The art of war
by Michael Maiello

Sun Tzu's The Art of War can be found in the business section of your favorite book store. Now read that sentence again, and realize how stupid it sounds. Sun Tzu was a Japanese philosopher who taught tactic in guerrilla warfare. He was the Che Guevara of feudal Japan. Never mind that Sun Tzu was talking about actually killing people. His book has become a marketing bible.

Art, whether it be a novel, poem, or book of philosophy, helps us see aspects of the world clearly. Unless the meaning is purposefully twisted, The Art of War shows us the realities of waging war -- how to burn supply lines, how stick people with swords before they stick you with swords, and how to run away without getting stuck by a sword. It's all very real, and it's all about people getting hurt.

I could calm down and accept this as just a metaphor if our media hadn't equally perverted our view of real war. The pictures from Baghdad are back, and MSNBC must be thrilled to have something other than Linda Tripp's mug to flash on the screen. Amazingly, the pictures in 1998 look the same as the pictures from 1991. Now, we all know that technology has grown faster in the last seven years than in the last twenty, and that our international news services could certainly provide us with clear night time photographs of Baghdad if they wanted.

Instead, we get green, fake looking battle scenes with occasional splotches of light which the newscasters tell us is tracer fire and larger splotches of light which are cruise missiles and a few more splotches of light which are Roman candles which are illegal fireworks in much of the United States, but totally legal in Iraq, how fun! The scene from Baghdad a bit like an early 80's Atari video game. The sad irony is that the footage from Baghdad is too blurry and obscure to be used in one of today's games Today's games are graphic and scary.

The decision to air this vague, hard to analyze footage is an artistic decision, made by networks to manipulate the audience. The footage that came back from Viet Nam was too graphic and gory. It made people, gasp, hate war. It made them think premature death was a bad idea. It caused unrest. The problem is that wars are stories and the media can't afford to miss a story. It's hard to cover a war if the military won't help, so the media has to pick images which get us excited and not disgusted.

Look at the green footage and try to imagine people in the buildings and on the streets. It's not easy to real people in such a surreal scene. So I'll provide you with a perceptual trick, guaranteed to help you see through the facade. Go to a book store, find a volume of Van Gogh portraits and look at Starry Night. Here, Van Gogh deals with a similar subject but with different intentions. He shows a small town, nestled in the mountains, underneath a fury from the heavens that would just make the Pentagon drool. But in the houses--light. There's a human connection which makes Starry Night more disturbing than hours of "Desert Fox" footage. But it will help provide some perspective, and provides a clearer lens than the nightvision newscams.

Michael Maiello prefers his war with al the bloody trimmings.

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