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The Key War on Terror Propaganda Tool: Only Western Victims Are Acknowledged
- NumberSix 11y agoI recall considerable press coverage of the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. Granted, both were US citizens but Muslims -- family originally from Yemen. Many of these issues were raised at that time (2011). CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-paul-aclu-condemn-anwar-al-awlaki-killing/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-paul-aclu-condemn-anwar-al-a... NPR http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/09/30/140950953/ron-paul-condemns-al-awlakis-killing http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/09/30/140950953/... Forbes (sort of) http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/30/ron-paul-condemns-assassination-of-al-awlaki/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/30/ron-paul-con... PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/aclu-criticizes-killing-of-anwar-al-awlaki-a-u-s-citizen-calling-it-a-dangerous-precedent/11813/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/aclu-cri... The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team... The New York Times carried an editorial by Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar al-Awlaki's father, on July 17, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-kil...
- thephyber 11y agoThe killing of his son did bring some mild attention to the fact that US drone strike announcements call all combat age males "militants" or "combatants", even if there is no proof they are anything but civilians[1], but that news cycle was dominated with the fact that this was an unprecedented attack on a US civilian put on the kill list. [1] http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/
- furfish 11y agoWould it have received that attention of they weren't US citizens?
- tptacek 11y agoThis is a long political editorial with no new reporting in it. There are better places to discuss pieces like this than HN.
- aburan28 11y agoIf you have been a techie for many years you would understand that techies are very much united by political engagement and the issues of our time
- tptacek 11y agoI don't know about "techies", but I've certainly been a member of this community for many years, and I'm pretty sure the guidelines of the site ask us not to post things like this here.
- efdee 11y agoI'm pretty sure those guidelines also ask us not to post comments complaining about how submissions are inappropriate for this site.
- wernercd 11y agoSo... if this post is inappropriate (not sure if it is or isn't) then how are you supposed to correct that? The post is inappropriate, but it's inappropriate to bring up that fact... Catch-22... Edit: Just a quick look but "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports" - not sure where this falls in "most" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- efdee 11y agoYou can voice your concern by flagging the post you deem inappropriate.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- greenwaldLOL 11y agoGreenwald himself is a propaganda tool. Mentions of victims in his reports: Yazidi 0 Jewish 0 Hindu 0 Christian 0 For all complaints about "western imperialism" or propaganda Greenwald sure is mum a about Arabic/Islamic ones. I wish he took his younger toyboy and settled in a good muslim area. To live the bullshit he peddles. Move to Iran, Jordan or what about Qatar? Anwar al-Awlaki wasn't a victim. Him and his jihadi son got what was coming for their homophobic misogynist bottoms. The sooner islamist bootlicker leftists can get their heads around that, the better. Until then you will keep feeding the far right with people who have something to lose to muslim terrorists.
- icebraining 11y agoI find it curious how the only name of a victim cited in this article - is of a westerner!
- dmurray 11y agoFrom TFA: “Today, if Nabila or Zubair or many of the civilian victims, if they are watching on TV the president being so remorseful over the killing of a Westerner, what message is that taking?”
- icebraining 11y agoFair enough; I was talking about the dead - like their grandmother -, which is who are usually remembered, even in the attacks against westerners.
- ghufran_syed 11y agoHere's an article about non-western victims of the war on terror: http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/pakistan-peshawar-inside-school/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/pakistan-peshawar-i...
- icebraining 11y agoYeah, but those are victims of the Taliban. The article was about the victims of attacks by Western countries: "Muslim victims of American and Western violence are completely disappeared."
- teddyh 11y ago“Good evening. Here is the news for Parrots: No parrots were involved in an accident on the M-1 today when a Lorry carrying High-octane fuel was in collison with a bollard. That's a BOLLARD and NOT a PARROT. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved.”” http://www.montypython.net/scripts/news.php http://www.montypython.net/scripts/news.php
- seivan 11y agoAttaches a wallet to my HN account and bitcoins your comment One day.
- golergka 11y agoIs the author seriously suggesting to view deliberate terror attacks against civilians the same as military strikes (drones or planes — I don't see a difference) performed against enemy combatants, by people who are trying to minimize civilian casualties as far as they can? Yes, it's horrible that sometimes your only choice to kill a high-ranking terrorist is by taking innocent lives with him. But granted how many innocent lives you can save by it, it's more horrible not to do it. There's never been a war where a victory didn't cost civilian lives, regardless how just was the cost. I really wish western governments would talk about this openly and have a serious discussion about these issues though, instead of awkwardly trying to hush it.
- braythwayt 11y ago> Is the author seriously suggesting to view deliberate terror attacks against civilians the same as military strikes (drones or planes — I don't see a difference) performed against enemy combatants, by people who are trying to minimize civilian casualties as far as they can? Why not? Let’s that the countries of Xanadu (“X”) and Yalü (“Y”) are at war with each other. Isn’t it meaningful to compare the number of X and Y citizens killed by each other, regardless of how it is carried out? If X says “We’re careful to minimize killing Y’s civilians,” shouldn’t we judge X by how successful it is in minimizing those casualties? Or should we say, “Oh, well, X is trying their best, so no need to keep count or compare the counts.” Quite obviously “terror” attacks and “military” attacks are different things. But it’s perfectly legitimate to compare them by the number of civilians killed. It shouldn’t be the only way in which we compare them. But it’s still informative to compare them.
