By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News
Published: September 07, 2009, 23:06


War is dirty, bloody and indiscriminate. It is nothing more than officially sanctioned murder perpetrated as part of a strategic end game. There is nothing uplifting about man's attempts to burn, dismember or torture his fellow kind. Can there be bravery in pressing a button at 30,000 feet in the foreknowledge that innocents - politely deemed 'collateral damage' - will die? Can the remote-controllers of a military drone be considered as honorable as those who fought hand-to-hand in muddy First World War trenches or on the beaches of Dunkirk?

There is certainly nothing noble about fishing for vulnerable young recruits barely out of school, shoving guns in their hands, indoctrinating them that the enemy is less than human, and telling them that killing equates to heroism. Often times, these young people are expected to make life and death decisions even before they are old enough to vote.

The unfortunate reality is that the human race hasn't evolved to the point where nations can solve their differences or attain their strategic goals without resorting to threats and violence. Unless a country practices military conscription, the only way it can attract youth willing to kill strangers and risk their own lives and sanity is by glamorising the tough guy, buddy-buddy, see-the-world aspects of conflict while sanitising the misery and the gore.

These fresh-faced idealists are told that there is no greater honour than serving their country when often they end up as cannon fodder for the ambitions of men in suits, who have never been near a battlefield. This is why the Pentagon is so incensed by the Associated Press's (AP) distribution of a graphic photograph of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, a mortally wounded Marine who was struck by a grenade in Afghanistan.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has characterised AP's decision to show an ugly reality to a public that is normally wrapped in cotton wool as "appalling". "Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image" of the Gates family's "maimed and stricken child on the front pages of multiple American newspapers is appalling," he said. For its part AP maintains that the photograph "is part of the history of war".

By evoking the sensitivities of a grieving family, Secretary Gates is obfuscating the real issue. A handsome young soldier pictured without legs in his dying hours, is not the kind of poster child the Pentagon wants for its aggressive recruitment drive.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has issued a 46-page report "Soldiers of Misfortune" charging that US recruitment practices target children as young as 11 in school lunchrooms and classes as well as disproportionately focusing on underprivileged students and those from minority groups. Over 54 per cent of students who participate in the army's Reserve Officer's Training Corps are African American and Latino.

The army also uses the lure of speeded up US citizenship to entice non-American Green Card holders into joining up. On the US Diversity Lottery website is a press release dated July 2009 headed "US Military now offers path to citizenship". Now even temporary non-Green Card holders can sign up.

The Pentagon employs ruthless strategies to fill its quotas including holding a database of students' personal information and an online video game "America's Army" that targets children 13 and upwards. This piece of propaganda depicts US forces escorting refugees to safety and defending a pipeline. It does not include air-strikes of the type that took place last week in Afghanistan's Kunduz province that left 70 incinerated, including young children.

Incredibly, the Pentagon employs 27,000 who work on its recruitment, public relations and advertising campaigns and has spent $4.7 billion (Dh17.25 billion) on these pursuits this year alone. It runs a media empire that churns out articles that are made to appear independent and, in the past, it has paid journalists to write stories in its favour. There are also Pentagon TV and radio channels designed to show the military in the best light, while it often cooperates with Hollywood filmmakers.

As a recent article in The Guardian exposed, "producers and directors have often agreed to changes in order to gain access to expensive military hardware or to be able to film on military property." Just a few of the films that have received Pentagon blessing are Armageddon, Air Force One, The Jackal, Pearl Harbor and Top Gun. One of the most memorable home-grown Pentagon productions was, of course, the fable of Jessica Lynch, portrayed as an all-American heroine rescued from Iraqi clutches.

We, in whose name wars are waged, should not be forcibly issued rose-coloured spectacles. AP was right to publish the picture and, in order for us to wake up to awfulness of combat, I wish there were more of them.

The Pentagon is responsible for over one million Iraqi and Afghan fatalities as well as the deaths of thousands of coalition soldiers in pursuit of its country's wars of choice. Now that disgusting toll, combined with the horrors that took place at Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib, is what I call "appalling", Mr Gates!

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com Some of the comments may be considered for publication.

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