Tom Streithorst: Would Iraqis greet us with flowers? I made sure of it.
[Tom Steithorst has worked as a cameraman for 20 years. He is currently back in Iraq.]
Five years into the war, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 Americans have died. The proud and educated Iraqi middle class has been eviscerated. And America, the birthplace of rock and roll and Marilyn Monroe, the conqueror of the Nazis and the Soviets, for generations a benevolent and powerful force in the world, has been revealed as impotent and petty. The goals of transforming the Middle East, establishing hegemony over the oil fields of Iraq, and demonstrating the invincible powers of the American military have faded. Most of us, except the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Christopher Hitchens, realize the invasion was a disaster. Whom shall we blame?
Blame me. On Feb. 13, 2003, a few weeks before the invasion, I was working as a cameraman for a network news bureau in Kuwait. Our fixer told us that his cousin, a florist, planned to donate 10,000 flowers to children's charities for the youngsters to give to American soldiers to show gratitude for saving them from Saddam. It was a perfect scene: friendly Arabs, cute kids, our brave men about to go into battle. We pitched the story to our bosses in New York.
The boys at the morning show loved it—light and happy, a Valentine's Day bonbon that could still pretend to be a serious look at the impending war. The next morning, we drove to the flower shop and soon realized that we had been duped. No children's charities were involved; the florist had just mobilized his relatives' kids. Had we not agreed to film, he probably would have called the whole thing off. But we didn't care. We had promised New York this story.
I filmed the shop, the flowers, the smiling kids. As we drove to the U.S. Army base, the florist led his nieces and nephews in chants of "We love Bush." (This did not air. Our producers thought it a little "over the top.")
The response when we pulled up was not what we had planned, not at all what the network expected. The military police, seeing three vans filled with flowers, children, and an American TV crew, incomprehensibly assumed we were terrorists intent on breaching security. They pointed their guns at us, ordered us out of the cars, and told me to stop filming.
This was not what we had promised the morning news. American soldiers terrified of flower-bearing nine-year-olds wasn't the image New York producers wanted to project, not something likely to raise our ratings. It did not matter that this story of fear and misunderstanding and the Army's preoccupation with "force protection" was more interesting, important, and real than the sappy tale we had sold.
Since the florist and his kids had an articulate TV crew with them, they were not arrested, but we were all kicked off the base.
Read entire article at American Conservative
Five years into the war, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 Americans have died. The proud and educated Iraqi middle class has been eviscerated. And America, the birthplace of rock and roll and Marilyn Monroe, the conqueror of the Nazis and the Soviets, for generations a benevolent and powerful force in the world, has been revealed as impotent and petty. The goals of transforming the Middle East, establishing hegemony over the oil fields of Iraq, and demonstrating the invincible powers of the American military have faded. Most of us, except the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Christopher Hitchens, realize the invasion was a disaster. Whom shall we blame?
Blame me. On Feb. 13, 2003, a few weeks before the invasion, I was working as a cameraman for a network news bureau in Kuwait. Our fixer told us that his cousin, a florist, planned to donate 10,000 flowers to children's charities for the youngsters to give to American soldiers to show gratitude for saving them from Saddam. It was a perfect scene: friendly Arabs, cute kids, our brave men about to go into battle. We pitched the story to our bosses in New York.
The boys at the morning show loved it—light and happy, a Valentine's Day bonbon that could still pretend to be a serious look at the impending war. The next morning, we drove to the flower shop and soon realized that we had been duped. No children's charities were involved; the florist had just mobilized his relatives' kids. Had we not agreed to film, he probably would have called the whole thing off. But we didn't care. We had promised New York this story.
I filmed the shop, the flowers, the smiling kids. As we drove to the U.S. Army base, the florist led his nieces and nephews in chants of "We love Bush." (This did not air. Our producers thought it a little "over the top.")
The response when we pulled up was not what we had planned, not at all what the network expected. The military police, seeing three vans filled with flowers, children, and an American TV crew, incomprehensibly assumed we were terrorists intent on breaching security. They pointed their guns at us, ordered us out of the cars, and told me to stop filming.
This was not what we had promised the morning news. American soldiers terrified of flower-bearing nine-year-olds wasn't the image New York producers wanted to project, not something likely to raise our ratings. It did not matter that this story of fear and misunderstanding and the Army's preoccupation with "force protection" was more interesting, important, and real than the sappy tale we had sold.
Since the florist and his kids had an articulate TV crew with them, they were not arrested, but we were all kicked off the base.