Eighteen months ago the so-called leader of the free world, George Bush, told us the war in Iraq was over and that major combat operations were completed. Our local satraps fell into line and expounded the virtues of the technical ‘achievements’ that led to an early ‘cessation of hostilities’ and how ‘just’ the conflict had been. We now find they were all lying – again.
Today marks a day of remembrance, Armistice Day, observed here and in other Allied countries as citizens take a silent moment to listen for the voices of the slaughtered. The end of the "War to end all wars" saw ten million human lives erased and tens of millions more forever suffering the scars of physical and psychological trauma. It’s hard to imagine what it was like in Australia at the start of World War I. However in raw figures it is not inaccurate to say the we paid a higher sacrifice per head of population than any of the other Allied nations.
From a population of about five million approximately 300,000 young men served between 1914 and 1918. If we take away from the population figures all those who were not of eligible to ‘serve’ (women, children, older men and, of course Indigenous Australians who weren’t even counted) we find that of the total available cohort of eligible men one in two served. Of the 300,000, about 60,000 were killed either on the battlefield or died from their wounds while under military care. That means one in ten service age men were killed and of the total number over a ¼ were wounded. The odds of being killed were one in five. The odds of being wounded were one in two. Eighty six years later we should be hearing about the reality of war and not just viewing the pixilated "wow" pictures sent back by the military propaganda machine and its stenographers –the embedded ‘journalists’.
I have never experienced war and the closest my family has been to war was my dad’s time during the bombing of Darwin in the 40’s. But if we take a leaf from the propagandists like Donald Rumsfeld we hear that "war is a dirty business". World War I war historian C.E.W. Bean describes the way Australian soldiers were killed on a battlefield. He wrote "[they] are simply turned in there as into some ghastly giant mincing machine". No fancy technology. No pixels. No ideological clouding of his reporting. "Giant mincing machine". Unlike his colleagues today Bean was attempting to be dispassionate and tell it like it was. No embedding. No cosying up to the majors and generals.
Compare Bean’s description to that offered by a "journalist" on the news the other day. Australian ‘journalist’ Michael Ware was describing the assault on Fallujah by using the inclusive "we". He said ‘we are approaching the middle of the city’ and ‘we are coming under heavy fire’ and ‘we are taking cover’. On the surface there is nothing really obnoxious about these comments. However, if we take them apart we find that there is something intrinsically sinister about a ‘journalist’ identifying him or herself as part of the war machine without identifying that that is exactly what they are.
Ware and his colleagues who have been "embedded" are allowed in as part of the military propaganda machine. Just a few short months ago Ware was telling Andrew Denton that he was trying to earn the trust of the Iraqis so he could report fairly. Now he includes himself with the invaders. Unlike Dean, Ware and his colleagues in Iraq are no longer able to separate the ideology that has driven this war from the humanity it steals. I am yet to hear Ware or any other mainstream journalist report, as British poet John Mansfield did of a battlefield scene, that "there was a cat eating a man's brain...they were shovelling parts of men into blankets"(1).
Sure we hear reports and see pictures of dead people but we don’t see the dying – unless we go to the movie. We don’t hear the hours of groaning and crying and screaming as men, women or children die with their guts strewn about them. We don’t see the images or hear the sounds of the soldiers dying in their Humvies after an IED rips it apart. We don’t see journalistic poetry that allows for a real humanity and helps us to understand the futility of war. We no longer believe the now empty rhetoric of our so-called leaders who express their "sympathy" for the "victims" of the war. The dead and wounded are not victims of some inevitable outcome. They are dead, dying or wounded because of the direct, conscious decisions taken by ideologues who decreed the war should start. Even now, after two years and more of the farce called "Operation Iraqi Freedom" the ideologues still feel they are justified.
Poet/soldier Seigfried Sassoon, who was renowned for his want to wander off into the battlefield on his own (no embedding in the trenches of the Somme), wrote of his disillusionment of the war commanders in this way:
Good morning, good morning, the General said,
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers Owen smiled at are most of them dead
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
Sassoon also wrote of the suicide of soldiers who, faced with death at the hand of the enemy or out of shear desperate fear, turned on its head any notion of the brave patriot fighting for King and country. Robert Graves described one incident in which troops turned on their superior officer and bayoneted him to death.
Today we find stage-managed events taking place and broadcast, not as what they truly are – propaganda - but as if they are reality. We find embedded so-called ‘journalists’ who, under threat of removal from the ‘battlefield’, report only what they are told and in the way they are told to tell it. Perhaps they should take a line from Sassoon who wrote that he would not return to the French theatre because, "I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings".
Sassoon and the poet/journalists/soldiers of his day were far more engaged and observant of what was happening around them. They wrote what they saw and had no need to resort to lies and deception. I can only imagine that in the reality of war it is not really possible to exaggerate the carnage and suffering. Perhaps our well coiffured news anchors in their pancake make-up along with their never ending stream of ‘experts’ and ‘reporters’, who have dismally failed to report the effects of the war on the humans who are involved in it, would do to take a moment to reflect on the life and words of Edward Thomas.
Thomas was a young poet who decided to enlist in the British army. First point: If Ware and his ‘journalist’ colleagues want to declare ‘we are advancing’ then they should sign up and put their money where their mouth is as Thomas and Sassoon did.
Thomas was married with two young children. Point two: His patriotism was not fostered by the thought of fame and fortune in pursuing the great "scoop".
Thomas wrote, ". . .Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My Subject is War, and the Pity of War, The Poetry is in the Pity."
Point three: these men who reported what they saw did so through a lens of humanity. They were dirty, hungry, scared and fully engaged as soldiers in battle.
The war is not over. The lie, broadcast around the world and unchallenged in any substantial way by the corporate and mainstream press, prevails. In the meantime men, women and children die in ever more sophisticated ways at the receiving end of depleted uranium tipped shells fired from Apache Helicopters and AC130 gunships by boys young enough to be my son or your brother. And all this is ignored for the video opportunity no matter how pixilated, fuzzy or out of focus just so we can be reminded of how well we kill people at the end of high-tech weapons.
Perhaps we need to take some during the minute silence to reflect on our part in attempting to stop this war. Perhaps we should take the time to read the history our so- called political leaders ignore and remind ourselves of the pain felt by our grandparents as they found out about the death of their mates and loved ones. Only if we acquaint ourselves with the lessons of history will we be able to better prepare for a humane, just and lasting, peaceful, future.
(1) Anthony Burke, Security: an Australian genealogy, PhD thesis.