About site: Issues/Warfare and Conflict/Specific Conflicts/Afghanistan Civil War/US Intervention - A Fairy Tale at Christmas
Return to Society also Society
  About site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,619895,00.htm

Title: Issues/Warfare and Conflict/Specific Conflicts/Afghanistan Civil War/US Intervention - A Fairy Tale at Christmas Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has played down the civilian deaths and 4 million refugees, to make audiences believe in a straightforward moral narrative, says the Guardian. (December 17, 2
Religious_Texts_in_the_Etext_Archives Selection of online texts, including poems in praise of Abirami, the Dawn-Breakers, multiple Buddhist texts, the Nag-Hammadi, the Quran, Rosicrucian writings, and the Aazhvaar paasurams.

Eve_Music_Store\'s_Cocktail_Page A source of images, links and information regarding the sixties and lounge culture.

Isabelle_Peschard Curriculum vitae and texts of presentations and articles by Dr. Isabelle Peschard on topics in cognitive science, physics, and transcendental philosophy.

Ancarrow,_Jason Includes personal information, a resume, a weblog, and links.

The_Filipino Serving the Filipino-American community of Arizona.

Dudley_Clark_&_Chan_LLP Practicing in the areas of civil litigation, labor, real estate, banking, commercial and administrative law, from offices in the United States Virgin Islands.

  Alexa statistic for http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,619895,00.htm





Get your Google PageRank






Please visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,619895,00.htm
  Related sites for http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,619895,00.htm
    Autonomous_Zone_InfoShop_(Chicago,_Illinois) A resource co-op for activists and organizers.
    Critical_Discussion_of_Vinge\'s_Singularity_Concept Thirteen participants write essays on the Singularity; Vernor Vinge responds to each. Edited by Robin Hanson.
    Humanics_Taoism The Taoism section of the Humanics Publishing Group.
    Gypsies_\'caught_in_the_middle\' The Roma people, who are being subjected to revenge attacks by Kosovo Albanians, have suffered a long history of persecution. [BBC News] (July 5, 1999)
    The_Institute_for_Labor_Studies A Kansas City based labor education program offering credit and non credit courses for union members and the general public. Sponsors a radio show: the Heartland Labor Forum.
    Economou,_Thomas Includes personal information, academic work, and photographs.
    Order_of_the_Trapezoid The most culturally diverse order in the Temple of Set.
    Applied_Scholastics__Opening_the_Doors_to_Learning Acclaimed as a major breakthrough in education by specialists and lay practitioners alike, the Applied Scholastics approach developed by L. Ron Hubbard is called Study Technology.
    BlackNet Resource rich internet portal for the African British community providing online forum, chat rooms, newsletter and online dating facilities.
    Brunk,_Matthew_Ian A mother's memorial website dedicated to her son.
    Kashmir_Council_of_Australia Aims to support right for self-determination of Kashmiris and condemn violations of human rights.
    Crossdressing_Dreams Counseling, advice, escorting and shopping are provided for our CD/TG clients.
    Allentown_Bible_Students Includes booklets, current events, comfort and consolation article.
    Good-Touch/Bad-Touch A comprehensive child abuse prevention curriculum designed for pre-school and kindergarten through sixth grade students.
    Pre-Wrath_Bible_Prophecy Part of an extensive study and outline of Bible prophecy written from the pre-wrath rapture standpoint.
    Wenz,_Rev__Paul_and_Lorene_-_The_Brewing_Pastor Lutheran minister makes homebrew during winters in Yankton, South Dakota. Recipes are included, including his Luther's Lager.
    Document_Research Researching and retrieving documents for the legal and lending industries.
    Colby_Attorney_Services Filing or retrieving incorporation documents and information from state agencies or the court systems.
    Two_Concepts_of_Rules An excerpt from Rawls' 1955 paper, with study questions.
    REALationship_Com Tests, forums, question and answers, articles, ability to forward tests.
This is websites2007.org cache of m/ as retrieved on 2008.10.12 websites2007.org's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time.
document.domain = "guardian.co.uk"; Madeleine Bunting: A fairy tale at Christmas | Politics | The Guardian // // // // // // Jump to content [s] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8] Sign in Register Text largersmaller // guardian.co.uk logo Search: Location guardian.co.uk Politics Web News Sport Comment Culture Business Money Life & style Travel Environment Blogs Video Jobs A-Z News Politics

