{"id":240871,"date":"2023-08-07T12:01:11","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240871"},"modified":"2023-08-03T08:38:27","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T07:38:27","slug":"usa-how-to-hide-and-ignore-4-5-million-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/usa-how-to-hide-and-ignore-4-5-million-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"USA: How to Hide and Ignore 4.5 Million Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Review of Norman Solomon\u2019s ‘War Made Invisible’<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jornal Tornado<\/p><\/div>\n

1 Aug 2023 – <\/em>Brown University\u2019s Costs of War project released a study<\/a> this year estimating that US-led wars since 9\/11 have contributed directly and indirectly to 4.5 million deaths in the targeted countries. Those countries\u2014Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Syria\u2014have also seen an estimated 40\u201360 million people<\/a> displaced from their homes. This refugee crisis is as destructive as any war, and marks the largest number of refugees since the end of World War II. By all accounts, the US-led Global War on Terror has been a disaster for tens of millions of people.<\/p>\n

When the study was released in May, there was only one report (Washington Post<\/b>, 5\/15\/23<\/a>) in all of America\u2019s top newspapers<\/a> that brought attention to the staggering figure. The Hill<\/b> (5\/16\/23<\/a>) and a few smaller outlets (NY1, <\/b>5\/17\/23<\/a>; UPI, <\/b>5\/16\/23<\/a>) published pieces on the topic, but the bulk of corporate media did not deem it worthy of any coverage at all.<\/p>\n

No solemn reflections about the war machine, no policy pieces about how we might avoid such devastation in the future, and certainly no op-eds calling for the wars\u2019 architects to stand trial for their crimes.<\/p>\n

How does our media environment so easily dismiss carnage of this scale? Norman Solomon\u2019s new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its War Machine<\/i><\/a> (New Press<\/b>), offers a deep look at the media system that enables a monstrous war machine to extract such a heavy toll on the world with impunity.<\/p>\n

Solomon\u2019s book attempts to show how our institutions came to be so casual about burying the costs of US wars. He challenges the traditional myth of the American \u201cfree press\u201d as a check on power, and instead shows how the media act as \u201ca fourth branch of government.\u201d This book serves as a survey of media malfeasance in recent history, but also as a meditation on the role of our media system in manufacturing consent for a brutal foreign policy for the entire world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Useful victims<\/b><\/h3>\n

Solomon takes aim at the common, unchallenged assumptions that often shape how media portray conflicts. Persistent tropes<\/a>, like the constant appeal for America to \u201clead the world,\u201d and dangerously common euphemisms like \u201cdefense spending<\/a>\u201d contribute to a culture that worships a mythical version of America, while the empire\u2019s true nature remains hidden.<\/p>\n

\n

\"FAIR:<\/p>\n

FAIR.org<\/strong> (3\/18\/22<\/a>): In the Ukraine War, US corporate media discovered a \u201cnewfound ability to cover the impact on civilians\u2014when those civilians are white and under attack by an official US enemy, rather than by the US itself.\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One key aspect of that myth-building is the selective way US media cover civilian victims. Some are covered extensively, eliciting calls for revenge, while others are ignored entirely\u2014depending on who the aggressor is. Solomon recalls a critical moment just a few weeks into the US invasion of Afghanistan\u2014at a time when, as the Washington Post<\/b> (10\/31\/01<\/a>) reported, \u201cmore errant US bombs have landed in residential areas, causing damage to such places as a Red Cross warehouse and senior citizens\u2019 center.\u201d Images of these atrocities had sparked \u201ccriticism of the American war effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

At CNN<\/b>, chair Walter Isaacson declared<\/a> in a memo to staff that it \u201cseems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.\u201d When the network did cover the toll on civilians, Isaacson told the Washington Post<\/b> (10\/31\/01<\/a>), <\/b>\u201cYou want to make sure people understand\u2026it\u2019s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.\u201d John Moody, the vice president of Fox News <\/b>at the time, called the directive \u201cnot at all a bad thing,\u201d because \u201cAmericans need to remember what started this.\u201d The coverage was designed to reinforce the US government line of a noble cause, to shield viewers from the toll on civilians, and justify them if they were shown.<\/p>\n

