No morality or equivalence

In March 2003, Australia joined Britain and the United States in a campaign of violence that would result in large scale destruction of civilian infrastructure and untold thousands of casualties. On the first day of “shock and awe”, coalition forces dropped several hundred tons of high explosives on Iraq.

The mainstream media gloated over this display of hi tech savagery as if it were a New Year’s Eve fireworks spectacle. Armchair generals and pro-war commentators waxed lyrical about the sophistication of US military power, seemingly indifferent to the carnage and human misery unfolding before them.

The politicians responsible for inciting this callous act of aggression assured us that civilian casualties would be minimal, thanks to the exquisite precision of satellite guided munitions. The people of Iraq, we were told, would greet us as liberators and shower us with flowers.

Toward the end of May 2003, Alexander Downer stood atop the newly “liberated” roof of Saddam International Airport and marvelled at the smouldering ruins of Baghdad. “It feels good” he told his entourage of reporters, “to look out upon a liberated city”.

That night, millions of Iraqis went to bed fearful, hungry and cold. Their city had been shattered, telephone and power lines were down, water and sewage pipes were broken, medical supplies were scarce and security was nonexistent. Thousands of Iraqis had lost jobs, friends, family, limbs and lives.

Not many politicians spoke out against this illegal, unjustified aggression. Very few journalist dared condemn this atrocity or admonish its architects. Nor did they show much concern for the innocent victims of our violence.

But when a few pounds of high explosives were detonated in the London subway, journalists and politicians recoiled in horror, declaring it an evil and barbaric attack by “sub-human filth who must be captured and eliminated”, as Kim Beazley so eloquently put it.

Predictable outrage and hypocritical rhetoric spread like wildfire, “terrorists hate us because of who we are, not what we do... they hate our values, they hate our freedom.” Any suggestion that “terrorist attacks” are inspired by our own acts of violence is vehemently denounced as “moral equivalence”.

There can be no justification for such terrible violence, our politicians declare with an air of righteous indignation. But justifying violence is what our governments and pro-war pundits do all the time, they seek to justify our violence in terms of “defending our values”, “responding to acts of terrorism”, “liberating oppressed peoples”.

The truth is that our violence is all about imposing the neoliberal ideology of  “free market” capitalism, controlling resources vital to the advanced industrial economies of the world and asserting authority via military force.

Indeed, there is no morality here, nor is there any equivalence. A thousand tons of high explosives used in Iraq, a few kilos in London. Whole cities smashed in Iraq, minor structural damage in London. Ten thousand deaths in Iraq, less than a hundred in London. Simply no comparison.

Our tough talking politicians seem to think the best way to deal with “terrorism” is to up the ante, escalate the violence, bomb more towns, level more homes, kill more individuals. The pro-war moralists want to believe that our violence is noble and legitimate. They talk about spreading freedom and democracy as a justification for mass murder. Collateral damage is unfortunate, they say, but not morally wrong, because our intentions are good.

Of course, such distinctions are academic. It is the type and quantity of explosives that determines a bomb’s lethality, not the intentions of the bomber. Our bombs cause more harm than “terrorist” bombs, because ours are bigger and far more numerous. Our “values” and “intentions” do not in anyway ameliorate the harm done by our bombs.

It is about time our warmongering politicians and their media hacks realized this fact. Their turgid love of military force is reaping conflict and provoking hostility. Their reckless, ill-conceived “War on Terror” is undermining international security and exposing our social and economic systems to the vagaries of fourth generation warfare.

We cannot hope to protect our way of life by escalating violence without regard for the human cost on both sides of the conflict. If we are a civilised democracy, as we claim to be, it really is our collective responsibility to demand an end to our part in this spiral of violence.

And if we fail to challenge our governments and hold them to account, if we continue to ignore the effect of our violent and predatory foreign policy, then we can expect evermore “terrorist” violence.

Lies, Laws and the Media

The exposure of deception that triggered the spat that led to the outing of Valerie Plame has landed someone in jail. It is a delicious irony that journalist Judith Miller, who worked so hard and did so much to help promote the Bush administration’s fantasy about WMD in Iraq, ends up the first to go behind bars in this whole sordid affair.