A fairy tale at Christmas

Coverage of this war has played down the civilian deaths and 4m refugees, feeding a new US doctrine of terror

Madeleine Bunting Madeleine Bunting The Guardian, Monday December 17 2001 It's all settled then - this really does seem likely to prove a war that ends before Christmas. Any day now Bin Laden should be blown up in a cave, and then we can settle down to our turkey and Christmas pudding. We can send cards and sing carols about peace and goodwill without a chorus of daisy cutters in the background. Christmas is a time when, above all else, we like to feel good about ourselves; we give to charities, we give presents, we offer hospitality and we remember those lonely old relatives. If it works, the objective is to feel expansive, warm-hearted and generous. So all good wars must end before Christmas. Indeed, this one is shaping up in every respect to having been a jolly good war. It is fitting all the criteria for what a modern war should be - very neatly. It's been short; it's been successful; and we've had right on our side. Not a day is going by without another al-Qaida bomb factory or terror manual being discovered; and now an Advent goodie, the smoking gun himself, Bin Laden, chortling as only an evil genius would do over his handiwork. Even the ascetic Mullah Omar comes in for demonisation as his vast compound in Kandahar allegedly exposes his corrupt egotism while his people suffered in poverty (worst of all, it appears, he had execrable taste in interior decor). So this year, as we pull the crackers, we can happily reflect on the fact that those dear Afghans are now flying their kites and listening to their screeching music (though it's a mystery as to why they would want to) once again, thanks to us. To top it all, feeling really good usually requires some measure of feeling superior; so round off that seasonal glow with some gloating at the idiots who opposed this war. All so neat, just too neat, and I don't buy it. The coverage of this war raises more questions than any other war I can remember (and I'm not even talking about the video tape). Of much more concern has been the way the coverage has been heavily skewed towards the military conflict: it's been a boys' war. We've followed planes and bombs, we've watched plumes of smoke from distant brown hills, we've seen picturesque Afghan fighters hanging about in mountain hideouts - and now it has culminated in a grand finale, a mountain shoot-out. It's been as gripping and as plausible as one of the black-and-white westerns we'll watch this Christmas, only fewer dead bodies. Very occasionally, we've glimpsed that people are getting killed - the images of the castrated Taliban fighter pleading for his life before he was shot, and the massacre at Qala-i-Janghi. But our sympathy for these near-feral wildmen is limited - they got what they deserved, they were Taliban after all. What has been strikingly absent is the humanisation of this war. Unlike in Bosnia and Kosovo, our screens and newspapers have not been filled with the terrible trauma of recognisable individuals and their families. The cameras haven't hovered on the faces of shocked tearful children, and the impotent anguish of their parents and grandparents. On a few occasions, reporters have reached a bombed village, but it's hard to tell the rubble from the hovels, and estimates of the dead are always circumspect; there has been no sense of outrage about these atrocities. Yet the number of Afghan non-combatants reported killed (how many more do we not know about?) in this war is edging close to those who died in the World Trade Centre. The latter has provoked global outrage, the former is accepted with an astonishing equanimity as a necessary price to pay for two very uncertain prognostications - Afghanistan's peaceful future and ridding the world of the evil al-Qaida. But the even bigger story that has barely surfaced in recent weeks is the huge dislocation the war has caused to the entire population. The World Food Programme estimates that as many as 3m-4m people have fled their homes because of the bombing. Médecins Sans Frontières claims that Maslakh - a name that should be on every newspaper front page - is the biggest refugee camp in the world. The few aid workers there haven't even been able to assess its population, which is believed to be somewhere between 200,000 and 800,000 and growing; new arrivals have recently shot up from 20 a day to 1,200. It is one of five refugee camps around Herat, but the route there is too insecure for western journalists. They are largely sticking to the main cities and Tora Bora (there are a few notable exceptions, such as the Sunday Telegraph's Christina Lamb, who sent a