Dry Bones

Like the three front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination, I think the war in Iraq is important in our defending this country against Islamic terrorism. The 2008 election will be the first election in over 30 years where a central campaign’s issue is America’s role in a war on foreign soil. Although our focus remains on Iraq, our challenge is farther-reaching -- in Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan and Iran. A March 2007 CNN poll showed that 21 percent of Americans want to withdraw from Iraq now, 37 percent within a year; and 39 percent want to remain as long as necessary.

I would make up the 39 percent who “want to remain as long as necessary.” Which is why I wouldn’t be very good at reporting this story.

And yet, I must admit to being mildly exasperated by the current coverage of the war. I never doubted the difficulty foreign correspondents face. The war is costly and dangerous. Journalists are now the targets and, in many ways, their lot has become “a lonelier media scene,” as Sherry Ricchiardi notes in her article “How danger and high costs limit Iraq coverage.” She suggests that the “relentless violence in Iraq has seriously compromised coverage of arguably the most important story in the world today. Certain facets of the conflict remain exasperatingly elusive or, at best, thinly reported” (28).

In researching for this essay, I came across an April 19, 2007, article by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal that suggested Americans are “hollowed out”; we’re tired and seem to be suffering from dry bones -- the world-weary feeling that seems to seep into one’s bones after enduring tragedy after tragedy. Henninger suggests that Americans’ response to the Virginia Tech shootings weren’t “inappropriate, inadequate or lacking sympathy”; rather, it “just seemed that the emotional surge was discernibly less than with similar events in the past -- such as Oklahoma City, the Beltway sniper, Columbine, the Branch Davidians. This was the sort of event that normally would have caused one's phone to ring off the hook or email inbox to fill with alerts from friends. But that didn't seem to happen this time. If one wasn't watching TV, the news arrived with an uncharacteristic delay.”

But what of the war in Iraq? To me, the media recently have become more detached, cynical, unemotional. While a moving story can just as easily bore, there seems to be fewer stories to put the war into context, to help us wrap our minds around a most complex subject. Yes, the war is violent and perhaps can’t be won. Moreover, the suicide bomber’s psyche is impossible to comprehend. But we shouldn’t be seeing the war from an emotional distance.

Until nightly news producers realize these stories should be run, no matter how much coverage on a particular night is devoted to Iraq, America will continue its “numbing down,” a phrase Henninger used to describe what seems to be our country’s disposition as of late.

There have been more than 700 suicide bombings since 2003. The politics of war is important, but so are the facts and figures and the emotion. Somewhere in our coverage of the war, though, the more concrete has been muddled by doomsday accounts of where the war is headed.

Henninger suggests that the “effect of all this is disabling, perhaps for a long time.” He continues: “One example: Supporters of intervention in Darfur are upset that the international community hasn't responded. That hesitation may be morally unattractive, but one can hardly drain the limited wells of emotional and moral fortitude in Iraq and expect them to produce elsewhere. For the foreseeable future, Americans may decide they don't wish to expose themselves to similar drainings.”

I’m reminded of the old adage that where you stand depends on where you sit. In the case of coverage of the war, I readily admit to being partisan. I agree with Ricchiardi’s assertion that Americans are left without a complete account of the war, which she characterizes as “a prolonged, bloody war that is devouring billions of taxpayers’ dollars” (28). But I would contend it’s because the politics has trumped the human effect. To adequately cover a war, the media mustn’t aim to prove the futility of the war, nor should the media offer nothing more than harrowing accounts of death. That’s the job of politicians -- to sensationalize. The job of a journalist is to provide the numbers -- and then to contextualize those numbers in a story.

Until the media adopt a new plan in covering Iraq, I'm not shocked by this country’s apparent waning interest in the war. As Henninger notes, “Europe did after World War I, when people became hollowed out by repetitive exposure to violence and death -- real or manufactured. No one should be surprised if our shell-shocked population is reluctant any time soon to revisit the experience outside the realm of friends and family.”