Apparently the New York Times has moved Elisabeth Bumiller over to the Pentagon beat. Her record as Bush White House correspondent produced some memorable missteps ("You can’t just say the president is lying," for example), so it wasn't a surprise to see her byline under the story, "From a Carrier, Another View of America's Air War in Afghanistan" (2/24/09). The piece was little more than pro-military propaganda (is that "another" view?) with lines like "pilots circle Taliban strongholds like an airborne 911 service and zoom in," and:

From 15,000 feet up, the pilots protect supply lines under increasing attack, fly reconnaissance missions to find what they call "bad guys" over the next hill, and go "kinetic" with bombs that kill three, four or five Taliban fighters at a time.

Of course, a piece about airstrikes in Afghanistan can't completely avoid mentioning civilian casualties; but the point of Bumiller's piece is that these things aren't supposed to happen. Just ask the U.S. military: "As Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, the commander of United States naval forces in the region, put it: 'We don’t drop when we’re unsure.'"

Is there any reason to put any stock in such reassurances? Not if you think way back to, say, Saturday's New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — An airstrike by the United States-led military coalition killed 13 civilians and 3 militants last Tuesday in western Afghanistan, not “up to 15 militants” as was initially claimed by American forces, military officials here said Saturday.

Bumiller's piece would seem to be an attempt to make up for that bit of bad press.

New York Times reporters Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise went to Gaza (2/4/09) to look into stories of civilian atrocities, and turned up some very powerful examples. Unfortunately, the impact of that reporting was undermined by the all-too-familiar tendency to "balance" these facts with criticisms of Palestinians.

For a piece that is attempting to get a better sense of who's "version" of events is more accurate, the Times reveals its bias from the start, rendering a white phosphorous attack on a house as a "phosphorus smoke bomb," the qualifier "smoke" helpfully suggesting that the bomb, which accidentally incinerated most of a family in their home, was being used legally as a smoke screen.

The Times underlines this point in the second graph by noting that the bomb was "intended to mask troop movements outside." According to whom? That claim is stated is as a fact, with no attribution.

The Times' reporters continue by writing:

The war in El Atatra tells the story of Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza, with each side giving a very different version. Palestinians here describe Israeli military actions as a massacre, and Israelis attribute civilian casualties to a Hamas policy of hiding behind its people.

In El Atatra, neither version appears entirely true, based on 50 interviews with villagers and four Israeli commanders. The dozen or so civilian deaths seem like the painful but inevitable outcome of a modern army bringing war to an urban space. And while Hamas fighters had placed explosives in a kitchen, on doorways and in a mosque, they did not seem to be forcing civilians to act as shields.

OK--neither side's tale is completely accurate.  But after reading the Times' own account, it certainly seems that the Palestinian "version" is much closer to reality. Nonetheless, the reporters chalk up the differences as part of  "a desire to shape public opinion."

The Times goes on to review--and in some cases debunk--some of the Israeli justifications, including an attack on a school and the destruction of homes. The impact of that investigative work is, yet again, diluted by the framing of the big picture:

Both sides engage in their own denials.

Israelis argue that this war was especially tough because they had waited so long before taking action in response to the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza over eight years.

Yet after Israelis withdrew their settlers and soldiers from Gaza in late 2005, they killed, over the next three years in numerous military actions here, the same number of Gazans as those killed in this war--about 1,275.

For their part, few Palestinian villagers even acknowledged the existence of fighters here. Hamas is now asserting that it achieved a victory.

Let's compare those two forms of "denial." Israelis somehow have convinced themselves that their military has been exercising unusual restraint--while killing over 1,000 people before this latest round of attacks. Palestinians, meanwhile, deny the existence of Hamas fighters in their area-- though, by the Times' own reporting, in the very same article, Israeli claims about the numbers of Hamas fighters in this given area appear to be (in some cases) unfounded.

This equivalence comes amid stories of heart-wrenching suffering--an injured baby left to die on a tractor because Israeli soldiers were firing on family members trying to get to a hospital. Why dress up that kind of reporting with this sort of "he said, she said" balance? Perhaps the sense that the truth is too one-sided.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (1/27/09) introduced a segment on civilian casualties in Afghanistan by saying, "Our Elizabeth Palmer spoke with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who says the Taliban have become masters of manipulating public opinion."  That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, was CBS's sole on-camera source for the segment, making assertions like "we try to avoid [killing civilians]. The insurgent does it on purpose."

The U.S. military also served as an off-camera source for Palmer as well, cited for claims like "80 percent of Afghan civilians are killed by the Taliban.... But there's huge frustration that anytime the U.S. military is honest about its lethal mistakes, that's used against them."

Actually, though, the U.S. military is not the only source available on the question of how many people they kill. According to U.N. human rights monitors in Afghanistan, 2,100 civilians were killed there in 2008, and in the cases where responsibility could be determined, 41 percent were killed by U.S. or allied forces, including 455 civilians killed by airstrikes. That's an awful lot of "lethal mistakes."

Palmer concluded her report: "U.S. success in this complex war depends as much on controlling the message as deploying the guns." The U.S. military got to be the only source for a story about the deaths it causes: I'd say that's pretty good message control. The Taliban may be "masters of manipulating public opinion," but they've got nothing on CBS.

New reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan  (37 dead) were covered in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. The story provides a decent sense of the death toll, but near the end makes a rather bizarre point (see bold):

Afghan weddings are traditionally large, drawn-out affairs, and wedding parties several times have been the target of errant airstrikes, in part because from the air the gatherings can appear similar to concentrations of Taliban fighters.

In Afghanistan's clan-based society, civilian deaths can cause otherwise peaceable villagers to declare a vendetta against those they consider responsible for killing their kin--in many cases, Western forces.

This isn't the first time corporate media have strained to interpret normal human reactions to violence as uniquely tribal or regional. When an Iraqi family refused a cash payment after their child was killed by Blackwater contractors, the L.A. Times (5/4/08) chalked it up to the "deep disconnect between the American legal process and the traditional culture of Iraq.... traditional Arab society values honor and decorum above all." A New York Times article (8/25/08) about house raids in Afghanistan noted that they "are seen as culturally unacceptable by many Afghans who guard their privacy fiercely," and that detaining hundreds of Afghans without trial have "stirred up Afghans' strong independent streak and ancient dislike of invaders." So I suppose it's no great surprise to read that being upset about civilian deaths is the kind of thing that happens in a "clan-based society."

More intriguing--or perhaps troubling--is that this is happening in Afghanistan. Think about this for just a second: U.S. airstrikes are continuing a war that started seven years ago in response to the 9/11 attacks. Villagers in Afghanistan had nothing to do with those attacks, but they're on the receiving end nonetheless. And corporate media puzzles over the peculiarities of an Afghan "vendetta."