The War We Dont See Part 1

He started as a copy boy for the newspaper The Sydney Sun and moven on to become a star reporter for The Daily Mirror. He was a war correspondent in India, Egypt, Cambodia and most notably, Vietnam. As a young man, he marched shoulder to shoulder with most of America’s impoverished people from Alabama to Washington in 1963. In 1968 he witnessed the assassination of Robert Kenndey, being in the same room.

Such are only some of the major events from the (so far) eventful life of  journalist John Pilger.

According to Pilger, ‘It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it’. It is a statement that most accurately describes his own approach to journalism. Surely, Pilger seems interested in discovering the true agendas behind current affairs such as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and this documentary of his (The War You Don’t See)  has really touched a nerve; the screening of this very same documentary was cancelled in the US by The Lannan Foundation. An open letter by Pilger to Naom Chomsky regarding the matter can be read at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28296.htm. Pilger’s own article about this film can be viewed http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-are-wars-not-being-reported-honestly

The documentary starts with clips from a video showing an unreported apache attacks in Baghdad in 2007. At one pint, later, Pilger quotes British Prime Minister Lloyd George who stated in a ‘private chat’ with the editor of The Guardian during the years of the first world war, “If people really knew the truth, the war would stop tomorrow”. The PM was referring to terrible carnage taking place around the world that had resulted in the deaths of 16 million people. Yet the public was not to know this fact and many others, until later. Lack of developed technology and news service was to blame back then. However, Pilger uses this fact to create the irony between the past and the present; in this day and age we have 24 hours news service. We ARE aware of what is going on. Not everyone buys the PR version of today’s current affairs. Most of us doubt if counter terrorism has made the world a safer place. But….what do we do? Even with the availability of technology, would Lloyd George’s statement hold true today? Would we really try and stop the war?

Pilger also traces the history of ‘propaganda’ to Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud who coined the term ‘Public Relations’. Bernays was known as the ‘Machiavelli’ of his time for his ability to manipulate emotionally. He believed in   ‘engineering public consent’ and creating ‘false realities’. He was part of a secret group, ‘The US Committee on Public Information’ and  one of many used this technique to persuade reluctant Americans to join the war in Europe in 1917.

Today, these same techniques are keeping the realities of the war hidden from us. Well, not ‘hidden’ exactly. Have we not all seen the images of war from Iraq? But then don’t we always flip the newspaper page or the TV channel to view something that is not so ‘disturbing’ and don’t we like to believe calculated statements such as ‘unavoidable tragedies’ or ‘minimum collateral damage’? All too soon, our mind simply stops responding to what it learns to perceive as irrelevant. The casualties of war are just a number…nothing more.