Courage Under Fire


by Theron Dash

Now that The War is over, it's time for courage under fire. People whose contributions to the fighting were made in front of their TV sets are giddy with vicarious triumph, and like bullies in the wake of defeated second graders they're out for more easy blood. They'll pounce on anything relatively defenseless ---actors, the Dixie Chicks, even French fries, and oh yes, the First Amendment---that stirs them to vent their mean spirits. And those whose only principle is whatever is selling at the moment are cynically pandering to this spineless ugliness.

It's another time of testing, as was the Blacklist 50s, the FBI Love It or Leave It 60s, the Enemies List 70s, the flag waving Reaganomics 80s, the Gulf War I 90s. There's little point in trying to figure out how bad it is in comparison. It's plenty bad enough.

The media is being tested, and it's failing and flailing. Most Americans, it is said, got their news about the Iraq war from cable news channels. The most popular cable news channel is the most radical: Fox News, which foments a continuum of opinion ranging from the fundamentalist to the fascist. The news coverage is only marginally different.

The other cable channels. CNN and MSNBC, were shamefully competing to be even more rabid, sensationalizing and flag-enshrouded. It is probably too much to expect American television to cover a war that involves U.S. troops with complete objectivity. An American news channel is going to report from the American point of view. But that's a far cry from what they're doing, which is to stifle the least criticism of even the political basis for the war, let alone report fairly on the facts of what happened and what is happening now. It's one thing to cover the deaths of Americans more thoroughly than the deaths of Iraqi soldiers. It's quite another thing to refuse to cover the deaths of Iraqis, civilians or soldiers, except now and then to refer to them euphemistically.

Consider some of what's happened at MSNBC. Just before the war started, when it was clear that it was going to happen and all the news operations were gearing up for it, MSNBC canceled the Phil Donahue show (cable TV's only more than entirely frivilous yet non-radical right talk show), ostensibly because of poor ratings. But an internal memo reportedly claimed that Donahue would be a ""difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The memo warned that the Donahue show could be "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

More recently, one of MSNBC's star reporters, Ashley Banfield, was called on the carpet by her bosses for saying in a talk in Manhattan, Kansas that Americans didn't see the real war on TV. And no, she wasn't being criticized for uttering an obvious truth.

There are two basic reasons for such bizarre media behavior, exemplified by two other recent outrageous incidents. The Huron (Michigan) Daily Tribune killed an anti-war column by its columnist and reporter, Kurt Hauglie. He was told it was because it might upset readers.

That's one reason. The warm feelings of triumphalist readers and viewers can't be disturbed by the complexities revealed by unsavory truths or troubling points of view. The folks at home might get mad at the newspaper and not buy it, or at the TV station and not watch it. (Hauglie resigned, by the way.)

Then there's the case of Ed Gernon, a veteran TV producer for CBS. He worked on the upcoming miniseries on Hitler. He was dutifully promoting it when he made the mistake of suggesting there were parallels between Germany during Hitler's rise and reign, and America today. But CBS, the erstwhile network of Edward R. Murrow, didn't suggest to him that maybe he was trying a little too hard to sell the series as relevant, and it didn't reassign him to the editing room for awhile and leave the promotion tour to others. No. CBS fired him. That's it. You're gone.

Why? Because he pointed out, correctly if ungrammatically, that Germany was "an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunge the whole nation into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now."

And so by firing him, CBS, rather neatly if absurdly, proved his point. That's the second reason---and since it's really the reason behind the first reason, it's the whole reason: a nation gripped by fear.


Maybe it's time to take another look at the national behavior since September 11, 2001. Since that date, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died preventable deaths. Millions of people are suffering because our government and our electorate are neglecting crucial problems. Our health care system is on the verge of collapse. In the blink of an eye, in the space of a single year, there are formerly middle class people who've gone from a reasonably comfortable life with expectations of a secure retirement and with full medical coverage, to suffering and death as the result of a minor ailment unattended because of this bizarre economy and dysfunctional health insurance system.

