Reality TV

Now, how I could write a weekly newspaper column without at least commenting on the war. Journalism, after all is the first draft of history. One problem is that we’re just not CNN. I write these things almost a week before you read them.

Last week’s column was in some mailboxes just a few hour before President Bush’s deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq. As I’m writing this (last Friday, March 21^st) I’m listening to National Public Radio report that the air campaign of "Shock and Awe" is just getting under way. By the time this edition officially is on sale, Thursday, March 27^th, the whole thing may well be over!

I am by no means vehemently opposed to this military solution, in fact I’ll stipulate that Hussein is dangerous and should be removed. I certainly and whole-heartedly support our servicemen and women, but you have to admit that, considering wars throughout history, this one is a little weird. I’ll go further than that and call it down right surreal.

First of all, whoever heard of a "preemptive war?" This is a new invention. One of the reasons so many people, including the French and Germans had (have) such a problem with the war is that in the history of the world, the people who" threw the first punch" were generally considered aggressors. Napoleon, for example.

Generally the "good guys" wait until their hit first before they hit back. John Wayne in "the Quiet Man," for example. I appreciate that 9-11 was a first punch, but it was a sucker punch from somebody other than Iraq. It’s just a little hard for some people to get past.

Then what made it more weird is how long we knew it was coming. In 1991 the first Gulf War was precipitated by several weeks of coalition-building and mobilization as we gave Hussein time to pull out of Kuait, but let’s face it, we’ve all known that this one was coming since last October. The news channels have scheduled their "Showdown with Iraq" shows since the holidays. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as odd? Think about every war from the Spanish American War through Vietnam, sure, in hindsight we can say that there were warning signs that trouble was brewing, but wars generally sneak up on us and surprise ya.

Remember the Maine, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin?

I’m not accusing the administration of propaganda or the media of profiteering, but you have to admit, we’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea of going to war..

I think that the weirdest thing of all has to be our being able to watch this as it happens. It’s the ultimate in "reality TV." Frankly, I feel like a voyeur. We’re all given the chance to be "armchair generals."

Think about it, thanks to satellites, we’ve been able to listen to the Iraqi Minister of Information make live statements to the press. The Wednesday night that the war started, we were watching live images of dawn in Baghdad via these traffic or weather cameras. Reporters talk to us from Baghdad itself and from ships in the Gulf and the battlefield itself via their video phones! The ultimate has to be the Tank-cams. It’s better than the dashboard cameras in NASCAR races.

It’s all been too strange. It can’t be natural. During the first Gulf War cynics commented that watching live coverage was like watching a video game. Today video games have cleaner, clearer graphics! Videotape and film of Vietnam had to fly through Hawaii and on to network offices in New York before the gruesome footage made it the "Living Room War."

I appreciate that the Pentagon and White House intend to minimize civilian casualties and that on the one hand war gets TV ratings yet National Security and the safety of our troops necessitates sterilizing the coverage we get to see, but I still think it’s been a bizarre show. I for one feel guilty for watching. Still, like so much reality television, it’s like a hangnail that you can’t leave alone.

I pray that it’s over soon, that we accomplish our objectives, perhaps more importantly, that we succeed in the nation building that will follow, and that this doesn’t come back to bite us like so many of our foreign policy decisions of the last fifty years have. Most of all, I pray that our comfort at home and prowess in battle don’t make it easier for us to wage virtual wars more frequently just because we can.

I am sure that when our new veterans come home they will earnestly tell us that on the ground and in person, war is still Hell, even if it makes good television.