Control Room and modern images in warfare

How do media images affect the conduct of modern warfare?
It could be argued that modern warfare is as much carried out in the media with images and words; as it is on ground with weapons and soldiers.
Media images are important because it is through them the actions of a government are portrayed to the citizens of their country, and the world, and through them we as a public can make our judgements. Media images are the only way we can be spectators of wars fought thousands of miles away, form opinions upon them, and ascertain whether we believe our governments are making the right decisions. Images are exceptionally important as they transcend language and are something people of any nationality can understand.

The Vietnam War, or the ‘Living Room war’, nicknamed so because many believed it was fought out on our television screens as much as or more so than the battleground, was impacted to such a degree by media images that it has transformed the way wars have been fought since, by the USA, as well as other countries.
The media were largely held accountable for the outcome of the Vietnam War; with many believing that it was the journalists who had ‘lost it for them’, that the enemy within had been their own media, and television was blamed for alienating public sympathy.
One side of the argument regarding the media’s importance in the outcome of Vietnam is that the media misrepresented the events taking place and the US militaries actions, leading to a lack of support for the troops from the American public in a war that should have been won.
Others would argue that the media and journalists had only satisfied their responsibilities by reporting and revealing the truth of the situation and US failures to the public who would have been otherwise kept in the dark.
Both however would surely agree that the media had been of huge significance in the war and the resulting consequences and the shift in public opinion, with governments realising that wars could be won on the battlefront but lost on the domestic front through the influence of media.
Vietnam was largely seen as a ‘war we shouldn’t have been in’ by Americans, and this resulted in anti-war feeling and pacifism that was prominent in America for many years afterwards. In the 1980’s this still present atmosphere was combated by the uber-masculine war movies starring the Stallone’s and Schwarzenegger’s of the world arguably attempting to brainwash the male public out of their pacifism and into being more pro-war, ‘curing’ the withdrawal, male shame and failure that was still felt after the ‘loss’ of Vietnam.
The media’s influence was now considered in planning public relations in future wars not only in the USA but worldwide, and in the Falklands War of 1982 the British government fought a war in, as Philip M. Taylor puts it, an ‘information vacuum’. The war was fought without televised coverage for a number of reasons, some technical, but mainly because of policy, with most of the images emerging only once the war was over.
It seemed that the British military had found a way to fight wars that would alleviate ‘Vietnam Syndrome’, and so America went about applying this to conflicts in Grenada and Panama, and later to the Gulf War.

It became obvious that if the Gulf War was going to be won, not only would American public opinion have to be harnessed but worldwide opinion as well, and so depicting the enemy as a military, economic and ideological threat was essential, portraying Saddam Hussein as a ‘new Hitler’ who was threatening the American way of life. This propaganda was crucial in psychologically preparing the American public and ensuring the government wouldn’t have another Vietnam on their hands.
In comparison the government was remarkably unchallenged by the media in the Gulf War, with journalists not wishing to be held accountable again for the militaries failure. The press didn’t fight the imposition of government censorship and the public also complied with the media’s new ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ attitude.
Research even showed that a large number of Americans would have approved of more rigorous censorship; it seems that they didn’t want to be humiliated again and wanted their wounded national pride to recover, meaning that the American military were free to wage a war as if no-one were watching, as if it were not a democratic country.
The countries media acted complicitly with the government to provide public with the reports they wanted to hear, shielding them from the ‘bad violence’ that exposed contradictions and providing only the ‘good violence’ that they felt was justified.
Images were now harnessed for a different use, utilized to justify the government’s actions, with images of atrocities becoming their own argument and supporting the deployment of American troops, which arguably made it hard to ask essential questions about the war.
In an approach that was unusual for warring leaders George Bush and Saddam Hussein exchanged blows over CNN, this surely being an eloquent synonym for the important role the media would take in modern wars. By using a television channel as the ring for their political discourse Bush and Hussein were changing the rules of international politics and altering the way in which modern warfare would be carried out, this being on our television screens.
Overt censorship, along with saturation bombing and rejection of all third part ceasefire proposals, as well as many other factors, signified a reincarnation of the US military used to completely lay to rest the anti war sentiment of Vietnam once and for all, and subscribing to the belief that if you are victorious, you don’t have to justify yourself.
Much has been said since that there seems to have been two wars taking place, the one itself that was happening, and the one that had been portrayed by the media. The degree to which journalists can ever cover any war objectively is debatable and we need to be cautious about accepting what we see as truth. War which appears to be one that if fought openly in full view of public opinion because it is televised can often be as hidden as one which is not, and when we accept images as reality and allow them to merge into one another we are susceptible to accepting propaganda as truth. As Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister puts it, ‘Television is no longer a spectator... If you observe a phenomenon, you actually change it... As you observe a phenomenon with television, instantly you modify it somewhat. And I think that what we have to make sure of is that the truth is not modified, and that it’s constantly fed to the leaders and to the publics in democratic countries’.

