Page 279 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Afghanistan and 9/11 269

was let on by reporters and anchors who accepted the promise of the use of
"precision weapons" from U.S. military leaders.
On October 22, 2001 alone, at least twenty-five Afghan civilians were
killed after a U.S. bombing of a village near Kandahar, despite reports from lo-
cals that there were no Taliban or A1 Qaeda forces in the area.79 Mushfeqa, one
of the survivors of the attack, shared her experiences while she recovered at
Quetta hospital from shrapnel injuries:
It was at about 11 p.m. First, one plane came and dropped a bomb. We ran out of
the home, because we were afraid to die there. Then, some went back inside. I was
at the door, and some of the small children were outside. Then the plane came and
it was firing. I saw my mother and my brother shot. My uncle ran to his car to turn
off the lights. Then a bomb hit the car and he died. When the next bomb came, I
was inside the room. I was injured from the shrapnel.80

In its coverage of the US.-Afghan war, the Los Angeles Times ran the um-
brella headline "U.S. Strikes Back" above all its stories. But who was really
targeted as the United States struck back? Reports throughout the major media
admitted that American bombing was killing Afghan civilians, although the total
tally for such deaths was rarely a feature of reporting. Most reporting seemed
more interested in how the campaign was progressing, or failing to progress, in
terms of capturing bin Laden and other suspected terrorists. Humanitarian con-
cerns were generally allotted little attention. An examination of New York Times
stories from October 7 to November 13, 2001 (the period of the U.S. bombing
campaign against Afghanistan) shows that headlines emphasizing military op-
erations or progress in "Operation Enduring Freedom" were run three times as
often as those headlines addressing the potential for humanitarian disaster result-
ing from American bombing. Headlines reporting military progress outnum-
bered headlines addressing Afghan civilian deaths (numbering 3,000 in the
month of military operations) by an astounding margin of eighteen-to-one.8'
In such a fiercely pro-war climate, some pundits explained that concern
with civilian casualties, limiting damage to infrastructure, and reconstruction
should not be a major focus of reporting or U.S. strategy. Charles Krautharnmer
stated that "the American instinct for generosity is legendary, and we appear to
be outdoing ourselves" by committing to rebuilding the country. Yet, in the
same opinion piece, he lucidly wrote that, "Our objective in Afghanistan is to
destroy the Taliban.. .we are not in Afghanistan to nation-build. We should do
only as much as is necessary to leave behind a structure stable enough to prevent
the return of the Taliban. . . . It is equally important to rid ourselves of the illu-
sions of 'humanitarian war' that beguiled us during our holiday from history in
the 1990s. This is going to be a long twilight struggle: dirty and dangerous,
cynical and self-interested.. .war is an act of destruction, not urban rene~al."~'
In light of American bombing, media outlets began to promote a "bread and
bombs" approach to reporting following the U.S. cut-off of food to millions of
Afghans. The American bombing effectively prohibited the United Nations and
other humanitarian aid organizations from trucking food in for millions of hun-
gry Afghans. Attention in the dissident press was drawn to the Afghan people's