The media\u2019s expedient treatment of civilian suffering has continued to this day. In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where civilian casualties supported rather than hindered the message the media wanted to send, the coverage was reversed (FAIR.org<\/b>, 3\/18\/22<\/a>). \u201cBy any consistent standard,\u201d Solomon writes, \u201cthe horrors that the US military had brought to so many civilians since the autumn of 2001 were no less terrible for the victims than what Russia was doing in Ukraine.\u201d Despite that, the media coverage of Ukraine was \u201cvastly more immediate, graphic, extensive and outraged about Russia\u2019s slaughter than America\u2019s slaughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

During April 2022, the New York Times<\/b> published 14 front-page stories on civilian casualties from Russia\u2019s military offensive. During a comparable period after the US invasion of Iraq, there was only one front-page story about civilian victims of the US attack (FAIR.org<\/b>, 6\/9\/22<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Media boundaries<\/b><\/h3>\n

Looming over any current discussion of news media is their abysmal reporting of the Global War on Terror. Solomon uses the case of Iraq to demonstrate the boundaries of our media system, both top-down and self-imposed.<\/p>\n

Through social filtering, the journalists who end up covering wars for elite institutions often have internalized the assumptions that justify the empire. Journalist Reese Erlich<\/a> (Target Iraq<\/i>, Solomon and Erlich) recounted that he \u201cdidn\u2019t meet a single foreign reporter in Iraq who disagreed with the notion that the US and Britain have the right to overthrow the Iraqi government by force.\u201d This selection bias was clearly reflected in the West\u2019s acquiescent coverage of the war.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Ashleigh<\/p>\n

Ashleigh Banfield (4\/24\/03<\/a>): \u201cThere is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you\u2019re getting the story.\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Other times, boundaries can be rigidly and publicly reinforced, as in the case of the young journalist Ashleigh Banfield<\/a>. Banfield was a journalist who ascended the heights of cable news. A rising star, Banfield\u2019s career at NBC<\/b> hit a wall after she made a speech<\/a> in April 2003 deeply critical of how the media obscured the harsh realities of the Iraq War. She told an audience at Kansas State University:<\/p>\n

What didn\u2019t you see? You didn\u2019t see where those bullets landed. You didn\u2019t see what happened when the mortar landed\u2026 There are horrors that were completely left out of this war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Television coverage of the war, Banfield said, was \u201ca glorious wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

NBC<\/b> announced that it was \u201cdeeply disappointed and troubled by her remarks.\u201d Her punishment<\/a> was swift and harsh:<\/p>\n

I was officeless for ten months. No phone, no computer\u2026. Eventually after ten months of this, I was given an office that was a tape closet\u2026. The message was crystal clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The message wasn\u2019t just for Banfield. Journalists could not help but pay close attention to this destruction of one of their own.\u00a0 If they stray outside the unspoken bounds set by corporate media\u2019s owners, they could share Banfield\u2019s fate or worse.<\/p>\n

Accepting forever wars<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n

\"NYT:<\/p>\n

Even war critics give the US military credit for being \u201cmore humane\u201d (New York Times<\/strong>, 9\/3\/21<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As of 2021, the last soldiers exited Afghanistan, solidifying a new era of US warfare dubbed \u201cover the horizon<\/a>.\u201d This is a reference to the constant high-tech, \u201clower intensity\u201d slaughter emanating from the hundreds of military bases the US still has across the world.<\/p>\n

US drone warfare has been a persistent source of horror for millions. But, as Solomon notes, \u201cthe systems of remote killing get major help from reporters, producers and editors who detour around the carnage at the other end of US weaponry.\u201d One clear way they help is by endorsing and repeating the idea that America\u2019s campaign of air assassinations is a new form of \u201chumane war<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even some of the more thoughtful critics of this kind of war fall into linguistic traps that minimize its true toll. In a New York Times<\/strong> op-ed (9\/3\/21<\/a>) that described the trend as \u201cdisturbing,\u201d Yale historian Samuel Moyn wrote that \u201cAmerica\u2019s bequest to the world\u2026over the last 20 years\u201d was an \u201cendless and humane\u201d form of \u201ccounterterrorist belligerency,\u201d one in which \u201cHuman Rights Watch examined for violations of the law of war and\u2026military lawyers helped pick targets.\u201d Moyn is concerned that \u201cmore humane war became a companion to an increasingly interventionist foreign policy\u201d\u2014but seems to miss the irony of calling a strategy\u00a0 \u201chumane\u201d that kills innocents by the millions.<\/p>\n

