The ability to see. And then to report what is truly seen, without the eyes being averted due to "editorial concerns." Can it be taught in journalism school, or is it an innate moral compass one is born with?
Initially I was skeptical of this book; the title is a bit off-putting (that was before I learned that it refers to one of world's oldest logic problems; and has ample applications to all involved in the so-called war on terror). And then it was written by a journalist, a woman at that, who was unfamiliar with war when she started. Enough reasons for some justified unease. Fortunately a good friend recommended it; he even wanted to check out the validity of certain portions of the book, those on Saudi Arabia, with me. And so when it popped up on my Vine Newsletter, I had to say: "Yes, please." The best decision I made the entire week.
Megan K. Stack is a remarkable person. She had been in Paris on September 11, 2001; soon thereafter she was on the Afghanistan - Pakistan frontier, reporting on the hunt for Bin Laden. She appears to have come to the so-called "War on Terror" unencumbered by theoretical models of the Islamic world formulated in America's various think-tanks and university "Middle East Studies Centers." She espoused none of the theories of the fictional "York Harding," as described in Graham Greene's
The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Her assignments thereafter carry her to Israel, Iraq, Libya, "Kurdistan," Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt. When she gets "shut out," meaning that she really cannot cut through the government-imposed barriers on journalists, like in the Yemen, she says so. Thought her portrait of the madness in Qaddafi's Libya was on target. In Israel she learns that you cannot call Israelis from Morocco and Yemen "Jewish Arabs." She also commits the ultimate faux pas: "You humanized them. You're writing about suicide bombers as people who have corpses and families. They can't stand to see them written about like that." In Saudi Arabia I saw only one error; it was in assessment and judgment, understandably enough given her brief time in the Kingdom. She is yelled at by two guards for standing in front of the bank; told to go away because men might see her. Stack says: "Leave me alone!" And then she says: "This was a slip. In a land ruled by male ego, yelling at a man only deepens the crisis." Au contraire. In this situation, 98% of the time, the correct response is yelling loud and hard. The chauvinistic men don't know what to do, and slink off. My wife did it several times.
It is Iraq and Lebanon that are the essential core of the book, and she tells the story with a rising, Bolero-esque style; certainly not of pleasure, but of horror. The murder of the young female Iraqi journalist, Atwar Bahjat is particularly heart-rending. Call it what you may, incredible courage, sheer insanity, the ultimate in journalistic duty, but the climatic part of the book is in South Lebanon, where Stack raced, as the bombs fell around her from Israeli planes. Fittingly, in the madness around her, she visits a hospital for the mentally ill; and ponders the classic question: Are the people on the inside, or the outside, the ones who are the crazier? Stack HAD to document the horror done to civilians from the bombs dropped by planes; for as she said, she was drowning in shame. She knew that the bombs that had caused a tiny baby girl to be badly burned, and placed in a Tyre emergency room had come from, and been paid for, by Americans
Another female journalist with long-term experience in the Middle East, Robin Wright, also wrote a book
Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East on her experiences. I gave Ms. Wright's book a 3-star review; comparisons between the books are instructive. Wright's experience is longer; but, as she says, in October, 2006, she was on her fourth trip to Iraq with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Close association with power caused her to lose some of her ability to see, so it is no surprise that Abu Ghraib is never mentioned in her book, yet is a salient point in Stack's; the disillusionment of a young Jordanian women was the perfect vehicle to convey what Abu Ghraib represented to the Arab people. Both journalists covered the rigged election in the town of Damanhour, in Egypt, between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Gamal Heshmat, and the government-sponsored candidate, Moustafa Fiqi, who "won." Stack was there, and interviewed the principals through interpreters. Wright reported from a secondary source, Noha al Zeiny, who told her what she needed to know.
I've also read (and reviewed) Dexter Filkins'
The Forever War (Vintage), Sebastian Junger's
WAR and Steve Coll's
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century. Each of the books is strong, written by journalists who are generally thorough; at least two have clearly "paid their dues" in terms of being where the bullets were flying. Each book is a worthwhile read. Nonetheless, I felt that Junger practiced some self-censorship; Coll's book is almost perfect, factually, yet even he makes a major mistake in describing the terrorist attacks against upscale compounds in Riyadh in 2003. I didn't find any of these flaws in Stack's work.
In 1994 I traveled for six days with one of the "big-name" journalist from the Vietnam War era. Serendipity had brought us together; both on our first return visits to Vietnam since the war. We had our agreements, and our (civil) disagreements, about the wars of the past, and the ones to come. Murray Fromson shared with me an experience from the very final days of the American war in Vietnam; he was still working in the Saigon bureau a few days before the fall of the city. The report came in that a C-5A Galaxy had crashed just after takeoff from Tan Son Nhut. He was the first on the scene, and reported the devastation; the babies and small children, the orphans of the war who were being evacuated, and now lay, scattered across the fields, dead. He cried while reporting the story, and almost 20 years later, he was still deeply rankled that he had been upbraided by the "brass" of CBS in NYC for being "unprofessional." After seeing the devastation of South Lebanon; the impact, particularly on the old, the crazies, and the babies who suffered under the bombs, Megan Stack also cried. We need more such "unprofessional" journalists; those who can see, and be moved by it; who know that nothing justifies such suffering. Ms. Stack has performed the essential journalist function: she has helped us all to see, if we are willing. An important, 5 ˝ star book that should be read in all our schools, but particularly in the think tanks that construct the reasons why all of this is justified by America's `security needs.'
A final piece of gratuitous advice that I hope finds its way to Ms. Stack: You've paid your dues; never let the siren song of the adrenalin rush of war call you back. You've done enough to help the rest of us see; go peacefully among the many countries that still have a tenuous hold on that marvelous state.
