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| War images drain the wells of moral outrage. |
| 2006-08-04 |
| by Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal "Where is the press? Where is the media to see this massacre? Count our dead. Count our body parts." The man complaining this week about the media's inadequate coverage of the Lebanon conflict was a village mayor, Hussein Jamaleddin, whose words and the loss of his son in an Israeli strike were quoted by Associated Press reporter Hussein Dakroub. Later that day, another AP reporter, Hamza Hendawi, filed a graphic description of the funeral: "Weeping as he walked in a funeral procession hours later, Jamaleddin pulled at the limbs of the dead, carried to a cemetery in the bucket of a yellow front-loader." Writing on this page about Lebanon last week, Riz Khan, the host of a program on Al Jazeera's forthcoming English-language TV channel and a former anchor for CNN International, described "the American media's sanitization of the conflict," and "those observing war from the safety of their living rooms." Indeed, "those observing war from the safety of their living rooms" have become the most important political force engaged today in modern warfare. There is now a belief, held for different reasons by pacifists and propagandists, that if the media forces the people in America or Europe to see and read the bloody details of these conflicts, then public opinion will force their leaders, as Kofi Annan would put it, to stop the fighting. . . . Today, print and electronic media are integrated as a force depicting war's carnage and cost. Mere reportage as in WWII has been succeeded by an implicit journalistic moral obligation to delegitimize the use of armed force, "the killing," for political goals. On July 21 as the fighting began, the New York Times's front page published a photograph of a dead person in a black plastic body bag over the headline, "In Tyre, the Dead Wait for the Bombings to End." In the days since, the paper's front-page photographs have been not so much standard journalism as Goya-like compositions on the disasters of this war. If Riz Khan believes the American press is offering a "sanitized" version of Lebanon, I would say he is overreaching. The way war arrives in living rooms nowadays has an effect, and the effect often is revulsion. How could it not be? The thousands of replayings in 2004 of photos from the prison at Abu Ghraib had a political effect. The published photographs and videos of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's humiliations and beheadings of Western captives also had a political effect. One's emotions and politics are routinely jerked now from revulsion to hatred and back. . . . Earlier images of human carnage had already brought calls for a cease-fire. At Qana, Israel's bombs purportedly killed more than 20 children, and this reality of course took the form of pictures transmitted globally and continuously of small dead bodies held aloft, often by the same Lebanese rescue worker, for cameramen and photographers. A New York Post headline over a dead-child's photo said: "Enough." Calls for a cease-fire went up from France, Spain and the U.N.; Israel, in the face of what was reported as "international outrage," declared a sudden, 48-hour cessation. It appeared that the modern means to make palpable the horrors of war had trumped politics to simply "stop the fighting." But then, against this new political reality, Israel resumed military operations. Unlike in the U.S., where Abu Ghraib's photographs quickly sent segments of the political class into active opposition, Israel's political class refocused on the means necessary to achieve its strategic objective--defeating Hezbollah (with U.S. support crucial). A belated ground invasion began this week. Also unlike in the U.S., Israel's population centers were under constant military attack, rather than for one morning. Thus, preventing national extinction remains the more potent moral argument. Images of war serve diverse purposes today. At Qana, the images' intent is to elicit a moral indictment of Israel's tactics and of war generally; at Abu Ghraib, to refute President Bush's stated nobleness of purpose in Iraq. Zarqawi's camcorder inside his house abattoir was meant to dispirit his American opposition "in the safety of their living rooms." But whatever the purpose, a world in which people get fed streams of awful images to drive political conclusions produces a familiar effect: They eventually become inured to the images. Human wells of moral outrage are deep, but not bottomless. If emotional outrage is the basis on which they are expected to make judgments about politically complicated events like Lebanon, many will turn away, rather than subject themselves to a gratuitous, confusing numbing of their sensibilities. This is not progress. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #7 They blow up a school bus here or school and the sh*t will hit the fan so deep them muzzy assholes will forever fear the Great Satan. I guarantee the first MSM asshole that sez disproportinate response gets hung from the nearest tree. |
| Posted by: djohn66 2006-08-04 11:50 |
| #6 "Weeping as he walked in a funeral procession hours later, Jamaleddin pulled at the limbs of the dead, carried to a cemetery in the bucket of a yellow front-loader." Dang it, I knew I missed that opportunity to invest in Caterpillar. They even have 'em in Lebanon now? D90's! |
| Posted by: BA 2006-08-04 10:50 |
| #5 I have a feeling that Mr. Henninger is right. Unfortunately, the average American will just tune out and put his/her ipod back on, at least UNTIL what Manolo describes happens here in the States. Sad, but true. I, for one, as well as most here, recognize the threat and would prefer to exterminate it BEFORE it can touch Israeli or US soil. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-08-04 10:38 |
| #4 Where was the moral outrage in Rhuainda? Iraqi when Saddam was killing everyone? Sudan? Israel dead to suicide bombing in the 90s? The thing is, the "moral outrage" only shows up when it benifits the MSM to show in on the news and fits their political needs. Otherwise, it gets ignored. So don't talk to me about "moral outrage". Mine is fine, and is pointed at Islam. The rest of you MSM idiots can go fuck yourselves. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-08-04 09:47 |
| #3 "Even though most Americans witnessed by distant media the destruction of 9/11 they still in large part have not been touched directly by the terrorist." I think that will soon be coming to an end. I would expect that we will begin to see more and more repeats of the Islam inspired murder in Seattle. And it will get worse. When we have Jihad's detonating themselves on school buses and in malls...etc. We will come to know our enemies as well as the Israeli's. Then, and only then will we be able to do the things necessary to eradicate Islam. "We have yet to come to the understanding that the Israelis as a people have now achieved." Soon. -M |
| Posted by: Manolo 2006-08-04 09:27 |
| #2 Israel is a small country. The unrelenting years of muslim terrorism has effected every family. They all have been first person witnesses to the barbarity of the enemy. They've played the game of land for peace and they still have no peace. They now know that there can be no 'reason', no 'compromise'. Those are the ground rules established by the enemy. The Israelis have learned that no matter what they do, the 'moral outrage' is reserved for them and not the barbarians. They may have finally realized that their safety depends upon ignoring those so 'outraged'. Even though most Americans witnessed by distant media the destruction of 9/11 they still in large part have not been touched directly by the terrorist. They are inured of the danager by the fifth column which distracts the attention from the real threat and projects all the blame on a closer target to serve their short term domestic interests of power. We have yet to come to the understanding that the Israelis as a people have now achieved. |
| Posted by: Uloter Grinenter8414 2006-08-04 09:09 |
| #1 "those observing war from the safety of their living rooms" have become the most important political force engaged today in modern warfare. There is now a belief, held for different reasons by pacifists and propagandists, that if the media forces the people in America or Europe to see and read the bloody details of these conflicts, then public opinion will force their leaders, as Kofi Annan would put it, to stop the fighting. . . . Suspect their assessment is a bit off. An accurate analogy might be, we're all Cowboy's fans and we're watching Drew Henson trounce New England in the Superbowl. More popcorn please. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-08-04 09:02 |