June 8, 2006
To Frame Haditha Debate, Follow The Money
by Jeffrey Feldman
Something horrific has happened in Haditha, and while the full details of the incident are still coming to light, it has made one thing clear: The war in Iraq has damned our soldiers. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more soldiers will be damned. Damned to shoot innocent people--by accident and by fear. Damned to be maimed and decimated by an enemy they cannot see or stop short of committing genocide. Damned to return home physically and mentally scarred forever. Damned to spend the rest of their lives frustrated, addicted, undercompensated, mystery disease afflicted. Damned to ride out their lives weeping--kneeling at the foot of the future Iraq War Memorial. Damned to be a lost generation.
What are we doing to stop this from happening any longer?
This is what Rush Limbaugh is doing:
The Haditha story, this Haditha incident, whatever,
this is it folks, this is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic
Party, the American
left, and the Drive-by Media to destroy our effort to win the war in
Iraq. That’s what Haditha represents--and they are going about it gleefully.
They are ecstatic about it...Folks, let me just put it in graphic terms.
It is going to be a gang rape. There is going to be a gang rape by the
Democratic Party, the American left and the Drive-by Media, to finally
take us out in the war against Iraq.
(Quoted on Think
Progress)
The event that Limbaugh refers to started when Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas was tragically killed by a roadside bomb while his humvee was riding through Haditha. Immediately, the members of his patrol allegedly set out to find the person who planted the bomb, but ended up killing as many as 24 people in their homes instead, most of whom appear to have been guilty of nothing more than being Iraqi in proximity to a horrific scene of anguish and confusion. In response to this event, Rush Limbaugh chose to talk about the ‘American left’ and ‘the media’ engaged in a ‘gang rape’ of the American policy in Iraq. That’s right: a gang rape.
Limbaugh is a skilled speaker and so long as he has thousands of radio stations that carry his program, there is nothing that can be done to quiet him. But beyond the fact that it makes us angry, what is actually wrong with what Limbaugh said about the death of Miguel Terrazas in Iraq? And what should we say in return?
Chris Bowers has argued--cogently, I believe--that the Limbaugh tirade and others like it are part of a time-tested ‘blame-firsters’ narrative the hard-right uses to locate fault elsewhere for their own failed policies. Our overstressed soldiers blow their top in Iraq, accidentally killing the very people they are trying to help--Limbaugh blames the likes of Katie Couric instead of the generals running the war or the President selling it.
And yet, even when we see that explanation, give it a history and nod our heads in agreement, we are still left short of a response. The problem lies in the fact that Limbaugh does not merely blame Democrats for losing the war, but also frames the entire incident in Haditha as being about winning or losing. And that is not a frame that allows Americans to actually express their views on what is happening in Iraq.
To Reframe Haditha, Follow The Money
The incident in Haditha is not really about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ the war in Iraq. It is about the insane situation we have condemned our soldiers to suffer in this war.
To be able to talk about this clearly, consider the following description of what our policy in Iraq forces our soldiers to do:
On the morning of Nov. 19, :The entire city [of
Haditha] was in an uproar,” says Scott Jepson, who was monitoring the
radio back at Kilo Company’s
base in Haditha. Jepson, who is now a sheriff in New Jersey, was on
a team sent to do a damage assessment of Iraqi homes. The team later
paid out money to civilians who had lost family members. It is common
practice to compensate civilians or their families wounded or killed
by American fire, up to $2,500 per civilian; at Haditha, the Marines
handed out a total of $38,000 to relatives of 15 victims.”
(Newsweek)
This is respect for our soldiers? We treat our soldiers like spoiled frat boys. They wreck the bar on a Saturday night bender and daddy deep-pockets comes in the next day to give the owner a couple thousand in cash for new bar stools. Only...they are not frat boys, but soldiers armed to the teeth. And it is not bar stools that have been killed, but people.
It is amazing how remarkably similar this policy of 'cash-and-kill' is to the criminal mishaps and solutions of Rush Limbaugh. A drug addict with a thousand-dollar-a-day habit, he is driven by stress to commit multiple felonies. His lawyers walk in after the damage has been done to pay the fine. Having paid thousands in fines for countless thousands in drug crimes, Rush then returns to the studio to spread hate about black drug users rotting in jail for being caught a third time with $5 of crack cocaine.
But where is concern for the soldiers in Limbaugh’s diatribe? Nowhere.
Again, we follow the money:
Hicks claims that "there’s a lot of guys who steal
from the Iraqis. Money, family heirlooms, and then they brag about it.
Guys would crap
into MRE bags and throw them to old men begging for food."
(Newsweek)
Theft, vandalism, cruelty. There are always soldiers who make bad decisions, but mostly America’s heart aches for these soldiers whose behavior deteriorates in the cesspool of a failed policy. We see our soldiers have become the damned.
And still, while thousands of soldiers loose thousands of legs and return home in thousands of wheelchairs with thousands of colostomy bags, Rush Limbaugh argues that laws requiring fair access for the handicapped are immoral, that Americans without jobs are lazy, that the war in Iraq will be ‘lost’ because journalist report the news.
Following the money and how it is being used in Iraq paints a picture of an American soldier condemned to immoral suffering.
Our soldiers are good people, all of them dedicated to lives of service and ideals that drive our nation.
But they have been trapped in an immoral policy where the wrongful death of a civilian leads not to a change in our policy, but to a hastily written check thrown at the feet of the corpse. In that situation, there are few of us who would last very long. These are the very stresses that lead to the collapse of morality, that lead good people down the lost path of the damned.
Speaking With Passion For Our Soldiers
Democrats, Republicans--Americans have no more time to waste. We must
speak out passionately and consistently about the damned. Every American--who
has a conscience and is not a coward--is concerned about the deaths
of innocent Iraqis. But now is the time that we absolutely must speak
out before more of our soldiers damned--before an entire generation
is lost under the weight of the policy in Iraq.
Our priority is not to silence Rush Limbaugh, but to frame the debate
so that it frees Americans to express their concern for our soldiers:
Hard-Right Attack
“Democrats want America to Lose the war in Iraq.”
Re-Frame
“Our soldiers have become the damned.”
Hard-Right Attack
“The media hates America.”
Re-Frame
“Our soldiers have been trapped in an immoral policy--a kill-and-cash policy."
Hard-Right Attack
“We will lose this war because of the Left.”
Re-Frame
“Let’s not condemn any more soldiers to this terrible, no-win situation.”
Hard-Right Attack
“Hate”
Re-Frame
“Care”
Hard-Right Attack
“Win-Lose”
Re-Frame
“Soldiers”
Hard-Right Attack
“Lose”
Re-Frame
“Before it’s too late.”
Reframing, of course, cannot immediately silence the likes of Rush Limbaugh, but can drive the debate such that more and more Americans are able to express the real anguish they feel as a result of the tragedy in Haditha.
We must reframe the debate as part of the process of finding out what really happed in Haditha, so the suffering of our soldiers is not silenced by hard-right arguments about ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ the war.
© 2006 Jeffrey Feldman
Jeffrey Feldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Founder of Frameshop. First established in late 2004 on several large blogs and launched as an independent website Jan. 1, 2005. Dr. Feldman has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology which he applies broadly to the analysis of politics and communication. He lives and teaches in New York City, conducts workshops on framing throughout the country, and is s a regular guest on the national syndicated radio show The Thom Hartmann Radio Program.