Listening to NPR's coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein this week past (Middle East debates Timing of Saddam's Execution), the milestone (tombstone) passed of 3000 military service personnel dead in Iraq, and interviews with people living along Interstate 50 prompted me to write this somewhat frustrated response.
How do you feel the mainstream media is doing in covering the most important questions which face us regarding our military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the so-called "war on terror"?
To the editors of Morning Edition:
Your coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein was as phenomenological as any 24/7 television news channel: a predominant focus on the event itself with very little reflection on historical context, the flawed nature of the trial, or the highly controversial punishment. It was, in a word, propaganda.
Saddam Hussein was not tried for all of his “crimes against humanity” or tried in an international criminal court, because broadening the scope of his trial in this way would have invited unwanted inquiry into the long history of support and cooperation Saddam enjoyed from the United States in committing his crimes up to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. Furthermore it would have given legitimacy to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which the current administration openly rejects because it would inevitably hold Americans accountable for their actions in the context of international human rights violations and “crimes against humanity.”
So what we got instead was a show trial and a medieval-era public execution broadcast around the world by hecklers using cell phone cameras to capture every gruesome detail of death by hanging.
Lacking in your coverage was any real debate about whether execution is just or acceptable. You missed the opportunity to remind Americans that they belong to a minority of nations which still use the death penalty to punish crime (69 countries retain and use the death penalty versus 128 countries which have abolished the death penalty, according to statistics cited by Amnesty International on their website).
And as we passed the grim milestone on December 31 of 3000 service men and women dead in Iraq (over 22,000 wounded, over 350 dead in Afghanistan, and, conservatively, 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties), we have to ask ourselves the hard question of why we are still participating in this failed military occupation (and still calling it “the war in Iraq”).
One reason is our inability to learn the lessons of history – which in this case include our failed war in Vietnam and, more proximately, decades of intrusive foreign policy in the Middle East.
Another reason is that the burden of fighting this war is so unevenly distributed. Nothing illustrates this so well as your interview with the family of a fallen soldier today (American Military deaths in Iraq Reach 3,000), contrasted with the interviews you had with citizens living along Interstate 50 (Taking America’s Political Pulse Along Route 50), all of whom expect action from the new Congress on important domestic concerns, and had to be provoked to comment on the “the war in Iraq”. For most of us in this country, the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have achieved the status of afterthought.
And another reason is that neither our political leadership, nor the media, nor our fellow citizens have the spine to hold President Bush and his administration truly accountable for their actions which have brought us to this place. Were it any other corporate or business enterprise, Mr. Bush would have long since been fired or obliged to resign, for sheer incompetence if no other reason.
As much as I value the content and breadth of NPR news programming in general, there are times when your ability to report outside the box of conventional Washington beltway thinking is so glaringly lacking. This week you have outdone yourselves in the most disappointing way.
Please do better! Your listeners and loyal subscribers – and the citizens of this country and the world – need it!
John F Krotchko, MD
Iraq casualty and other war statistics can be found at:
www.antiwar.com
www.iraqbodycount.net
http://nationalpriorities.org
Photo credits: Images from the Eyes Wide Open exhibition at Centennial Park in downtown Denver, October 9-11 2006, mounted by the American Freinds Service Committee. Photos by John Krotchko.
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