With the most recent war in Iraq the media have not been so obedient in complying with the government to limit negative publicity. On the whole the portrayal of the war has largely been negative, and public feeling seems to hark back to that of ‘Vietnam Syndrome.’
There has been worldwide outrage at what is undoubtedly an illegal war, and countless protests which have largely been ignored by the US and UK governments, who previous to the invasion of Iraq had claimed that weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq and were a serious threat to their security as well as that of their allies. No such weapons or evidence of them were found by United Nations weapons inspectors, resulting in criticism of the US and UK ‘war mongers’ who many believed had used this excuse out of their greed for oil and profits.
Protests were organised across the world by anti-war groups and it is estimated that 36 million people have taken part in almost 3000 of them. There have been questions raised regarding the legality of the war, with Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations saying of the invasion ‘I have indicated it was not in conformity with the U.N. charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal’, as well as Lord Bingham, the former UK Law Lord describing the war as a serious violation of international law and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a ‘world vigilante’. There has also been a large amount of negative press condemning US soldiers’ actions, such as the mistreating of Iraqi civilians.

All of this is worlds apart from the media’s collusion with the government in the Gulf War, and the backlash has arguably resulted in George Bush Jnr becoming the most unpopular American president of all time, as well as a worldwide laughing stock due to his apparent ignorance in many political and geographical matters. It could be argued this is largely down to our ‘soundbite society’, where information, images and videoclips are always at our fingertips due to advancements in technology and websites such as Youtube.com. All of this demonstrates the proximity and great importance of the media, and the image, to politics today in our modern world.
This, and more specifically the media coverage of the Iraq war could be said to have been the downfall of Bush, and the Republican Party, as we have now seen a Democrat elected into the White House.
In late 2008 a pact was approved by US and Iraqi government which states that US combat forces will be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June 30th 2009, and that all US forces will have been withdrawn completely from Iraq by December 31st 2011.

Control Room is a film which is certainly aware of the significance of the media image in modern warfare. The film uses images and footage to relay the Iraqi point of view that is so often disregarded in our Western civilisation.
Donald Rumsfeld appears throughout the film at press conferences, complaining about the propagandist nature of Al Jazeera, the most popular channel in the Arab nations. He surely wouldn’t be so concerned if he didn’t believe that the portrayal and reports of the war would be extremely significant in the outcome of it.
Paradoxically, another clip shows Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf himself accusing the television organization of transmitting American propaganda. The Bush administration has also called Al Jazeera ‘the mouthpiece of Osama Bin Laden’.

It is ironic that the makers of the film and representatives of news channels in it are so concerned, and rightfully so, with communicating truth and fact, when the war was arguably one based on lies. There is also an irony in this when you consider Rumsfelds insensitive accusations that the Iraqis lie about their casualties, ‘grabbing women and children whenever a bomb goes off and say they got hit to harness sympathy’. This clearly demonstrates Rumsfelds, and the Bush administrations lack of regard for Iraqi life, and the editing utilizes the power of the image here, as this quote is used alongside images of injured Iraqi women and children, clearly actually hurt, resulting in a very moving and tragic piece of film.

The film highlights American attempts to gain control over people’s freedom of speech, the ‘accidental’ bombing of the Al Jazeera headquarters is a synonym for American control over the depiction of the war. The image of the destroyed satellite that the film starts with connotes the destruction of freedom of speech, the absence of impartial reportage, and is an eloquent metaphor for the ‘media war’.
So what did Control Room reveal about the relationship between the war and the media? Essentially, the film brings to our attention the contrast between reality and the reality we are offered.
The media subverts reality, but as Samir Khader, the producer of Al Jazeera said ‘You cannot wage a war without channels, and without media.’
The film also reveals that all the major news channels, including the BBC, CNN, and NBC have headquarters at Central Command, again illustrating the extreme proximity and importance of media to the war.
So in conclusion, how important is the media image in modern warfare? It is of the foremost importance. The media image can be the downfall of a leader or the reason he is elected, can win a war, or lose one.


Bibliography

Boose, Lynda, ‘Techno-Muscularity and the ‘Boy Eternal’: From the Quagmire to the Gulf’, in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (eds) Cultures Of United States Imperialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke U.P., 1993), pp. 581 – 616
Gaines, Jane M., ‘The Production of outrage: the Iraq War and the Radical Documentary Tradition’, The Journal of Cinema and Media 48.2 (2007) 36-55
Roper, Jon, ‘Overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome: the Gulf War and Revisionism’, from Jeffery Walsh (ed.) The Gulf War Did Not Happen: Politics, Culture and Warfare post-Vietnam (Aldershot: Arena, 1995), pp. 27 – 47
Taylor, Philip M., ‘Image and reality in the Gulf War’. from War and the Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War (Manchester: MUP, 1992), pp.1-30
Control Room, dir. Jehane Noujaim (2004)
"Iraq war illegal, says Annan". BBC News 24 (2004-09-16)
‘Top judge: US and UK acted as 'vigilantes' in Iraq invasion’, The Guardian, November 18 2008