Page 398 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pres dent al Stagecraft and M l ta nment |

opinions about war and its necessities, and those attitudes have influenced the
path of conflict. Over the years, elected officials and military planners have faced
significant public opposition to war. Convincing the public that war is neces-
sary, that all diplomatic channels have been exhausted, and that the call to mili-
tary action justifies the inevitable loss of life in its wake requires persuasive and
well-planned campaigns. Indeed, once war is waged, problems with battlefield
logistics, military conduct, and casualty figures can be an even greater deterrent
to favorable public opinion, or what has been referred to as “homefront morale.”
Homefront morale and the public’s resolve to continue the fight depend on a
complicated equation that compares the war’s justification with its destructive
force. Once the public perceives that the cost in human life is too high a price to
pay for the stated goals, opinion quickly turns against the war effort.
By the twenty-first century, images of soldiers and civilians who inevitably
die in conflict, once prevalent on television during the Vietnam War, were all
but eliminated from media coverage of the war in Iraq. In the absence of pic-
tures of death and suffering, war is more easily depicted in favorable terms, as
either an exciting video game, an action-packed battle film, or a rousing vic-
tory celebration. Shaping war narratives according to these formats lessens the
emotional impact that grisly images from the actual battlefield might have. In
doing so, the public is removed from the killing, which in a democratic system,
is being carried out in its name.

President Bush and the thanksgiVing turkey with
trooPs in the green zone, 00
On Thanksgiving Day 2003, Air Force One left Washington, DC, on a secret trip that would
carry a small group of aides with the president to the Baghdad Airport for a two-and-a-half-
hour visit and photo-op with 600 U.S. troops lucky enough to be stationed in the Green Zone.
The widely published image from this trip shows a beaming president wearing an Army flight
jacket, cradling a bountiful golden-brown turkey generously garnished with grapes and all
the trimmings. He appears to be serving dinner to the grateful soldiers who surround him.
A moment of high patriotism, the picture was ubiquitous in the days that followed, and the
president’s poll numbers shot up five points as criticism for his seeming indifference to the
suffering of American troops was quieted.
It would take a week for the Washington Post to report that the president was not actu-
ally serving the soldiers, who were eating presliced turkey from canteen-style hot plates. It
was six o’clock in the morning, and the turkey Bush held was inedible. White House officials
rebuked those who called the turkey fake, insisting it was not a presidential prop, but a
standard decoration supplied by contractors for the chow hall. In a burst of spontaneous
enthusiasm, the president had raised the platter and the shutter clicked. To the company
that produced a limited-edition Turkey Dinner Action Figure of the President for $34.95, it
did not matter that some viewed the secret trip as a ploy, or even a cowardly act, because
the president had been criticized for not attending services at U.S. military bases where the
bodies of the fallen return home. It became “a piece of our nation’s history.”