[Peace-discuss] Air war in Iraq

[Morton K. Brussel]

Published on Monday, December 5, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Hidden in Plane Sight: U.S. Media Dodging Air War in Iraq
by Norman Solomon

The U.S. government is waging an air war in Iraq. "In recent months,  
the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased," Seymour Hersh  
reported in the Dec. 5 edition of The New Yorker. "Most of the  
targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces  
that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border."

Hersh added: "As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in  
a significant discussion or debate about the air war."

Here's a big reason why: Major U.S. news outlets are dodging the  
extent of the Pentagon's bombardment from the air, an avoidance all  
the more egregious because any drawdown of U.S. troop levels in Iraq  
is very likely to be accompanied by a step-up of the air war.

So, according to the LexisNexis media database, how often has the  
phrase "air war" appeared in The New York Times this year with  
reference to the current U.S. military effort in Iraq?

As of early December, the answer is: Zero.

And how often has the phrase "air war" appeared in The Washington  
Post in 2005?

The answer: Zero.

And how often has "air war" been printed in Time, the nation's  
largest-circulation news magazine, this year?

Zero.

This extreme media avoidance needs to change. Now. Especially because  
all the recent talk in Washington about withdrawing some U.S. troops  
from Iraq is setting the stage for the American military to do more  
of its killing in that country from the air.

The last few weeks have brought a dramatic shift in the national  
debate over Iraq war policies. On Capitol Hill and in major news  
outlets, the option of swiftly withdrawing U.S. troops -- previously  
treated as unthinkable by most partisan leaders and media pundits --  
became part of serious mainstream media conversation.

At least implicitly, news coverage has viewed the number of boots on  
the ground as the measure of the U.S. war effort in Iraq. And as a  
consequence, public discussion assumes -- incorrectly -- that a  
reduction of American troop levels there will mean a drop in the  
Pentagon's participation in the carnage.

In fact, beneath the surface of mass-media discourse, there are  
strong indications that the U.S. military command will intensify its  
bombardment of Iraq while reducing the presence of American occupying  
troops before the U.S. congressional elections next fall. With the  
White House eager to show progress toward U.S. disengagement from  
Iraq, we should expect enormous media spin to accompany any pullout  
of troops in 2006.

"The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most  
significant -- and underreported -- aspect of the fight against the  
insurgency," Hersh's New Yorker article observed. The magnitude of  
the U.S. bombing is a mystery in American media coverage relying on  
what's spoon-fed by the Pentagon. "The military authorities in  
Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily  
accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or  
of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War."

Surely the media spinners in the White House are keenly aware that  
the air war in Iraq has been flying largely beneath the U.S. media's  
radar -- inattention that augurs well for a scenario of reducing U.S.  
troop levels while stepping up the air war. Hersh's reporting  
suggests that's in the offing: "A key element of the drawdown plans,  
not mentioned in the president's public statements, is that the  
departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower.  
Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve  
dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat  
units."

Mainstream news outlets in the United States haven't yet acknowledged  
a possibility that is both counterintuitive and probable: The U.S.  
military could end up killing more Iraqi people when there are fewer  
Americans in Iraq. "Lowering the number of U.S. troops in conjunction  
with a more violent air war and creation of an Iraqi client military,  
as some are suggesting, will likely increase the number of Iraqis  
killed," says Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service  
Committee. "This would in effect be 'changing the color of the  
corpses' in order to make the continuing war more palatable to the  
U.S. public."

There is a strong precedent for such a politically driven strategy.  
Midway through 1969, President Richard Nixon announced the start of a  
"Vietnamization" policy that cut the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam  
by nearly half a million over a three-year period. But during that  
time, the tonnage rate of U.S. bombs dropped on Vietnam actually  
increased.

A similar sequence of events is apt to get underway next year, before  
the November elections determine which party will control the House  
and Senate through 2008. Caught between the desire to prevent a  
military defeat in Iraq and the need to shore up Republican prospects  
at home in the face of an unpopular war, President Bush is very  
likely to keep escalating the U.S. air war in Iraq while reducing  
U.S. troop levels there. And he has good reason to hope that the  
American news media will continue to evade the air war's horrendous  
consequences for Iraqi people.

Norman Solomon is the author of the new book "War Made Easy: How  
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For information,  
go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.
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