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April 10, 2004
War and Television

Fascinating report on Nightline tonight.

The first segment was from an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad, who has been there on and off for a year, reporting that Iraq is as dangerous as he's ever seen it. He describes journalists being basically locked down in their hotels, having to form convoys to travel just a few blocks. He also describes how the Iraqis who work for American news organizations have taken to telling people, even their own families, that they work for French or Russian television.

One telling story was of an Iraqi ABC translator who attended a press conference. He asked a question, and out of habit identified himself after his question as affiliated with American television. His "heart sank" and when he returned to the base, his colleagues told him he was crazy, that now he was an obvious target.

The second segment deals with the different nature of the news coverage of the war in the Arab world. Al Jazeera and Al-Arabia naturally cover this war from a very different perspective than do our media.

They showed Don Rumsfeld saying the following without a trace of irony on February 12:

We're being damaged, let their be no doubt about it, by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia in that country. They are continuously putting out information that is false and inaccurate."

Hello kettle? This is Rummy. You're black.

He was immediately refuted by a professor of journalism from USC, explaining that it is unfair to label the Arab networks' coverage as propaganda. They are reporting the story from their perspective as we are reporting it from ours. When they focus on Iraqi civilian casualties, we tend to react in disgust and say that they are "sensationalizing" the war, though we don't seem to be able to see that we do the very same thing. We here details of every G.I. killed, and then passing mention of aggregate numbers of Iraqis killed, usually estimates, undoubtedly conservative ones.

This issue strikes me as a fundamental reason why this mission is folly at its core. The people on the "Arab Street" will never come around to our point of view because they will not often be exposed to it in the context that we think they will. By the same token, we will by and large never understand their perspective.

This is why spreading our vision of freedom and democracy is basically misguided and doomed. You can't ram freedom down people's throats at the barrel of a gun. You can't give free access to information and then expect people to only look at your point of view. I truly believe that the Iraqis suffered under Saddam and that all things being equal democracy and freedom are infinitely preferable to tyranny and oppression. Who doesn't?

But all things are not equal. Many years of diplomacy and international pressure may not be dramatic, but it's much more effective. In the end, this will only leave things worse. I can't imagine a scenario in which this ends well for either side.

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