horrifying report from Maslakh). But it's not even those dusty, cold refugee camps that are the WFP's biggest headache, according to its Rome spokesman: at least it knows where they are. It is the refugees who have fled into remote rural areas, many of whom could die - or may already have died - a bitter death from starvation and cold this winter. Part of the explanation for why we are not hearing this is the unprecedented danger of reporting this war, in which as many journalists as western combatants have been killed. Partly it's because journalists always depend for help on local participants in a war who want to use the western media to advance their cause. But the only Afghans helping western journalists are the Northern Alliance, and they have no interest in shocking a western public with the suffering caused by the bombing. Meanwhile, the Taliban were hopelessly ignorant. They always buried the bodies too quickly for western cameras. Just compare them with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which ensured a storm of western moral outrage at Serbian ethnic cleansing by taking the cameras to remote villages to show them the dead bodies. Nor did the Afghans flee into Pakistan in sufficient numbers to provide the kind of disaster footage always inexplicably described as "biblical". All of this has conveniently dovetailed with the west's pursuit of this war. So we've been left with a straightforward moral narrative: good triumphs over evil. It's been this kind of easy moralising that kicked me into the idiots' camp from the start. The US may have wanted to exact revenge, but it was never something anyone could claim to be morally right. The Americans have unleashed a principle of foreign policy - it is legitimate to fight terror with even greater terror - that is causing havoc in the Middle East, could cause more havoc in Kashmir and is being used from China to Zimbabwe to warrant brutal repression. The fact that it hasn't yet caused the kind of havoc feared in Afghanistan (such as a protracted guerrilla war) is small recompense when we choose to overlook that we are not getting anything like the full picture of the suffering it has caused in this most tragic of countries. · Email m.bunting@guardian.co.uk Print thisPrintable version Send to a friendSend to a friend Share thisShare Clip thisClip Contact usContact us larger | smaller Email Close Recipient's email address Your name Add a note (optional) Your IP address will be logged Share Close Digg reddit Google Bookmarks Yahoo! My Web del.icio.us StumbleUpon Newsvine livejournal Facebook BlinkList Contact us Close Contact the Politics editorpolitics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk Report errors or inaccuracies: reader@guardian.co.uk Letters for publication should be sent to: letters@guardian.co.uk If you need help using the site: userhelp@guardian.co.uk Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard: +44 (0)20 7278 2332 Advertising guide License/buy our content Politics World news Afghanistan · Middle East More comment Related Sep 28 2005 Shortcuts: The new pornography of war Mar 26 2002 1,500 feared killed in Afghan earthquake Feb 18 2002 Bin Laden's No 2 'captured in Iran' Oct 29 2001 The Powell and the glory Print thisPrintable version Send to a friendSend to a friend Share thisShare Clip thisClip Contact usContact us Article historyArticle history Email Close Recipient's email address Your name Add a note (optional) Your IP address will be logged Share Close Digg reddit Google Bookmarks Yahoo! My Web del.icio.us StumbleUpon Newsvine livejournal Facebook BlinkList Contact us Close Contact the Politics editorpolitics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk Report errors or inaccuracies: reader@guardian.co.uk Letters for publication should be sent to: letters@guardian.co.uk If you need help using the site: userhelp@guardian.co.uk Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard: +44 (0)20 7278 2332 Advertising guide License/buy our content About this article Close

Madeleine Bunting: A fairy tale at Christmas

This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday December 17 2001 . It was last updated at 02.38 on December 17 2001. google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'Politics'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // // Latest news on guardian.co.uk News Government to inject £40bn into ailing UK banks Sport Ballesteros confirms brain tumour Politics EU bank bail-out plan agreed Free P&P at the Guardian bookshop Gods That Failed Gods That Failed £12.99 with free UK delivery Towards the Light Towards the Light £8.99 with free UK delivery Browse more politics books Buy books from the Guardian Bookshop

