Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : WAR & CRISIS REPORTING
Pictures Worthy of Contemplation by Walter Cronkite 
Pictures Worthy of Contemplation By Walter Cronkite In the propaganda that swirled around World War I there appeared the claim that this was "the war to end wars." It turned out that this was an empty promise and an impossible dream. The claim was made in an effort to justify a war so murderous and destructive that it offended all peoples including those who started it and those who saw it coming but failed to stop it. Perhaps a similar claim should be made about the U.S.-Iraqi war that opened the 21st century. The escalation of the firepower with which nations could equip their military today cast an entirely new light on the face of war. The explosive power packed into bombs, the electronic precision with which they could be guided to their targets, pilotless airplanes and virtually indestructible tanks, television and computers that kept combat commanders advised of the exact location of friend and foe - it was Star Wars all right, but Star Wars transferred to Planet Earth. No doubt about it - it was our first "push button" war. It must have alerted us by now to the danger that lurks in the future: the future President of the United States decides on war; the Constitution still being in effect, the Congress grants its approval; the lights go on in a special bunker under the White House basement as men and women in uniform take their places in front of television screens and panels of buttons; the red lights in front of them turn to green and they attack the buttons. The bombers are on their way, their deadly weapons already programmed to drop on the targets chosen perhaps weeks before, or possibly, in dire crisis, decided minutes earlier. World War III (or is it World War IV or V or VI) is underway. At this point, in the late spring of 2003, only weeks after the Iraqi war, we haven't heard of the equally miraculous defensive weapons that presumably our military is planning, in the rare possibility that some other nation should match our push-button offensive capability. Yes, Star Wars lurks in the transistors that stand ready to answer the push-button signal from the Defense Command headquarters, perhaps in that White House basement bunker. Meanwhile, as we begin to relax from the hours spent at our television sets we can review what we have just seen - the end of traditional warfare, the birth of war's modern age. The technological advances that changed the face of war also brought the war into our living rooms. That smacks of the phrase so often spoken during the Vietnam War: Television was bringing the war to the nation's dinner tables. That reference was to the fact that the three television networks of the time included in their dinnertime news summaries, film taken one to three or four days earlier of action in the forests and the fields of the Vietnam battleground. The motion pictures, taken by daring camera crews in the heart of the combat, had been flown to the United States to be developed and edited before reaching the TV screens. The Iraqi war, in contrast, was brought to the nation's dinner tables in real time. We watched as the bombs exploded in glorious color on Baghdad's palaces. We saw and heard frontline war correspondents give us the play-by-play report as artillery blasted and small-arms fire rattled in the background. This presentation of the Iraqi war was made possible by technological progress and the courtesy of the Defense Department. Stung by what many superior officers believed was television's part in turning many Americans against the Vietnam War, the military had banned reporters and photographers from accompanying the troops in its subsequent military incursions in Panama and Grenada and the real war of the Persian Gulf. In Gulf War I, it even insisted that an officer be present when the rare permission was granted to interview a soldier or two. The blackout left the nation without an independent history and with only the military's own version of the first war with Iraq. In the ensuing years there was a drumbeat, insistent if not particularly noisy, from individuals and news organizations offended and deeply concerned by the Pentagon's denial of the people's right to know how their military performed in their name. Whether because of these complaints or the political nature of the Iraqi commitment, the Pentagon reversed itself for Iraqi War II. Recognizing the capabilities of satellite communications, the Pentagon performed the almost impossible task of simultaneously opening up and restricting access of war correspondents to the combat troops. It invented the ingenious concept of embedment: the assignment by the military of accredited correspondents to specific units. The correspondents were pledged to remain with those units for the duration and to obey whatever restrictions on coverage the commander of the unit felt necessary for operational security. With those restrictions, the correspondents and camera operators were permitted access to satellites to relay to the States their reports, in real time, as the action took place. This was in sharp contrast to the press coverage during World War II and