Moyn seems partially aware that the \u201chumane\u201d war is more rebranding than restraint, but insists that the \u201cimproved humanity of our wars\u201d is both \u201costensible and real.\u201d References to \u201chumane\u201d war should ring just as hollow as Lyndon Johnson\u2019s proclamation<\/a> in 1966 about soldiers on the way to Vietnam: \u201cNo American army in all of our long history has been so compassionate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The risk of truth-telling<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n

\"Jacobin:<\/p>\n

Jacobin<\/strong> (8\/21<\/a>) notes that \u201cthe Espionage Act makes no distinction between spies who steal information for hostile foreign governments and government employees who share information of public interest with the press, journalists, or even members of the public.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As a sharp contrast to the media who shield the empire from any reckoning, Solomon highlights the people who take a risk to bring the world the truth about this detached, mechanized warfare. He talks to Cian Westmoreland<\/a>, who \u201cspoke sadly of the commendations he received for helping to kill more than 200 people with drone strikes.\u201d Brandon Bryant<\/a> lamented that the entire system was designed \u201cso that no one has taken responsibility for what happens.\u201d There was Heather Linebaugh<\/a>, who recounted how she and her colleagues \u201calways wonder if we killed the right people.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of these heroes was Daniel Hale<\/a>, who remains in prison today for leaking information that showed that over a five-month period in 2012,\u00a0 90% of the people killed in Afghanistan drone strikes were not the intended target. Solomon quotes Hale\u2019s touching letter explaining that he leaked the information so that \u201cI might someday humbly ask forgiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other whistleblowers have suffered immensely for their acts of bravery.\u00a0 In 2010, army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked the infamous \u201cCollateral Murder<\/a>\u201d video, showing US forces using an Apache helicopter to gun down a dozen civilians in Iraq. The dead included two Reuters<\/b> employees. For leaking the video and other documents, Manning spent seven years in prison, much of that in solitary confinement. In 2019, Manning spent another year in prison for refusing to testify<\/a> against the publisher of her documents, Julian Assange<\/a>\u2014who is himself incarcerated in Britain, facing extradition to the United States to face charges related to exposing US war crimes.<\/p>\n

These whistleblowers and truth-tellers only exist on the margins in public discourse. When the 20-year US occupation of Afghanistan was bookended by yet another \u201cunintentional\u201d drone strike on ten civilians<\/a>, the words of these whistleblowers had long left the public mind. Media shrugged when the Pentagon cleared itself of any wrongdoing, as they have done countless times before. In this so-called free press, Solomon writes, \u201coutliers can\u2019t compete with drumbeats.\u201d<\/p>\n

It really is no surprise that US media had so little to say when Brown University\u2019s Cost of War Project released its estimates for the death toll of the US\u2019s post-9\/11 wars. They ensured America\u2019s 4.5 million victims barely registered in the public consciousness, as they diverted audiences\u2019 attention to another noble US cause<\/a> in Ukraine. War Made Invisible<\/i> lays bare the very heart of the system that allows the US war machine to grind onward, with minimal resistance from a confused and misled public.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bryce Greene is a writer based in Indiana.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Aug 2023 – A ‘Costs of War’ study estimates that the USA’s 9\/11 wars caused 4.5 million deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Syria with 40\u201360 million people displaced from their homes. “Pax Americana”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":240887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[91,112,870,95,70,1594,2686,492,481],"class_list":["post-240871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-nato","tag-pentagon","tag-reviews","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-war-of-terror","tag-war-on-terror","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240871"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240888,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240871\/revisions\/240888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}