Showing posts with label War on terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War on terror. Show all posts

Saturday 24 June 2023

Why is US Media Blind to American War Atrocities?

Today I am obliged to share this text excerpted from Norman Solomon’s new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. On the first day of March 2022, visitors to the New York Times homepage saw a headline across the top of their screens in huge capital letters: ROCKET BARRAGE KILLS CIVILIANS.

It was the kind of breaking news banner headline that could have referred to countless US missile attacks and other military assaults during the previous two decades, telling of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.

But those wars on terror, killings did not qualify for huge banner headlines. What stirred the Times to quickly publish one about civilian deaths was—as reported on the front page of its print edition, “A deadly Russian rocket assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that raised new alarms about how far the Kremlin was willing to go to subjugate its smaller neighbor.”

During the months that followed, the New York Times was among thousands of American outlets devoting the kind of news coverage to Russia’s war in Ukraine that would have been unthinkable while reporting on US warfare.

Early in April, 40 days after the Russian invasion began a jarring headline in all capitals—“HORROR GROWS OVER SLAUGHTER IN UKRAINE”—spanned the top of the front page of the Times print edition.

During April, 14 stories on the newspaper’s front page were primarily about civilian deaths as a result of the Russian invasion, all of which appeared at the top of the page, researchers found Fairness and Accuracy in reporting.

During a comparable period—after the US invaded Iraq—the Times published only one story about civilian deaths at the hands of the US military on the front page.

By any consistent standard, the horrors that the US military had brought to so many civilians since the autumn of 2001 were no less terrible for the victims than what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

But the US media coverage has been vastly more immediate, graphic, extensive, and outraged about Russia’s slaughter than America’s slaughter.

On the rare occasions when a major US news outlet provided in-depth reporting of civilian deaths caused by American forces, the pieces were usually retrospective, appearing long after the fact—postmortems with little political impact and scant follow-up, hardly making a peep in media echo chambers.

No matter how sophisticated its high-tech weaponry, the large-scale Russian warfare in Ukraine is barbaric. That the same could also be said about American warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq was a truth nearly taboo to utter in US mass media.

Both the United States and Russia had brazenly flouted international law, crossing borders and persisting with massive lethal force.

Coherent principles would condemn and illuminate each instance. But, despite press freedoms in the United States, very few big-name journalists and their imitators in the profession have been willing to break ranks with the gist of Washington’s official war narratives, which are, at bottom, not much more nuanced than assuming that America’s exemplary national character has been mobilized to defeat the unmitigated evil of the foe.

Nationalism masquerading as journalism covers war in darkness and light, telling us for whom the bell tolls. And so, when Russia invaded Ukraine and proceeded to terrorize, kill, and maim, the US media were all hands on deck with empathetic, poignant reporting via TV, radio, print, and online outlets.

But when American missiles and gravity bombs hit population centers over the previous two decades, the human tragedies rarely got anything more than short shrift in the US media.

The extreme differences in the quantity and tone of coverage reflected—and reinforced—the agendas of war makers based in Washington.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New Press

 

Saturday 22 September 2018

Do the US citizens know how many people have been killed using tax payers’ money?


A few days back I posted a blog “US: Peace Broker or War Monger” and my conclusion was “United States is the biggest war monger”. This morning I read one of the most popular Global Research 2017 articles, its tile is “US has killed more than 20 million people in 37 victim nations since World War II. This prompted me to arrive at another conclusion “The US Citizens have hardly bothered to find out where tax payers’ money is being used”. I have taken extracts from this article to remind the US citizens to open up their eyes and try to stop the government from spending their money on wars.
After the catastrophic attacks of 9/1, monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger was inculcated in the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing the same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple. Although, Americans understand in the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by their government was soon overshadowed by an accelerated “war on terrorism.” The efforts of US citizens must continue to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will help in addressing the question “How many 9/11s has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?”
The causes of wars are complex. In some instances nations other than the US may have been responsible for more deaths, but if the involvement of United States appeared to have been a necessary cause of a war or conflict it was considered responsible for the deaths in it. In other words they probably would not have taken place if the US had not used the heavy hand of its power. The military and economic power of the United States was crucial.
This study reveals that US military forces were directly responsible for about 10 million to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars. The Korean War also includes Chinese deaths while the Vietnam War also includes fatalities in Cambodia and Laos.
The US citizens are probably not aware of these numbers and know even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the these wars from 9 million to 14 million people have been killed in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.
But the victims are not just from big nations or one part of the world. The remaining deaths were in smaller ones which constitute over half the total number of nations. Virtually all parts of the world have been the target of US intervention. The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of 20 million to 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.
To the families and friends of these victims it makes little difference whether the causes were US military action, proxy military forces, the provision of US military supplies or advisers, or other ways, such as economic pressures applied by the US. They had to make decisions about other things such as finding lost loved ones, whether to become refugees, and how to survive.
The pain and anger spreads even further. Some authorities estimate that there are as many as 10 wounded for each person killed in these war. Their visible, continued suffering is a continuing reminder to their fellow countrymen. It is essential that Americans learn more about this topic so that they can begin to understand the pain that others feel. Someone once observed that the Germans during WWII chose not to know, the US citizens must not allow history to say this about them.
Let every reader keep this in mind that gathering the actual count of deaths is not easy. The collection of data was undertaken with full realization of this fact. These estimates will probably be revised later either upward or downward, but undoubtedly the total will remain in the millions.