Pandora’s Box

Ever since April of this year, there have been over 100 kidnappings of foreign civilians in Iraq. There have been scores more Iraqis that have been kidnapped. The majority of these civilians have been released, but about 30 have been executed. Out of those 30 there were a few whose gruesome executions were filmed and later the videos posted on the internet. Everyone remembers Nick Berg, and the raw, unalloyed fear in the eyes of the Korean Kim Sun-il seconds before his throat was slit. They were powerful images that affected everyone who saw them.

Recently there was an article on the BBC debating whether the media should cover these kidnappings or not; the argument against giving coverage was that it plays right into the hands of the terrorist kidnappers, giving their cause publicity. Margaret Thatcher is of the view that starving these degenerates of ’the oxygen of publicity’ is the right answer. The question everyone is asking is whether or not the publicity of a hostage’s plight encourages kidnappers to take other people hostage. There are many reporters and editors of the view that hostage crises should not be covered, that such inhumane treatment should not be telecast. I have only one thing to say, if the media can show Saddam Hussain haggard, distraught and unkempt after his capture, if the media can ’embed’ troops into coalition units while they wreak havoc on the Iraqi military and civilians, if the media can show foolish 18 year olds blasting death metal music over their tank’s speakers to pump themselves up before going into a city, then the media must show the plight of these hostages. Anything else reeks of hypocrisy. Since the start of the Iraq war, estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties range from 13,000 (conservative) to over 30,000 (not so conservative). What sickens me is that no one denounces or deplores the deaths of those civilians, whereas when one Nick Berg, citizen of the US, is killed, there is a huge hue and cry. Is an American life worth more than an Iraqi life? Looking at the news media one can not but reach that conclusion. And what is worse, an American civilian killed by insurgents/terrorists/crazed lunatics, or an Iraqi civilian killed by uniformed soldiers of the US armed forces? If you listen to Mr. Rumsfeld’s point of view on it he would state that ’collateral damage’ is an unfortunate inevitability in armed conflict. If that’s the case then why not call the kidnappings/beheadings ’collateral damage’ as well, why call them terrorism? But lets call a spade a spade, for the beheadings ARE a terrorist act, because they instill fear in people. What, then, may I ask is the presence of US soldiers on Iraqi soil? I’m sure an American soldier carrying an M16 instills fear in Iraqis, the recent bombings of Fallujah probably terrorised the civilian populace of that town to death (some of them literally).

Another thing that must be kept in mind is the role of the coalition forces in these situations. For all intents and purposes (despite Mr. Bush’s blatantly photo-op driven ’mission accomplished’ speech on the US aircraft carrier) Iraq is still an active war zone. Civilians (non-Iraqi civilians) have no job being there, if they go they put themselves in harm’s way. Unfortunately, rather than discouraging or disallowing civilians from entering Iraq, the coalition authorities have made it extremely lucrative. Let’s not kid ourselves, apart from a very few people, all the civilians in Iraq are there to make a quick buck. There are notable exceptions like the two Simonas from Italy who were working with an NGO. If a truck driver in Iraq is paid $120,000 a year, I think we can all guess the reason why he went. Again, the blame lies not with the people who went there to work (who can judge what kind of difficulty or desperation led them to it), but with the coalition authorities and their subcontractors (Halliburton et al) that are paying these exhorbitant sums to attract people to work in what is an active war zone. This is a facet of the hostage taking scenario that has, to my knowledge, NEVER been covered by the news media.

Unfortunately, there is no solution in sight. This war was waged on more than one false pretext. Some of these would be:

1) There were WMDs in Iraq
2) Iraq was a threat to the good old US of A
3) Iraqis wanted to be ’liberated’ from Saddam by the US
4) They would welcome US troops with open arms
5) Before the invasion, there was terrorist activity going on in Iraq

Due to these, now the US is in a quagmire that seems to be getting deeper by the day. They have absolutely no exit strategy, they have no international backing worth speaking of (call me crazy, but I don’t think that yes-men like the UK and inconsequentials like Romania count towards international legitimacy). No country is willing to send its troops to Iraq. American and British troops stationed in Iraq are getting weary and frustrated at things like unannounced extensions in tours of duty and cancelled discharges from the military. The law and order situation requires that there be an effective security force in place before the US can start pulling its troops out, but Iraqi recruits for the security forces are targeted for bombings frequently. The devastation of the infrastructure requires that it be rebuilt, but the foreign specialists who can do that are being kidnapped and beheaded on tape. In short, the US is up shit creek without a certain instrument.