War Porn

I'm surprised this air strike didn't happen sooner. It's EXACTLY what the doctor ordered for an Administration struggling to cope with a failed Iraq policy. That's because there's nothing the American media loves more than 'splosions.

By day I work as an editor for a variety of TV shows, and lately I've been coming in to find scripts from the night before on my desk. Today's script is for a show called "GI Factory" on something called "The Military Channel." I vaguely knew such a channel existed (and I don't know how it's funded, although I could guess), but reading this script was instructive. It's a segment on the M-134D Gatling-type Machine Gun. Here's an excerpt:

It's a six-barreled, electrically-driven machine gun, firing 3000 rounds per minute. They call it a fight stopper and you can see why.

The accompanying video suggestion says "Minigun in action - blows up something."

When the US began shock and awe in 2003, it was the talk of all the news nets. There were military experts walking on giant maps of Iraq projected on the floor, bestriding over them like a colossus. There were flashy graphics and vital statistics of weaponry and breathless descriptions of destruction and carnage.

I woke up to the same thing today. CNN had a scroll of all the munitions being used in the attack. There was lots of footage of planes, bombs, aircraft carriers, etc.

Allowing the news nets to air their war porn is the perfect antidote to bad news from Iraq. They practically salivate at the equipment, and completely lose sight of the context: why are we starting major combat operations three years after the war's inception? Why in Samarra? What is the benefit of this? None of that gets answered: what could be heard above the din of 'splosions onscreen?

The war has always been fought harder in this country than it has in Iraq. The war for hearts and minds is for the hearts and minds of the American people, to have them get behind the war effort. This show of force, with its attendant focus on the weapons of modern warfare, anesthetizes us to the effects of the violence in favor of its colorful display.

We already knew that the air war in Iraq was increasing. The political class at the White House just realized what they could gain by bringing it out into the open.