Kidnappings or arrests?

Like the “terrorist” versus “resistance” semantic argument, describing Western reporters who do not have appropriate permission to enter Iraq as kidnapped innocents betrays the prominent role media plays in modern war

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

Do kidnapped reporters in Iraq deserve our sympathy?

It seems at first an incredibly callous question. Like no other conflict, the one presently taking place in the Euphrates valley has directly involved media reporters as intended victims of bombs, guns, and abductions. Videotaped scenes involving terrorized reporters with tape over their mouths and fear in their eyes is harsh viewing—and not the stuff about which one could normally be ambiguous.

Reporters are the traditional conduits of information and without their services, social theorists are convinced representative and democratic government is impossible. Reporters, including those in Iraq, intend to do good and useful work.

But the context of this particular conflict and the situation surrounding the many abducted reporters needs to be sketched out before knee-jerk judgments are made. So far, all Western media reports about abductions of Western reporters do not question whether the victims are innocent or not. But it is not an automatic assumption for everyone that they are innocent. Certainly their abductors don't see it that way. It may be worth considering this never-heard-from point of view, and to bring into question culpability in crimes (unintended notwithstanding) on the part of Western reporters in Iraq.

The coalition invasion of Iraq led by American and British armed forces was illegal, it has now been officially declared by the one person in the world invested with the authority to make such declarations: Kofi Anan, the Secretary General of the United Nations. This is no pointy-headed talking point. The declaration comes with serious implications that do not go away without being adequately addressed. The last time the Secretary General declared a war to be illegal, the person who called it, Slobodan Milosovic, was hauled before the International Criminal Court, where he continues to languish.

If the invasion was illegal, then the occupation government that came about as a result of it has also been all along illegal. If that's the case, then the interim government the occupation appointed and continues to prop up is illegal and illegitimate as well.

That fact makes anyone who enters the country with a visa stamped by this illegitimate regime an illegal alien. If a group of Chinese reporters showed up in New York carrying entry visas issued by Osama bin Laden, they would be kidnapped as well—or as we put it, arrested. All Western foreign reporters are therefore illegal aliens in Iraq, and wherever illegal aliens go, they are susceptible to arrest. It's hard to say if there is a legitimate regime in Iraq from which to seek permission to enter, but lately the Iraqi resistance has appeared organized. There does seem to be a hierarchical command structure to it, as evidenced by reports of so-called “high-level talks” between US and resistance commanders, who therefore seem to have a "high-level.” Shouldn't Western reporters be seeking permission to enter the country from these more legitimate organizations besides the illegal regime installed by the US occupation? Reporters from Arab media do not seem to suffer the same fate, and they seem to have sought and secured permission to enter also from non-occupation organizations.

I by no means condone beheadings of arrested illegal aliens, but such acts can only be condemned if similar acts on the other side are also condemned, if they indeed occur.

While they certainly do occur, it is rare to see brutal and offensive acts conducted by the invaders properly condemned. Rumsfeld recently asked reporters to lay off their hysteria over Abu Graib tortures by comparing those acts to the beheadings of captured Western workers. Goose and gander must eat from the same trough: do the beheadings compare to, say, a helicopter gun ship hovering over and ripping up a group of civilians looking at a burning military vehicle in what certainly appears to be an act of pure revenge and a war crime. Only one reporter in the larger name-brand Western media universe raised the question of whether this incident constituted a war crime, and it was a vague consideration. A prominent Arab reporter, obvious with a large television camera perched on his shoulder, was killed in that incident.

Compare quiet and neutral Canadian media reaction to that shocking event with the wild condemnation in Canadian media when four uniformed Canadian military men, illegally in Afghanistan, were accidentally killed by the same rogue force. This is not just a matter of our own versus someone else's people getting killed. The arguments in favour of chastisement for the guilty bombers in the Afghan affair were highly principled. Those same principles apply just as surely in this case, if not more so, since the dead, 13 in all, were unarmed civilians in their own city.

All media is global now, and readers in Najaf can just as easily see reports and opinions condemning the bombing of four uniformed military people illegally in one country, and reports and opinions in the very same media silent about the bombing of 13 civilians who are legally in their own country.

It would be hard to argue that Western media are not taking sides. It would also be hard to argue that this is not an important observation. The ability of American forces to continue to prosecute the war depends utterly on continued substantial American public support for this war, and that support is heavily influenced by media reports on the progress of the war and media perceptions of what is worthy of covering among the acts carried out by either side. No matter what they intend, reporters in Iraq cannot escape the modern fact that their work is part and parcel of the prosecution of all wars now, and of this one in particular.

For these reasons, it is certainly possible to argue that Western foreign reporters are aiding and abetting the enemy (consciously or not). This makes them combatants in the war. One side in this war has already decreed that combatants deserve no Geneva Convention protections.

If reporters are unable to practice the basic tenets of the profession of journalism in some location, they are doing a disservice to their audience by continuing anyway. If it is impossible to report in an unbiased manner for whatever reason, then to continue to report at all only legitimates the corrupt reporting. Western reporters in Iraq should not be in that country unless they have permission from whatever high command of a more legitimate authority besides the illegal occupation that they can find. If they cannot find someone qualified to give permission to enter the country, perhaps they should not enter the country. If they do so anyway and then find themselves arrested and then treated as combatants and denied protections of the Geneva Convention, one can only ask: do these reporters read the papers or not?

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