Is this what friendly fire looks like?
The Sun has posted a video it obtained of U.S. pilots strafing and then firing on British tanks in Iraq. One British soldier was killed in the attack and four others were injured. The BBC is following the legal proceedings regarding the death. The availability of this video footage and radio communication-- recorded from one of the airplanes-- has been an increasingly significant portion of that investigation. Only after the video was leaked to The Sun did the U.S. government grant British authorities official access to it. Until that announcement, the video hovered in a kind of limbo: neither government initially acknowledged its existence, and then it was freely available to anyone with Internet access. It leapt from classified to completely public without passing through intermediate stages.
It should be up to each of us to interpret the video itself; clearly, it has major implications for the psychological dimension of the Iraq war for the people who are fighting in it. I was struck by the deliberateness of the discussion about the vehicles before they were attacked, as well as by the tone and words used by the pilots once they had been informed of their mistake. It is also incredible to hear how quickly news of the attack spread, from the British troops to their superiors to their American counterparts and down to the radio operators and the pilots.
Comments
This is clearly an example of what we talked about the other day in class: the government is no longer able to completely comtrol the flow of information to the public. Now that technology has made access to information, events, and ideas so simple, it is hard to keep things secret. Sure, there are legal issues to overcome in terms of The Sun's ability to show the footage, but the fact is that someone got the footage, and leaked it. The US government had no choice but to acknowledge it, or else someone else would have made it public anyway.
Is technology a serious threat to, or an aid to governments?
Posted by: Miriam Altman | February 7, 2007 01:34 PM
if you go back to last night's video, Wendy Chun (prof. in the MCM department) talks about how technology is simultaneously empowering and disempowering... so, to answer your question--it's both.
Posted by: Christina | February 7, 2007 02:24 PM
... or more specifically -- I don't think you can have one and not the other.
Posted by: Christina | February 7, 2007 02:26 PM
One: I just wanted to say not so outrageous a video. I think the guys f'd up and they demonstrated in their voices how upset they were at getting the mission wrong. I DID, however, note that they were more worried about consequences they would face rather than whether Brits had died. But I think that's an expected quality of war that has become so impersonalized by technological advances. About the fact that this got "leaked." I'm not sure I understand how that happens. Is it like one of the governemnts got paid a lot of cash for the tape? I would think the high level of sensitivity would mean both sides would be incredibly careful about who got hold of the info. I mean, it's clearly not public record. Anybody with insight into the parameters of the journalism industry?
Posted by: Daliso Leslie | February 8, 2007 06:47 PM