Meanwhile the number of black children living in extreme poverty is at a twenty year high. It's gone up 50% just since 1999, thanks to the neglected effects of "welfare reform." I don't doubt that the number of all children as well as adults of all races, creeds and genders in extreme and not as extreme poverty has also gone up. Unemployment continues, and benefits are running out.

Thanks to the cuts in state spending unrelieved by a federal government controlled by political extremists obsessed with enriching the rich, rewarding corporate pals and extending its power, our educational institutions are next on the deathwatch. Need I go on?

But instead of considering all of this, Americans seem obsessed with one event, and it's scared them. It was understandable and even sane to be scared by September 11, for the next weeks and even months. But thanks to that fear, excesses were permitted and encouraged. Civil liberties, inalienable rights, they could all go. It was most important to feel safe. Turn a blind eye to the cronyism and corruption in Washington, the fundamentalist takeover of national life and international relations, it doesn't matter...as long as we can feel safe.

So we send our high tech engines of death and devastation to destroy the ragged wily men who committed this outrage, or at least (since the ones who actually did it foiled us by dying in the process) the ragged wily men who helped them, encouraged and fed them. And after Afghanistan was crushed, and well before it's been rebuilt (if it ever will be), it was time to send those engines to crush another country that looked like it might someday be a threat, whose leader was distinguished from a number of other vicious dictators by his approval of 9-11 (as well as his oil), and of course all those chemical and biological and maybe nuclear weapons he had ready to deliver to Oshkosh and Santa Rosa. (Apparently they got lost in the mail.)

In the meantime, international terrorism has so quieted that there is less of it than at any time since the 1960s, even though the devils Osama and Saddam are probably still alive. Western efforts to root out terrorists and cut off their resources has doubtless been partly responsible for this relative quiet, but the fact is that no Americans have been killed by terrorists since 2001, but lots of Americans have been killed or faced with immense suffering due to other needlessly neglected problems.

Yet we apparently still live in fear. We'll do anything to feel safer, to feel powerful and right. So it may not be too soon to wonder what this country is really made of. Because this is starting to look like cowardice. Yes, 9-11 was terrible, and there will probably be terrors to come. But there are people in many places around the world who live in terror that is far worse, every day of their lives. The people of London during the Blitz lived in more danger every day for years, and they did not snivel or strut. Americans are more in danger from drivers on drugs and cell phones, falls in the bathroom, fat-drenched fast food, second-hand smoke (while the U.S. is trying to torpedo yet another international treaty, this time limiting the death-dealing scourge of Big Tobacco) and getting shot by friends and family and other good Americans with too easy access to profitable guns than they are from terrorists. These days they are also more in danger from not getting adequate medical care, from retiring to a cardboard box on the street, and from wallowing in abject but self-righteous ignorance than they are from a shoe bomb or a half-dozen terrorist attacks on the scale of 9-11.

None of this is about effective action to prevent terrorist acts, especially the big, really devastating kind, like causing a nuclear plant meltdown or throwing an entire city into a panic. Those are problems like any other---a matter of forethought, planning, resources, action: you do your best and if it happens anyway, you deal with it as best you can. (Whether we're even doing that right is another question, and the answer might be, not really.)

There may very well be more American deaths caused by terrorism. Are we so coddled and deluded that we'll let the country fall apart because our current dad-figures tell us we have to or the boogy man will get us?

This is about fear and the manipulation of fear. It's about a nation that lets its fear be manipulated. Americans have great reserves of intelligence, courage, resourcefulness and heart. But it's fear that's being encouraged and exploited. And it's fear that's running the show.

So just as we all need to grow up and realize that terrorism is one of the dangers of this world (especially when we refuse to acknowledge injustice that contributes to it), we have to face the kind of country we are in at this moment. We need to rally around those who the purveyors of fear are targeting, by their aggressive action or by their neglect. We're under fire and we need the courage to survive it, and the presence of mind to encourage those activities and ideas that represent our vision of a responsible society and a worthy future.