniforms off, and the war, more or
less, faded to pockets of resistance.

The statue event quickly became a metaphor for “liberation.” NPR reported
how Iraqis first tried chipping away at the legs of the bronze dictator,
then at the concrete base, before ultimately asking the US forces to assist.
The images that we saw, however, were tightly controlled and scripted.
Dozens celebrated while millions hid in mortal terror. We have no idea who
the people in this all male “crowd” were, who brought them to the square,
why they didn’t fear the otherwise trigger-happy American troops or why
those troops didn’t fear them or think they were among the 4,000 suicide
bombers the media told us entered the country? This wasn’t a time to ask
questions.

JOURNALISTS TARGETED

And nobody was likely to venture out to ask questions. That’s because on
April 8th, US forces, in a preliminary raid on Baghdad, fired a tank mortar
into the Reuters “office” in the Palestine hotel, launched an air strike on
Al Jazeera’s office, and attacked the office of Al Jazeera’s main
competition, Abu Dhabi TV, with small arms fire. When all the shooting was
done, a Reuters correspondent, a Spanish Telecino correspondent and one of
Al Jazeera’s best known correspondents were dead. Six other journalists
were wounded. According to Reporters Without Borders, “The US Army
deliberately and without warning targeted journalists.” The committee to
Protect Journalists declared that the US violated the Geneva Convention by
attacking journalists.

Pentagon officials claim they were simply “returning fire” after being fired
upon with rockets from the Palestine hotel. Robert Fist, reporting for the
London based Independent witnessed the attack, and reported hearing no fire
before the tank attack. He described the attack as “looking very much like
murder.” According to journalists from a host of diverse countries, there
was no weapons fire in the area prior to the US attack on the journalists’
hotel. Witnesses say the tank, over a period of two minutes, sat facing the
hotel, adjusting its gun barrel to point to the 15th floor Reuters office,
and fired ­ a scene which was caught on videotape by a French TV crew.

Pentagon officials also claim they were being fired on from the Al Jazeera
and Abu Dhabi TV offices as well ­ charges that the journalists adamantly
deny. US forces also shelled an Al Jazeera office in Basra on April 2nd and
shot at a clearly marked Al Jazeera vehicle on April 7th.

The end result of these attacks is that most journalists not “embedded” with
the US military were basically pinned down under fire and unable to easily
or safely move about Baghdad when the “fall of Baghdad” images of a toppling
Saddam were recorded by embedded journalists. Hence, the US military public
relations forces had near absolute control of the images being produced.

RIDING SADDAM'S HEAD

The powerful images of the Saddam statue’s bronze head being dragged through
the streets of Baghdad also bore signs of being choreographed, albeit
poorly. By freezing the frame of the televised image, one can see that a
third of the supposed celebrants being photographed were themselves
photojournalists. The image, however, still served its purpose.

In the American press nobody questioned the fact that the footage shot by
embedded journalists of the initial images of Iraqis cheering on their
American “liberators” was looped, with the same few seconds running over and
over again. Once these images entered our visual lexicon, reality followed
suit ­ and we suddenly were awash in images of Shock and Awe survivors
suddenly celebrating their liberation. But these images dangled severed
from history and without context. Pundits compared them to World War II era
shots of French citizens cheering on their American liberators ­ but absent
from this dialog was any reference to near identical images of citizens
cheering on their supposed German “liberators” as the Nazis brutally marched
across Europe.

The sad reality is that people quickly adapt to political realities and suck
up to whoever is in power ­ often as quick as possible. Hence we quickly
saw images of Iraqis carrying pictures of George W. Bush ­ and we quickly
forgot that they were carrying around similar images of Saddam Hussein last
month. For people weaned on generations of totalitarian oppression and
colonial occupation, such behavior typifies survivors. We certainly shouldn
’t humor ourselves into believing we are loved ­ we’re just the new game in
town. And people are hungry.

BIG BROTHER SAYS KEEP YOUR TV ON

The images are powerful ­ and they are toxic to a democratic discourse.
They are extremely sophisticated and designed to elicit an emotional
response ­ which should quickly trump a rational response. Watching these
images reminds me of the final scenes in George Orwell’s classic work, 1984.
Life would be much easier if we could just learn to be like everyone else
and love big brother ­ cheering on the global conquests. Even the best read
peace activist feels a twinge of self-doubt. That wasn’t so bad. Then the
SUV ad comes on. And it doesn’t look so bad. If only we could get with the
program. This is propaganda theorists call the bandwagon effect. People
like to cheer for perceived “winners.” There’s a natural urge to suck up to
power. To line the streets and celebrate your own destruction ­ as we saw
in Nazi Germany.

Then the horror of reality sinks in. The endless deaths. The endless war.
Boundless hate. Generations of terror. And the Pearly Gates slammed shut
in your face because, whether or not you voted for George W. Bush, because
you’re a citizen in a democratic country and this travesty occurred under
your watch. Then you turn your fucking television off. Wipe off your brow.
And realize how close you came to succumbing to mind numbing emotionally
targeted propaganda.

April 21-27th just happens to be the ninth annual TV turnoff week. I was
planning on writing my usual TV Turnoff week article ­ talking about
addiction, obesity, consumption, debt and the decades of life the average
American loses to the tube. But there’s just too much horror in the world
today and I needed to write about that too ­ this is no time for journalists
to make pretenses toward normalcy. So just turn the damned appliance off
for a week. Especially now ­ before it seduces you into complacency. And go
out and look for some real news.

Dr. Michael I. Niman’s previous TV Turnoff Week articles are available by
searching http://www.alternet.org or visiting http://mediastudy.com

posted at PeaceAware.com - Fair use policy.