Critiques of Western Media in Baghdad Burning

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women's Studies)
17 March 2010

Critiques of Western Media in Baghdad Burning

In the entry “Teapots and Kettles . . .,” dated 7 April 2004, Riverbend recounts the early days of the American occupation of Baghdad and eventually concludes that, despite what the Western media would have their audiences believe, not much about life in the city has changed or improved. Like the rest of Baghdad Burning, this entry uses Riverbend’s personal experience to critique the American occupation, with particular focus on exposing the false reality about Iraqi life presented by Western news outlets. In this sense, her blog follows two “paths” of “media advocacy . . . critiquing mainstream media, and making media tools available to people from subordinated groups to express themselves” (“Globalizing World” 387). Both a personal account and an educational tool, Baghdad Burning is the method by which Riverbend successfully calls into question the cultural perceptions Americans hold of Iraqis and the cultural perceptions Americans hold of our own military.

Riverbend’s blatant critique of Western media is a common, constant theme throughout her blog. As in another entry from later that same month, “Media and Falloojeh,” she contrasts accounts of what Western or Western-affiliated news stations are reporting with her own observations as a citizen of occupied Baghdad. “The foreign news channels [CNN, BBC, LBC] are hardly showing anything,” she says. Instead of reporting on the “over 150 Iraqis [who] have been killed by troops all over Iraq” during the last three days, the Western media airs “dazzling reportages on football games and family pets,” only occasionally “showing the same faces running around in a frenzy of bombing and gunfire” (Riverbend). For Riverbend, this inaccurate portrayal of circumstances is inexcusable. It presents an obviously false image of the American occupation and furthers the ludicrous beliefs Americans hold about the Iraqi population and the war itself. Rather than acknowledge the war as a serious, deadly affront with serious, deadly consequences for Iraq, the Western media’s reporting maintains the myth of American liberation: the idea that “the [American] troops were going to be ‘greeted with flowers and candy’” (Riverbend) by Iraqis grateful for liberation upon their arrival. In reality, the truth could not be more different. If Riverbend’s account is anything to go by, the Iraqis feel like “caged animal[s]—there’s so much frustration and anger . . . all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad” (Riverbend), and no one feels safe, stable, or free.

Less obviously, Riverbend’s entry forces us as Americans to reevaluate how we perceive our military. Even if we don’t fully realize it, “the military shapes our notions of patriotism, heroism, honor, duty, adventure, and citizenship . . . Politically, economically, and culturally, the military is a central U.S. institution” (“Women and the Military” 494). We are taught to evaluate and understand patriotism, devotion to one’s country, and courage in terms of military service, which further engenders an already-deep sense of pride in our troops and any initiative they become involved in. Riverbend’s accounts, however, remind us that there is more involved in war than our troops making us proud—namely severe consequences for the country being “liberated.” Why, she challenges us to ask, are we proud to learn of our military “bombing” a city “constantly,” leaving “dozens dead” and taking out “the only functional hospital . . . except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time” (Riverbend)? Why are we proud to hear of our troops effectively blockading a city, cutting off supplies of produce and food and leaving its inhabitants in streets littered with “bodies . . . beginning to decompose in the April heat” (Riverbend)? By unrepentantly showing us the harsh, negative consequences of war, Riverbend forces us to acknowledge that the “liberating Americans” myth is false from both perspectives: just as Iraqis (and, indeed, many people supposedly in need of democracy and U.S. aid) largely do not feel grateful and liberated under American occupation, our American troops are not nearly so often the heroic, untarnished saviors we should like to understand them as.



Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Living in a Globalizing World.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 371-392. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women and the Military, War, and Peace.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 493-509. Print

Riverbend. “Teapots and Kettles . . .” Baghdad Burning. Blogger, 7 Apr. 2004. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.