The "What's going on here?" paragraph explained

by Jeff Nygaard • 9/5/08 • The daily news is typically limited to reporting on specific daily events. Since reporters are aware that no event makes sense without a context, they will often insert into an article what I call the “What’s going on here?” paragraph. While the point of such paragraphs is to make the specific event (that is, the focus of the story) more understandable, they do not always succeed. That is, they don’t always succeed in helping us understand the story. But, since reporters are drawn from the educated/political classes, these paragraphs that they write almost always help us to understand a bit of the foundational premises upon which our public reasoning is based. That is, they are very revealing as to the mindsets that produce our news, which in turn has a huge influence on how people think about the world.

This article takes a look at one such paragraph to expose what I think it reveals.

The article in question appeared on page nine of the New York Times of August 26th under the headline: “Afghans Want a Deal on Foreign Troops.” If you haven’t been following recent events in Afghanistan, here are two key facts to know: 1. On August 22nd, according to the Washington Post, “at least 90 civilians—two-thirds of them children—were killed in a U.S.-led airstrike” in Herat, Afghanistan; 2. This has, not surprisingly, “caused the Afghan government to call for a review of U.S. and NATO military operations in the country.”

This appears to be the largest single known massacre by U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, but there have been plenty of other innocents killed by U.S. airpower in that country since the 2001 invasion. 22 innocents were killed by “international forces” on the Fourth of July, for example. 47 more on July 6. Four more on July 17. Nine on July 20. Three children killed on September 1. And so forth.

The above numbers are only the deaths reported in the U.S. media, and we have to imagine there are some number of unreported deaths, as well. Consider that the most recent official reports from the U.S. Air Force show an average of 67 airstrikes a day. Although these reports never refer to “death” or “killing,” be assured that there is a large and mostly unreported toll in human lives from all of these airborne attacks. (Perhaps as a result of the “rising public outrage” at the toll the Air Force appears to have suspended, as of August 10th, its daily reporting of its activities in Afghanistan. Not that anyone besides Nygaard Notes has been reporting these shocking numbers, but still…)

The reason that the Afghan government wants a new agreement is easily understood if we read the lead paragraph from a Washington Post story of August 28th: “For the past six years, military relations between the United States and Afghanistan have been governed by a two-page ‘diplomatic note’ giving U.S. forces virtual carte blanche to conduct operations as they see fit.”

What the U.S. “sees fit” is not the same as what most Afghans “see fit,” and there, I would suspect, is the problem with that “carte blanche.”

Here’s The Paragraph

It was on August 22nd that the innocent 90 (the U.S. is quibbling about the exact number) were killed by U.S. airstrikes. Four days later, on August 26th, the Times ran the “Afghans Want a Deal on Foreign Troops” article. In this article, the “What’s going on here?” paragraph was Paragraph Number Five. Here it is:

“Heavy-handed bombing raids and house raids, which are seen as culturally unacceptable by many Afghans who guard their privacy fiercely, and the detention of hundreds of suspects for years without trial at the Bagram air base and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have stirred up Afghans’ strong independent streak and ancient dislike of invaders.”

One 57-word paragraph, but it says so much! Let’s take it apart into six pieces for a closer look.

1. The reporting of “bombing raids” that kill hundreds of innocents (between 200 and 300 have been reported so far this year) as “heavy-handed” is euphemistic, at best. As to the nature of “house raids” in Afghanistan, such details are rarely reported, but if they are anything like U.S.-conducted “house raids” in Iraq (in which “soldiers feel free to ‘shoot first and ask questions later,’” as Rahul Mahajan reports), then it is also a gross understatement to refer to them as “heavy-handed.” Other adjectives that would be more accurate might include “deadly,” or “brutal,” or “savage,” or even “arguably illegal” (so says the Red Cross.)

2. Bombing raids and house raids by an occupying army are “seen as culturally unacceptable,” reporter Carlotta Gall says. It is hard to imagine a society where such wanton killing would be “culturally acceptable.” It must just be those exotic Afghans who, for some bizarre reason, seem to…

3. “...guard their privacy fiercely.” This implies that somewhere else must exist a people who aren’t so “fierce” in guarding their “privacy,” and who thus have a “culture” that wouldn’t find a little “heavy-handed” killing—done for their own good, after all!—perfectly “acceptable.” Such a people would, presumably, understand why the freedom from summary execution for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time (their homes) is wrong. It’s because it violates their “privacy.”

4. Again, can one imagine, anywhere, a people who do not possess an “independent streak” that is sufficiently “strong” as to have a problem with arbitrary and unchallengeable detentions at the hands of a foreign occupying army and innumerable deadly airstrikes and house raids that may occur at any hour? I confess that I cannot imagine such a people.

5. The reference to the “ancient dislike of invaders” being “stirred up” is perhaps the most complex of the references here. First of all, the idea of U.S. actions “stirring up” something implies that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was not an invasion, but instead was something that reminds the Afghans of an invasion. After all, it would sound strange, indeed, to say that “the U.S. invasion stirs up Afghans’ ancient dislike of invaders.” It would make more sense to say that Afghans—like anyone you can imagine—do not want to be invaded by a foreign military. There’s nothing “ancient” about it.

6. To say that Afghans “dislike” invaders is, again, a bizarre understatement.

Underlying all of these revealing phrases are two “foundational premises“—or what I call “Deep Propaganda“—that the reporter appears to hold: The first one is that THE U.S. IS VIRTUOUS, and any negative consequences must simply be due to poor (i.e. “heavy-handed”) execution of our virtuous plans.

The second premise is that THE PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN ARE DIFFERENT from “us,” and presumably from others who do not guard their “privacy” so “fiercely,” and for whom U.S. actions would not be “culturally unacceptable.” They have other exotic features, as well, such as their “strong independent streak” and their “ancient dislike of invaders.”

If we change our premises to “The U.S. is no more or less virtuous than any other powerful nation” and “The people of Afghanistan are just like anyone else,” then the “What’s going on here?” paragraph might read something like this:

“What’s going on here? The U.S., being no different than any other imperial power, places its interests ahead of the interests of the people of Afghanistan. This is an affront to the people of Afghanistan, as it would be to any people. As with any military invasion and occupation, the people who are occupied are resisting, and this resistance takes many forms, and is strengthened and given momentum when confronted with the standard abuses that accompany all such illegitimate uses of power.”

The foundational premises that result in paragraphs such as the one in the Times are assumed by the reporter and her editor to be widely, if not universally, shared by all readers. What makes this assumption dangerous is that many readers/viewers engage with “the news” without being fully aware of their own beliefs about how the world works. The result is that they absorb the premises of the media, since those premises are what makes the story “work.”

The best defense against absorbing such propagandistic premises is to keep our own foundational premises in mind when reading the news. It doesn’t change the “facts.” But it can radically alter the meaning that those “facts” have for us.