- avz 11y ago> Why not? Intention does matter. A military which aims to reduce civilian casualties and fails is less evil than a terrorist who deliberately targets civilians.
- Udik 11y agoWe have statistics. We know the probable outcomes. The man who pushes the button doesn't know if he's going to kill civilians and how many of them in that particular case, but the average number of civilans killed per bomb is well known. He knows that his actions will cause the death of a certain amount of innocents, and still he pushes the button in order to advance the political or military objectives of the entity he belongs to. On the other hand, if terrorists were able to drop bombs on the homes of high ranking army members and politicians of the West from drones travelling at 30 thousand feet and controlled from thousands of miles away, wouldn't they do so? Of course they would. Would that make them better?
- avz 11y agoThe article seems to imply there is real malice and deliberate intent to deceive the public in the media coverage of civilian victims of Western attacks. This is one explanation, but I don't see conclusive evidence of this in the article. More probable explanation is that viewing public's sympathy suffers from inherent biases and the media simply follows those biases. It's a well-known fact that media prefers headlines that are more likely to trigger emotional response. Also non-Western civilian victims have been a lot more frequent and the media has a bias towards reporting events that stand out such as unintentional killing of Western hostages by a drone strike. (Not claiming this outcome is moral - just saying that it may unfortunately arise without malicious intent on the part of the media)
- rdancer 11y agoIf it were so, if the public were aware of the reality at least in broad strokes, and if the media simply just didn't report on things everybody knew were going on... how would you explain the outcry after the Bataclan shooting that "they attacked us", and "now we're at war" -- while that same morning, just as every morning in the preceding month, French Mirages rained death on Syria? How would you explain the ludicrous notion that our soldiers and officials, when they are killed on our soil, are victims of terrorism, not casualties of the war we choose to wage? Perhaps it is because quite to the contrary, the public doesn't think we're at war at all. We're just killing off terrorists who aim to harm us, with surgical, precision strikes.
- soared 11y agoBecause the middle east is not "we" while France and the rest of Europe most definitely is "us." And war is going on in Syria, so a death that occurs in the homeland isn't a casualty of war, because the war isn't occurring here. Its over there. Deaths here are caused by terrorism, deaths there are caused by war.
- thephyber 11y ago> but I don't see conclusive evidence of this in the article. You are talking about something which is usually kept secret within the "state secrets" cabinet. Your expectations seem misconfigured for this topic. There's no way the CIA/DOJ/FBI would willingly allow that level of information to make it into wide circulation and the current administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to prevent further leaks. I tend to agree with you that the media news coverage in the US tends to focus mostly on certain specific military attacks (where the US government claims we either hit or believe we hit a "top leader" in whatever group) or where the US military strike was on bad/stale information (eg. we killed western hostages or a Doctors without Borders hospital in Afghanistan). I am not conflating drone strikes with other military strikes -- I am combining them because I see them as part of the same issue. I tend to see the media as willingly reporting only what little information is available from the only source, the White House via the US military. Journalists are reporting one very biased side of the story without making any significant effort to find other sources (because there usually are none). From a journalistic ethics standpoint, this _is_ malicious. I view US drone strikes "on terrorists" within a context of (what I believe to be) known information about our CIA drone strikes (which, granted might be outdated or otherwise inaccurate and is basically unverifiable): * "signature strikes" are designed to attack targets based on data points without knowing their identity * a "double tap" strike is when first responders are attacked immediately after a previous attack on the assumption that they know who was killed and care about the terrorist target and not the innocent victims of the first strike * weddings, funerals, and other public gatherings are attacked on the probability that terrorist or terrorist sympathizers will attend * an "enemy combatant" is any male of combat age (15-50, IIRC) [1] -- this is especially troublesome for US propaganda. See [1] for "deliberate intent to deceive the public in the media coverage of civilian victims of Western attacks". It might not even be "conclusive evidence", but I still think that standard is too high for any topic which is covered by national security where we will always be in an information "fog of war". These items are all claimed / documented characterizations of CIA (or JSOC or other similar US government/intelligence/military agency) attacks, but clearly not verifiable (the nature of state secrets). They were all covered by the movie Good Kill[2] (Ethan Hawke plays a drone pilot in Nevada dealing with the human consequences of being a killer in the drone war). [1] http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/ [2]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3297330/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3297330/
- Detrus 11y agoThere are shorter videos from Chomsky on this, but this one breaks it down thoroughly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvZRsdHgxgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvZRsdHgxgA The truth is, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq are colonial wars against insubordinate populations. We extract resources from those countries and their neighbors. When someone stands in the way they have to be punished so that other countries stay in line. There is little hope of winning hearts and minds with all the civilians that have to be killed. The main goal is to punish and make examples of insubordination. The West merely needs to scare them and their neighbors to get its way within a few decades. It worked well enough with Vietnam.