Page 282 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

272 Chapter 10

option for covering the war. Dan Klaidman of Newsweek, for example, claimed:
"It's a good start that the Pentagon at least embedded some reporters on the air-
craft carriers, but the real test is whether they'll allow reporters with the air units
and with the ground units when they go in."98 The success of the military's em-
bedding campaign was later seen in full effect in "Operation Iraqi Freedom,"
where American reporters were assigned to specific military units in order to
cover the conflict.

War on Terror or War of Terror?

Shortly before the beginning of the bombing of Afghanistan in early October
2001, the Times of London posed a series of critical questions about the planned
military project: "What can all this military muscle achieve?" The American
enemy "is in the hills and caves of a rugged and desolate land. Its infrastructure
is shot to pieces, its people face starvation, there is little left to bomb. . . . What
if the terrorist chieftain is impossible to pinpoint? What if civilians die, rather
than the terrori~ts"?~~ The Times editorial was prophetic in many ways, although
it may have underestimated the number of available targets in Afghanistan, as
the U.S. did not hesitate to bomb Taliban emplacements and a number of other
targets in civilian heavy areas in place of suspected A1 Qaeda targets.
Absent from mainstream American media commentary on the planned war
was one question of vital importance: was this really a "War on Terrorism," or
were civilians going to be caught in the attacks in significant numbers, as the
Times editorial seemed to imply? Would the deaths of thousands of Afghan ci-
vilians constitute a reciprocal act of terrorism to that of the terrorists who at-
tacked the U.S. on 911 l? While the Times piece was a step in the right direction
in terms of critically posing such questions, most American news editors and
journalists were not paying much attention to such concerns.
A number of critics of the war, however, certainly seemed to think such
questions were of vital importance. Historian Howard Zinn and foreign policy
critic Noam Chomsky both released books in the independent press arguing that
the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan was an example of U.S. terrorism directed
against innocent civilian^.'^^ However, the works of these scholars and other
anti-war critics, while selling well in the United States, were generally not well
represented in Op-Eds and editorials. There was little to no dialogue between the
Progressive-Left media contributors and mainstream media pundits, reporters,
and editors over the question of whether the U.S. was engaging in terror by kill-
ing civilians. The mass media's acceptance of the notion that the U.S. could
fight a "clean war" suggested that civilians could be spared in the bombing, al-
though the events that unfolded indicated that thousands of civilians died in the
American retaliation. The question of whether bombing civilians constituted a
"War of Terror," rather than a "War on Terror" was considered so ludicrous by
mainstream reporters that it was not even considered. The claim that war itself
(undertaken by the world's foremost military power) is a form of terrorism was
a topic deemed out of bounds for discussion. This differed significantly from