Not surprisingly, the self-obsessed navel-gazing acolytes of the mainstream media think this story is about them, their privileges as the honest broker, the courageous, objective, impartial warriors of news gathering, scouring the horizons for information, fearlessly challenging authority, reporting with fairness and independence.

In fact, most of them sit at their desks all day, pampering themselves with donuts and milk coffee, flirting, farting and waiting for a phone call from their “confidential sources”, red hot tips, straight from the lips of a “senior official who wishes to remain anonymous”, and we’re supposed to swallow this crap and marvel.

Give me a break. If these guys think it’s more important to protect their sources than assist the investigation of a crime, then perhaps they need to change their occupation. Isn’t it bad enough that we have to put up with this sort of anti-social, anti-democratic behaviour from our political leaders? Do journalists expect the public to simply accept being lied to, misinformed, hoodwinked, led up the garden path... by journalists who are more concerned about currying favour with the “powers” than with exposing deceit and corruption in high office.

Anonymous sources do not automatically bestow credibility. As Richard Stengel at the Philadelphia Inquirer opined, such sources “should be used to level the playing field between the powerful and the powerless... But more often than not these days, they have become a device to preserve and enhance power rather than question it - a tool journalists use to advance their own careers rather than the disinterested pursuit of the truth.”

Journalists need to lift their game if they wish to regain credibility for their profession. Their appalling collective malperformance during the pre-war phase of operation Iraq has seriously undermined public confidence in the ability of journalists to discern fact from fiction, let alone penetrate the obfuscation that passes for “media management” in the contemporary political environment. The Valerie Plame affair is a classic example of this “media management” by government.

Frank Rich, writing for the New York Times, compares the scandel to Watergate, noting that “the most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail.” Those origins being the litany of lies Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Rich concludes his editorial with a pertinent question and an astute observation... “has [special prosecutor] Patrick Fitzgerald moved on to perjury and obstruction of justice possibly committed by those who tried to hide their roles in that outing? If so, it would mean the Bush administration was too arrogant to heed the most basic lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.”

Exposing the name of an undercover CIA operative is a federal offence under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The fact that Ms Plame worked covertly on WMD nonproliferation makes the disclosure of her identity all the more treacherous, since many if not all the “clients” and “contacts” of the clandestine network she worked with in the CIA front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, and their role of gathering information to help defend America, have now been placed in jeopardy and rendered useless to the CIA. By revealing Ms Plame’s identity, certain individuals have done real and irreparable harm to US national security. This is exactly the sort of misconduct the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was designed to combat.

But it’s not the only statute applicable in this case. As Citizen Spook has noted, the indictment brought against Larry Franklin last week for conspiracy to communicate national defense information in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793, could equally apply in the case involving the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity. And given that the disclosure occured during a time of war (the Global War on Terror), the matter could even attract indictments under Title 18, USC, Section 794, which stipulates in part b)...

Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, communicates, or attempts to elicit any information ... relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.

Which should give an indication of just how serious this matter really is, and may explain why the adminstration has decided to redefine the “war on terror” as the “struggle against violent extremism”.

What the mainstream media needs to realize is that this story is not about them, it’s not about their precious sources, it’s not about the First Amendment, it’s not about free speech or confidentiality, or loyalty, or favours... it’s about something far more tangible and a lot more important than Ms Miller and some of her colleagues seem to appreciate - it’s about crimes in high places ... get it!?

It’s about an administration that has no regard for the truth and zero tolerance for dissent. It’s about an arrogant, corrupt administration that has lied us into war, plundered the coffers, desecrated civil liberties... it’s an administration that slinks around in armoured convoys and displays a pathological obsession with secrecy. It bullies, bribes and coerces without qualms, showing nothing but contempt for human rights, labour rights, international law, the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions.

Media darlings, get with it. Wake up to the real world, have a good hard look and a long hard think about the way you’re reporting it.