[Reader-list] Politics of American Un-civilization

[Avinash Jha]

Vivek, 

Your contention that the leak was not deliberate on the part of Bush Administration but rather a result of disaffection and disagreement with Bush's policies is at least as reasonable as the article that I posted earlier. 

Actually, what is important is to realize that at least after the bombings of World Trade Tower and Pentagon, the US policy is not to act by building consensus and the US is not interested in maintaining even an appearance of 'civilized' combat. If one is agreed upon it, one wonders whether there is a great point in following this debate about deliberate leak. But I think the case for deliberate leak requires at least some restatement. 

To my mind there are three questions involved here - nature of US administration and their policy, nature of western media, and the question of how does the US administration use the media to communicate to adversaries, potential adversaries, supporters, critics, the 'civilized world', the 'uncivilized world' and so on. 

As to the nature of US state and policies Bush has clearly said that they are engaged in a 'new kind of war' in which "no fixed rules will govern decisions on when and how to employ US forces" (Rumsfeld's words). One of Hersh's anonymous sources in his new book says, "Now we're going to be the bad guy, and being bad guy works."[quoted in Bacevich review in Washington Post Book World, reproduced in Asian Age 17th October.]

One has been left with no doubt regarding the relationship of mainstream western media to US state policies. Even non-US media faithfully reflects the state of relation between west European states, the UK and the US. How did the media portray these tortures? How does it contrast with the way civilian killings in Iraq were reported? The leak might well have been the work of those opposing Bush, but the Bush administration showed no urgency at all to curb the leak and very little consternation at being exposed. Normally, a counter media campaign would have been immediately in place to discredit the stories to some extent at least. Videos and pictures have not prevented this in the past.

This brings us to the third and the most important question - how does an undemocratic, militarist political entity in power, which is working within a loosely democratic framework and discourse, uses mass media. It cannot openly repudiate all democratic norms because it is legitimized by them, it has come to power through these same democratic frameworks. At the same time, it wants to communicate to its constituency and actually build a constituency of undemocratic militarist mass. Finally, it has to communicate to its adversary for the practical purpose of demoralizing and defeating them. So the communication is ambiguous and unstable. I believe one can see this in the way Sangh Parivar speaks through its many mouths and uses the media.

And to me Abu Ghraib pictures and videos seem quite theatrical. They do not show brutality beyond a point, as you note. They seem perverse. But what do they communicate to the potential adversary and actual supporters? How will they respond to these pictures? 

I do not have unequivocal answers to these questions. But this is where I reached after having read your mail on the list.

Avinash
__________________________________________________
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20041020/6f6049c7/attachment.html