THE FACE OF WAR

The face of war is ugly and misshapen yet somehow we are drawn to peer intently at the television screen bringing it to us, as the banner in the corner reminds us, “LIVE”. It is not the faux violence of the WWF. Nor is it the real possibility of death and destruction presented in the guise of an automobile race. The sounds we are hearing are the sounds of live fire directed with lethal intent. The smoke we see is from live explosions intended to being death and destruction to real people in real time.

We listen to speeches and press conferences telecast from Baghdad, London, Washington and the Middle East. Iraqi’s describe victories in the battles in which we witness the application of the Allies’ overwhelming force. Washington denies the loss of helicopters while we see an intact Apache surrounded by rejoicing Iraqis. Truth is submerged in the propaganda from both sides and disguised in the tailored dispatches of embedded correspondents as they bring us sanitized versions of events. Our ubiquitous talking heads comment endlessly on the same “facts” repeated equally endlessly until it is hard to distinguish today’s action from yesterday’s battles.

We called Vietnam the “Six O’clock War” as film flown home gave us accounts of completed operations with its images of the danger and heroism of battles in which the outcome had been determined and reported. The First Iraqi War was the province of the Pentagon briefer who showed us the “Video Game War”. Now just 12 years later this Second Iraqi War has embedded correspondents and real-time video links to the battle field. It is bullet to bullet coverage on the cable news-entertainment channels. It is the world’s first “LIVE-From the Front” war

With the embedded correspondents bringing the war to our television sets war has become a spectator sport for some and a nightmare for those who seek to control the flow of information to score political points. The same real time information that reaches the Commanders at Central Command flows into our television sets and we see the reality behind the spinners’ skewing of facts. We are fascinated with watching the fire-fights and the enemy’s propaganda shows of our dead and captured soldiers. We are carried across time zoned into the war and the war is carried, inexorably into us.

The television screen has become a mirror held up to the reality of warfare into which we gaze. The disfigured face that is reflected in the mirror is our own.