The UK Christmas Number One this year was 'Wherever You Are' by the Military Wives, a feat that the brainchild Gareth Malone said showed that 'The support of the British military has been fantastic' but to me shows just another step in the unhealthy propaganda to normalise the view our military and their ill-advised adventures.
Recently there are soldiers everywhere in the media, on talent shows, being paraded before football matches, being squeezed and fawned over by celebrities in photo opportunities and rattling Help for Heroes collection buckets at us in town centres.
I have always felt a bit uneasy with the term 'Hero' when it comes to describing the military, victims always seemed more appropriate because there was nothing heroic about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and the soldiers being killed and maimed are victims of the politicians decisions to send them into wars they had no place in being involved in.
When the Iraq War first began, there was an attempt by the more war hungry around us make anyone who criticised the war to appear somehow unpatriotic and paint all our brave boys as heroes.
It didn't work then but gradually the military has become part of our everyday life and as the duplicity and lies of the inception of the wars fade further into memory, an acceptance has evolved that what we did in Iraq and are still doing in Afghanistan is a good and decent thing.
The Afghanistan War has been going on for so long that i have teenagers who were mere toddlers at the time of the Wars outbreak asking me what it was all about. They are told to blindly support the troops but have no idea why.
The reasons behind the wars are no longer discussed, nor the reason why we continue to be there, just the propaganda that we must blindly support the troops who are there for our benefit defending our freedoms and protecting our way of life which is jingoistic nonsense.
The integration of the military into our everyday lives is a cynical ploy by the government and sectors of the media to sentimentalise the military, cast us as the good guys and stop us questioning the real issues of why we are there.
To read a newspaper today or watch a news broadcast, you wouldn't know that we were currently at war so maybe what we need are a few more reminders of the violence, death and destruction of War and to not allow a sanitised image of what the military do, and what our politicians did, to take hold in the public eye.
2 comments:
Alas, the "free" press once again has failed us as a result of government manipulation...
What I want from the press is a section (regardless of medium) with:
- just the data, sans the articles that combine data and opinion
- all the data, not just one side
- facts, sans the conjecture about what is going to happen or why things happened
- put all opinions, analysis, and expert advice in a seperate section since these all involve data and fact sensorship...
q
Great post. I agree with the above comment too, apart from the fact that the 'manipulation' mentioned comes from a much more complex array of forces rather than just 'government'. The government can be involved for sure, as was shown by the incestuous relationship between the Murdoch press and Blair's government during the nineties & noughties, but it's instructive how the parties bend over backwards to please the tabloid press, NOT the other way round. The owners are much more powerful than the useless jubs we elect.
And the other factor that impacts upon the effectiveness of the media is a combination of time constraints combined with sheer laziness and the appeal of party line-towing. It's MUCH harder to be a true investigative journalist than a cheer-leader, so we should cherish the few ones we have.
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