The Foer War
Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, spends 13 pages explaining how he and his mag did nothing wrong during the "Baghdad Diarist" controversy before, on page 14, essentially retracting everything.
But let's forget about the journalistic controversy and look at the original piece. It's a soldier in Iraq, Scott Beauchamp (published under a pseudonym), relating three stories about how callous the men there have become--they mock a disfigured woman, wear a skull as a hat and run over dogs.
Whether these things happened as related or not, what's intrigues me is how unimportant it is. If people want to check it out, fine, but what does it actually show? The point of the piece seems to be how cruel our soldiers have become in such an awful war as Iraq. But, in fact, these kinds of activities--in fact, far worse--are done by some percentage of soldiers in pretty much every war, no matter how just the cause, no matter how brave and noble most of the soldiers may be. (In fact, it's easy enough to find these kinds of activities among any large group of men, war or no.)
The piece, if true, may provide a little local color, emphasizing the dark side of Iraq, but as such is not particularly illuminating. As a general statement on the Iraq War, it's worthless.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:36 AM
6 Comments:
Mostly agreed. The story of laughing at the disfigured woman and its correction is an interesting one. The context of the most argued article is that war makes us into jerks. The woman, who the soldiers laughed at, is later revealed to have been seen and taunted in Kuwait, before the soldiers had been tarnished by the effects of war. Interestingly since the author wrote the piece in the theater of war about something he did before entering same, he actually and unknowingly makes the case that he is MORE sensitive after being battle hardened.
AAGuy
Abu ghraib, anyone?
I take it anonymous #2 has a point, though I'm not sure what it is.
The point is obvious. A few soldiers committed infractions (for which they were punished) that were nothing compared to how some POW's have been treated by almost all armies thoughout history, not to mention all the countless Iraqis who were tortured at Abu Ghraib by Saddam Hussein, yet, not unlike the Baghdad Diarist, the press concentrated on and overreported the story to make the war and those who served in it look as bad as possible, even if it meant the propaganda could lead to the death of American soliders.
Anon. 2, you had me right until the end. It is not the job of reporters to worry about whether their choice of stories to report will risk/save/protect/embiggen american soldiers's lives. If they're telling the truth, good. If not, there's a bigger problem.
Actually, LAGuy's point that the kind of behaviors in the articles(and those at Abu Ghraib) will be found among any significant group of men is an argument against rushing into a war on the theory that you will be saving people and be lauded as heroes. Bad things will happen, and even if anomalous, will affect the perception of the people you are "saving." This is not to say you should never take such action, but it does mean
1) Do not go in lightly, as unintended consequences are so likely as to not even be fairly "unintended;" and
2) Spend the time needed to train soldiers as much as possible against this kind of behavior -- don't just leave it to "But we're Americans and that means we're good!" Stanford students made into prison guards against other Stanford students quickly devolved to such behavior without even the pressure cooker of war -- it should be expected, not shocking.
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