Vietnam. In World War II, in the great land battles of Europe, accredited correspondents and photographers were free to roam the entire battlefront with the key restriction that their copy or pictures had to be cleared by censors to avoid the inadvertent revelation to the enemy of military secrets. The system worked extraordinarily well. In Vietnam, correspondents could accompany troops to wherever they could hitch a ride, and there was no censorship. Since nearly all combat was between small units and there were no mass movements, there were few military secrets to be revealed. That system - or lack of one - kept the American public well informed of our soldiers' problems, their setbacks and their heroism. The candor did not set so well with the military leadership, leading to those post-Vietnam vows that the press would be contained in any future conflict. The Pentagon's new policy for Iraq II led to the accreditation of more than 2,000 reporters, photographers and camera operators. The large majority was assigned to cover Central Command headquarters in Qatar, and, indeed, the Pentagon spent an estimated $250,000 building a state-of-the-art theater, designed by a Hollywood Art Director, for daily press briefings. Some 600 correspondents and camerapeople were "embedded" with the combat troops. Many saw action while some were disappointed to find that the units to which they were assigned saw little actual combat. Ten journalists were killed in action, two are still missing, and four died of natural causes, including NBC's much-admired David Bloom. In the first blush of victory while the correspondents were still embedded, it seemed that the military and the press agreed that the system had worked well. Indeed, during the war few complaints were heard that commanders had restricted the reporting of those attached to their units. What problems there were will see the light in months and years ahead as the inevitable books pour from the reporters' computers. As to the war itself, as one of the commanding generals said to the chagrin of his superiors, the war they found was not the war they had trained for. Almost in the earliest hours as the American forces left their Kuwait staging areas and crossed into Iraq proper, they claimed to have liberated with scarcely a shot their first towns. Those claims had to be withdrawn as irregular Iraqi forces staked their own claims on those villages. From there north to Baghdad it was to be a series of sometimes brief if intensive firefights as the American forces encountered the Fedayeen, the irregular but fierce forces loyal to Saddam who fought to defend towns, crossroads and vital bridges. Perhaps provoked by the small scale of the action, retired American generals began popping up on television talk shows, criticizing the overall battle plan. In particular they feared that the United States had not committed a large enough force to overcome the vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard divisions that presumably were waiting for the Americans in Baghdad. Probably the Iraqis' morale was shattered by the heavy precision bombing of the capital itself and the unchallenged and devastating air attacks on their own forces, but whatever the cause, the Iraqi Army virtually faded into the desert. It simply disappeared along with its leader, Saddam Hussein, himself. As American troops swept into Baghdad virtually unopposed, victory was assured. It had been accomplished with the loss of 137 American troops and 32 British, tragic but not nearly as costly as many had anticipated. The Iraqi loss had not even been estimated weeks after the fighting, but it was believed to be in the thousands, both military and civilian. The greatest concern of the American leadership had been that the allied forces would have to battle street-by-street, building-by-building through the crowded metropolis of Baghdad before securing victory. With the disappearance of the Republican Guard, that was not necessary, but as well prepared as the American leadership was for war, it turned out it was not nearly so well prepared for peace. American troops were met in Baghdad's streets not by hostile troops but by a civilian population apparently turned bitter and hostile by the riots and looting of their own making and the clear absence of an American plan to police the conquered city. The disorder provided another tableau for American photographers, this one buttressing the already existing worry over the nation's future in a conquered land. But despite all of those exciting, riveting television reports from daring correspondents and camerapeople there was something missing, something very precious. It was the luxury of thoughtful contemplation. The problem with the moving picture is that it moves. We are inclined to cry out as the camera sweeps over a complicated scene: "Hold it! Wait a minute! Stop there! What was that fellow in the foreground holding? What's going on there in the back?" History is, undoubtedly, richly illuminated as it is captured by the television cameras, but the history to be absorbed and contemplated is to be found in those pictures we can examine and study at our leisure, the photographs to be found within the binding of a book. |