Find your MP

Enter name of the MP Enter postcode or placename Or browse the map | About this search // Sponsored features Guardian Jobs UK USA UK Surrey Hills Planning Adviser surrey county council. mickleham. £31,308 - £35,748 pro-rata. URGENT - SECURITY CLEARED PA/ADMINISTRATOR (BCE/CT… excel recruitment. urgent - security cleared pa/administratorimmedia…. Top Rates. PROPERTY ANALYST regent selection ltd. this is an excellent career opportunity for a cand…. £45,000 + BONUS + EXECUTIVE PERKS. // Browse all jobs USA Software Sales Account Manager - State, Local & Education (S and/or strategic (long term) value; typically of higher risk to hp develops account plans and long-term... typically assigned higher than average quota... . az. Core Faculty-Education and Professional Studies passion for public higher education who are committed... and related teaching and learning issues in higher education.preferred qualifications·experience in... . co. Vice Chancellor for Advancement following qualifications: a minimum of five years of experience in a higher education setting with at least three years in direct fundraising; cfre preferred or... . ar. // Browse all jobs // Related information Politics World news Afghanistan · Middle East Hamid Karzai addresses his troops in Kabul, <b>Afghanistan</b> Hamid Karzai assassination attempt Apr 28 2008: Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban during a military parade yesterday; an MP and two others were killed during the attack More galleries Oct 11 2001 Taliban say locals burn food parcels Sep 28 2001 Top judge's human rights warning Sep 23 2001 Lives less ordinary: UK casualties in America Sep 17 2001 Middle East peace holds key to America's war osama bin laden Bin Laden calls for Afghanistan withdrawal Nov 30 2007: The al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, appeals for Europe to stop supporting the US in Afghanistan in his audio message broadcast on al-Jazeera television More video License/buy our content | Privacy policy | Terms & conditions | Advertising guide | Accessibility | A-Z index | Inside guardian.co.uk | About guardian.co.uk | Join our dating site today guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008 Go to: guardian.co.uk home UK news World news Comment is free blog Newsblog Sport blog Arts & Entertainment blog In pictures Video Archive search Arts & entertainment Books Business EducationGuardian.co.uk Environment Film Football Jobs Katine appeal Life & style MediaGuardian.co.uk Money Music The Observer Politics Science Shopping SocietyGuardian.co.uk Sport Talk Technology Travel Been there Email services Special reports The Guardian The Northerner The Wrap Advertising guide Compare finance products Crossword Events / offers Feedback Garden centre GNM Press Office Graduate Bookshop Guardian Ecostore Guardian Films Headline service Help / contacts Information Living our values Newsroom Notes & Queries Reader Offers Readers' editor Soulmates dating Style guide Syndication services Travel offers TV listings Weather Web guides Working for us Guardian Weekly Public Learn Guardian back issues Observer back issues Guardian Professional // // // //
 

Coverage

of

the

war

in

Afghanistan

has

played

down

the

civilian

deaths

and

4

million

refugees,

to

make

audiences

believe

in

a

straightforward

moral

narrative,

says

the

Guardian.

(December

17,

2

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,619895,00.htm

A Fairy Tale at Christmas 2008 October

dvd rental

dvd


Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has played down the civilian deaths and 4 million refugees, to make audiences believe in a straightforward moral narrative, says the Guardian. (December 17, 2

Rules

© 2008 Internet Explorer 5+ or Netscape 6+
Recommended Sites: 1. Arts - Business - Computers - Games - Health - Home - Kids and Teens - News - Recreation - Reference - Regional - Science - Shopping - Society - Sports - World Miss Gallery - Top Anime Hentai - DVD rental by mail - Pisos a Lleida - Compare - Geckos - Mortgage Calculator - Plumbing Directory
2008-10-12 17:02:22

Copyright 2005, 2006 by Webmaster
Websites is cool :) 264Hotel Berna - Hotel Helsinki - Projekty Domów - Portfele - Kserokopiarki