Kamal Ghorui
All life is valuable, so it’s great that the US F-15 crew, shot down over Iran last week, has been rescued. Talk about the op easily turns to its dollar cost – around $300mn, by some estimates. But that misses the point – America rescues its soldiers, because it believes no price is too high to save them. What about other lives, though? What value do we place on the lives of enemy soldiers, and non-combatants on both sides?
While casualties are hard to ascertain in an ongoing war, at least 1,600 Iranian civilians – including around 250 children – have died in US and Israeli strikes, over the past five weeks. In Lebanon, the civilian toll is touching 1,500. Israel’s toll is smaller, but considering that it’s fighting a “war of choice”, all casualties were avoidable. And Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, etc, aren’t even at war, but have lost people.
Could this war have occurred if both parties to the “dispute” considered all life valuable? India, with its long pacifist tradition, is attuned to such thinking, but it’s time other nations paid heed, too. That’s because a future that’s far bloodier than the present, no longer seems unthinkable. For a long time, it was believed that WW2’s devastation had inoculated the world against wars. But Ukraine, Iran, Gaza, Sudan, and other small and big conflicts, have shaken that certainty. Sworn pacifists like Germany and Japan, now feel the need to re-militarise.
Beyond govts, this war is a call for media, to assess priorities. Right now, the US airman’s rescue has turned the narrative to American glory. But a barrage of celebratory stories – successively more Hollywoodian – veils the suffering of the other side. It’s as though the real purpose of war isn’t killing, but heroic rescues. We know that narratives shape wars. Vietnam war lasted as long as it did – and ended when it did – because of the way US media painted it over the years. And talking of narratives, Vietnam, even now, is remembered more for the loss of 58,000 US troops, than deaths of an estimated 3mn Vietnamese.
In the ongoing war, US and Israel would want everyone to only cheer their gains, and commiserate their losses. But borrowing the US military principle underlying the rescue – No Man Left Behind – media shouldn’t allow “asymmetry” of the battlefield, to colour the tragedy of non-combatants. Because all life is valuable, the suffering of every man, woman, and child should be told.
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