WONDER LAND
Taking Sides
The Iraq war will divide the world--for the better.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, March 28, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
--old union song
Togetherness is oversold. Especially by politicians and statesmen, who sometimes hide their courage under the teacup of compromise and multilateralism. But there are times when all of us have to decide which side we are going to be on, not for an evening's argument but for the long haul. The Iraq war is one of those moments.
By the time this war ends, it will have divided national leaders, divided the world's voters and, yes, divided the world's press. That is to say, the institutions that set the world on its course. We will know pretty soon where that world is headed, and who will be its pilots.
There is a tradition in the U.S. that once the president puts troops into action we "unite" to support our men and women, as Democrats such as John Kerry and John Edwards have now done. But that's easy. A larger choice is being asked of everyone by this war waged against the regime of Saddam Hussein.
In The Wall Street Journal a few days ago, Spain's Foreign Minister Ana Palacio aligned herself with "the values and objectives we share with the United States" and in support quoted Miguel Cervantes on liberty. Liberty, Cervantes said, is "one of the most precious gifts heaven has bestowed upon Man. No treasures the earth contains or the sea conceals can be compared to it. For liberty one can rightfully risk one's life." We are finding out right now who agrees with that.
Yesterday Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak decided against: "Egypt won't offer any assistance of any kind against any Arab country." So too Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who says the war "is not about the democratization of Iraq. It's about the total destruction of the country."
Last Sunday, former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney made his decision: "For 135 years, Canada has made common cause with Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States in the defense of liberty and freedom around the world. Now we have repudiated at a crucial moment in our history."
Even in France you can find an inkling that not all its citizens stand with Messrs. Chirac and De Villepin. In the final sentence of an obscure New York Times report on Bordeaux, one finds this from Corinne Mentzelopoulos, the owner of Chateau Margaux: "America saved us in two world wars and from communism," she said. "I haven't forgotten that." I think Ms. Mentzelopoulos understands, in a way now lost to the Chiracs, de Villepins and perhaps never known to the Putins and Mubaraks, what Cervantes was saying about why liberty is the dearest of political values. A similar understanding has already been discovered in the nations east of Germany.
On MSNBC Keith Olbermann asked the parents of James Kiehl, a captured GI in Iraq, if they felt "victimized." His stepmother replied, "No, James was there to fight terror and to protect his family." Mrs. Kiehl has also made a decision, different than that of the people who laid down on Fifth Avenue in New York yesterday in what they called a "die-in for peace." But they aren't close to dying. I see no reason why Army Specialist Kiehl's parents in Comfort, Texas, should sit down with the protesters in New York or San Francisco to find common ground. There is none.
The divisions in the media are not so clear cut. Some of their colleagues are criticizing the work of the embedded reporters in Iraq. They say the embeds can't provide "perspective" or the "larger picture." For some years now, the standard model of journalism has been that reporters don't just offer facts but must include their analysis of the facts. The assumption here is that mere facts lack sufficiency and that an explained or analyzed fact moves us closer to reality or truth.
When this began, some stories were labeled "Analysis," and it was a useful tool for adding context if needed. But now no one bothers because it's almost all analysis. This model is so internalized that I believe some of the critics are coming very close to suggesting that what the embeds with U.S. troops on the Iraqi front are reporting does not constitute reality. Reality in journalism cannot exist until it is processed through a reporter's filter of analysis.
This may be a difficult model to sustain now, at least on television. The TV people stateside are clearly quite proud of what their reporters are doing. The frontline reporters who survive this war will occupy a unique status inside their organizations. Some media executives may decide that this straight reporting is where their strength lies. It looks like there's an audience for it.
It is one thing for reporters to say they don't take sides, even in war, or especially in war. But sometimes they seem to suggest that no one should ever be able to decide whose side they're on. This war is a killer of equivocation.
A few nights ago, during that high sandstorm, an embedded TV reporter stood over a soldier who was lying on his stomach, exposed to the wind and grit, holding his rifle and staring through goggles into nothing. The reporter said, "What do you think of being here in conditions like this." The soldier said: "I love it, sir. I truly do. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now."
Which side are you on? Some surely will recoil at the suggestion that we should so simply reduce the politics of this war. But the war against Saddam Hussein is a rare, defining event, as Vietnam was. It is going to establish divisions for a generation--in relations among nations, in voting patterns. Long-term claims to moral standing are at stake. Among families and friends, these matters in time will never come up again, but like villagers in occupied France, no one's ever going to forget either.
These are not the destructive divisions so often worried over by instinctive moderates and multilateralists. These are constructive divisions, which are driving the world's people toward making a decision about what they believe in, why they believe it and what kind of world they want to live in.
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