When Killing Civilians Is Bad for Image

When you kill innocent people, the big problem is that it hurts your image.

That's the gist of a major media message about the continuing deaths of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Seen through a non-ideological lens, such a message is absurd and repugnant. But we're receiving such prompts often these days as the Obama administration continues with escalation of what is becoming known as the Afghan-Pak war.

"Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War," a front-page New York Times headline glumly proclaimed on May 7. The same day, a Wall Street Journal headline was in the same groove: "Claim of Afghan Civilian Deaths Clouds U.S. Talks."

A day later came this doozy in The Washington Post: "Afghan Civilian Deaths Present U.S. With Strategic Problem."

These and other examples are cited in a "media advisory" that went out a few days ago from the media watch organization FAIR (where I'm an associate). The group points out that the same spin — implicitly positing the PR image of the U.S. government as more important than the lives of its innocent victims — goes well beyond headlines and pervades much of the news reporting.

On "CBS Evening News" last week, Katie Couric was matter of fact as she told viewers: "Reports of these civilian casualties could not have come at a worse time, as the Obama administration launches its new strategy to eradicate the Taliban and convince the Afghan people to support those efforts."

It stands to reason that if you want to win hearts and minds in a country, you don't keep killing people on a virtually random basis. But something is amiss beyond the quality of targeting systems. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. policy is to use high-tech weaponry to overcome widespread opposition to America's military presence and policies in the region.

The dominant U.S.

media spin goes beyond just toting up the killing in terms of the public relations score. On CNN's "American Morning" program, a story went like this: "CNN is learning that the Taliban may have been using women, children and men as human shields during U.S. air strikes earlier this week."

As FAIR notes wryly, "That would stretch the meaning of 'learning' quite a bit, since CNN's reporter from Afghanistan, Stan Grant, had little to report beyond vague official assertions ('We're still waiting for a formal statement, a formal report to come down from the U.S. military here in Kabul')."

This kind of stuff is par for the war-spin course, with media flackery for the Pentagon and White House masquerading as genuine journalism.

Eventually — when a war lasts long enough and the shaky basis for pro-war rationales starts to collapse — such media evasions may give way to more evenhanded reporting. But the process of partially replacing war PR with tough-minded war reporting is apt to take years. In the meantime, as is now the case in Afghanistan, an escalation process digs the U.S.A. deeper into a daily grind of carnage.

As a nation, we've been here before. From the Vietnam War to the 1991 Gulf War to the October 2001 launch of the U.S. war in Afghanistan and then the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the incoming propaganda has been fierce and profuse for Americans at home.

Now, President Obama — whose personal popularity exceeds the popularity of his military escalation in Afghanistan — is insisting on a much wider war effort there.

Yes, his presidency has a lot riding on the outcome. And so does the image of the United States of America. But there are lives in the balance. And those lives have value that should not be obscured by red-white-and-blue media fixations.

Norman Solomon is the author of the book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," which has been made into a documentary film. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com.

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