Media Moral doubts and the nightly news
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
On April 22, Tomislav (Tomi) Mitrovic, 60 -- as he had
done for over 30 years -- said goodbye to his wife, daughters, adopted son, two
cats and his dog, and set out for work. Mitrovic loved America, reflected in
the American-style ranch house he built himself, with three
bedrooms, three bathrooms, a connected living room and dining room, a nice
garden and a lawn with the grass cut short.
His job: program director for Belgrades Radio Television
Serbia. He had nothing to do with content -- he was the guy who coordinates the
cameras. He had started in the mail room in the early 1960s and worked his way
up, and now was looking forward to retirement in a year, when he would settle
down and scrape by on his pension of $100 a month.
He had no use for the Milosevic government and no desire to work
tonight, but the supervisor told the staff: Patriotism demands that you work.
No work, no job. Later that night he told his subordinates to go home and
stayed on alone.
He was, said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon, as much a
part of Milosevics murder machine as his military.
No more. At 2:10 a.m. NATO missiles slammed the station and killed
Tomi and four other technicians. It was six days before they could identify his
body. He was unlike the other 300 (American press estimate) or 1,200 (Yugoslav
count) Serbian and Kosovan civilians NATO has killed only in that, thanks to
terrific reporting by Steven Erlanger of The New York Times, we
know his name.
The Times, unlike the TV networks, has been bold enough to
chronicle the suffering of Serbias civilian population in a way that, at
least indirectly, raises questions about the morality of NATO tactics and
American foreign policy.
As in the Gulf War, we have steadfastly maintained that our smart
bombs avoid collateral damage. Nevertheless, since the bombing
began, according to various sources from the BBC Web site to the New York
Daily News, by human or technological error, in Serbia and Kosovo, our
bombs have gone astray at least 9 times, plowing into busses, convoys of
refugees, passenger trains, private homes, the Chinese Embassy and a
hospital.
A 63-year-old woman who lived next door to a house wiped out by a
missile said to Erlanger, Why are we guilty? We think nothing bad about
anyone. But what should God do to these people? Let Clintons daughter be
under a broken roof like the children next door.
Meanwhile, the NATO bombing strategy is clearly aimed -- if not to
indiscriminately kill civilians -- to make them as miserable as possible by
depriving them of light, power, medicines, food, transport, sanitation and
water. A woman who fears her pregnant daughters baby will die told the
Times Carlotta Gall, NATO is targeting the psychology of
people. Now we feel anger, which is not characteristic, and we think all the
world is our enemy, and that is not good for people.
When a reported eight cluster bombs killed 79 refugees in the
village of Prizren in southern Kosovo May 13, I stayed up late Friday to take
notes on TV coverage. The CBS Evening News gave it about 4 minutes,
noted that the injuries had required 7 amputations, but paid more attention to
the Pentagon spin than the dead refugees. Then a quick shift to the good news
-- the little 17-month-old boy who fell down a Kansas well and got rescued. The
Lehrer Newshour finally featured a substantive discussion that
touched on the moral issue. ABCs Nightline was about
grandmothers.
In the late-night C-Span replay of his Pentagon news conference,
Air Force four-star Gen. John Jumper, commander of the Allied Air Force in
Central Europe, like Defense Secretary William Cohen on CBS Face
the Nation, gave the classic spin:
1. Express pride in the great work American servicemen are doing.
Morale is high. Everything is being done to protect the safety of American
fighting men.
2. Mistakes are rare. Out of 20,000 sorties, only 12 instances of
collateral damage. Very low percentage.
3. On tough questions, plead ignorance. Were cluster bombs used?
Cant say. A cluster bomb, we recall from the Vietnam War, is
an antipersonnel weapon that explodes above the ground and spreads a hail of
shrapnel and/or razor-sharp needles over 1,000 square yards. How is this an
appropriate weapon in a city? Jumper says, We always match the weapon
with the effect.
4. Blame the Serbs. Earlier NATO spokesmen had said Serb artillery
had shelled the refugees. Now, offering no proof, Gen. Jumper said it was
possible that the Serbs had rounded up the refugees as human
shields and put them where they could be killed for propaganda purposes.
In Cohens words, there is no level to which Milosevic will
not stoop. This, of course, is true enough. The question is whether we,
desperate for some kind of success in a war policy that seems to be failing,
have let our own moral standards slip.
The blame-Milosevic-for-everything line of argument is reinforced
by a thesis advanced in The New Republic in articles by Stacy
Sullivan of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (May 10 issue), and
Daniel J. Goldhagen, author of Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust (May 17 issue). I risk oversimplifying their
argument by joining their pieces, but the general idea is: The Serbs are bad.
Ordinary Serbians, like good Germans during World War II, have had
an opportunity to speak out against the atrocities of their leaders but,
because they really approved of the slaughter, have preferred to keep quiet. As
a result, after the war we must occupy Serbia and transform the population into
moral human beings -- like us. Meanwhile, if Tomi Mitrovic has to die, too bad.
He should have stayed home and given up his pension.
The trouble with this line of argument morally is that it can be
used to justify an any means necessary strategy -- fly high to
avoid antiaircraft fire, sacrifice accuracy and regret collateral
damage. We are committed to degrading Serbias military,
but not committed enough to risk American lives.
In a passionate essay in The Nation (May 24 issue),
Stephen F. Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University, argues
that this policy degrades ourselves. Our military leaders care nothing of
morality, only the credibility of NATO, he says. To this we
must answer: We care more about the moral reputation of America.
In the one sensitive moment of weekend TV commentary, retired
General Robert Gard reminded Newshour viewers that, unlike any war
in recent memory, this one has been defined by its humanitarian goals.
Therefore, the means must be consistent with humanitarian ends. That clearly
rules out cluster bombs. We should have positioned troops ready to move in,
rather than imagine that Milosevic would fold under air attacks.
Now, writes Georgetowns Charles King in the Times
Literary Supplement (May 7 issue), we are destroying the Yugoslav
economy in order to build democracy, and now, killing Albanians in order to
save them.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is assistant dean of Fordham
College Rose Hill.
National Catholic Reporter, May 28,
1999
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