by Norman Solomon

Killing Them Softly: Starvation and Dollars for Afghan Kids

The Pentagon’s air drops of food parcels andPresident Bush’s plea for American children to aid Afghan kids withdollar bills will go down in history as two of the most cynicalmaneuvers of media manipulation in the early 21st century.

Many US news outlets have been eager to play along. A New YorkTimes editorial proclaimed, “Mr. Bush has wisely made providinghumanitarian assistance to the Afghan people an integral part ofAmerican strategy.” Later, on October 12, the same newspaper continuedits praise for the US food-aid charades: “His reaffirmation of theneed for humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan—includingdonations from American children—seemed heartfelt.”

While thousands of kids across the US stuff dollar bills intoenvelopes and mail them to the White House, the US governmentcontinues a bombing campaign that is accelerating the momentum of massstarvation in Afghanistan.

Relief workers have voiced escalating alarm. Jonathan Patrick, anofficial with the humanitarian aid group Concern, minced no words. Hecalled the food drops “absolute nonsense.”

“What we need are 20-ton trucks in huge convoys going across theborder all the time,” said Patrick, based in Islamabad. But when thebombing began, the truck traffic into Afghanistan stopped.

In tandem with the bombing campaign, the US government launched a PRblitz about its food-from-the-sky effort. But the Nobel-winning Frenchorganization Doctors Without Borders has charged that the gambit is“virtually useless and may even be dangerous.” One aid group afteranother echoes the assessment. The US has been dropping 37,000 meals aday on a country where several million Afghans face the imminentthreat of starvation. Some of the food, inevitably, is landing onminefields.

The food drops began on Sunday, October 7, along with the bombing. ByOctober 11, some 137,000 of the packages of the rations had beendropped, according to the Knight-Ridder News Service. “Internationalaid organization officials say, however, that around 5 million Afghansare in danger of starvation because the nation’s borders are sealedand food supplies are diminishing by the day—meaning that only a tinypercentage of the hungry are receiving the US food.” The borders aresealed because of the continuous bombing.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld wasn’t worried about provokingappropriate derision and outrage when he told reporters on October 8:“It is quite true that 37,000 rations in a day do not feed millions ofhuman beings. On the other hand, if you were one of the starvingpeople who got one of the rations, you’d be appreciative.”

Avowedly, the main targets of the bombing are the people in the binLaden network and their Taliban supporters. But the rhetorical salvoeswill be understood, all too appropriately, in wider contexts. “We willroot them out and starve them out,” Rumsfeld said, just before closinga news conference with a ringing declaration: “We are determined notto be terrorized.”

Supposedly, bombing Afghanistan is going to make us safer back here inthe USA. But as soon as the attacks began, the FBI called forheightened alerts across the US—because the risk of another deadlyattack in this country had just increased. What’s wrong with thispicture?

Unlike the media herd, longtime foreign correspondent Robert Fisk isexploring key questions. “President Bush says this is a war betweengood and evil,” he wrote in the London-based Independentnewspaper. “You are either with us or against us. But that’s exactlywhat bin Laden says. Isn’t it worth pointing this out and asking whereit leads?”

Fisk asks other questions that aren’t ready for prime time: “Why arewe journalists falling back on the same sheep-like conformity that weadopted in the 1991 Gulf War and the 1999 Kosovo war? ... Is theresome kind of rhetorical fog that envelopes us every time we bombsomeone?”

In wartime, media accounts seem to zigzag between selected facts andeasy sentimentality. Michael Herr, a journalist who covered theVietnam War, later wrote that the US media “never found a way toreport meaningfully about death, which of course was really what itwas all about.” Obscured by countless news stories, “the suffering wassomehow unimpressive.” Accustomed to seeing its military might asself-justifying, the USA powered ahead. “We took space back quickly,expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality,” Herrobserved. “Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could doeverything but stop.”

In an October 12 editorial headlined “Mr. Bush’s New Gravitas,” theNew York Times concluded that the President is providingexactly the kind of leadership we need: “As he reflected on thesorrow, compassion and determination that have swept the country sincethose horrifying hours on the morning of September 11, he seemed to bea leader whom the nation could follow in these difficult times.”

Among the leadership qualities most appreciated by editorial writersis the Bush administration’s aptitude for shameless propaganda. Whilethe Pentagon keeps dropping tons of bombs, it scatters some meals tothe winds. While persisting with a bombing campaign that shows everysign of resulting in mass starvation, among other disastrousconsequences, Bush urges American children to send in dollar bills “tohelp the children of Afghanistan.”

Norman Solomon writes a syndicated column on media and politics.His latest book is “The Habits of Highly DeceptiveMedia.”