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David Carr and Jill Stewart

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from: David Carr

Peace as a Can Opener

Posted Wednesday, June 16, 1999, at 10:33 AM ET

Dearest Correspondent,

The stories this morning about the liberation, such as it is, of Kosovo, reminded me that you can't really see a war until it ends. Peace is the great can opener on conflict, a revelatory process when the sacked houses are re-inhabited, the mines discovered one way or the other, and, of course, the bodies, great, decaying gobs of them, unearthed. The headline in the Washington Post today read "Survivors Begin to Seek Out Their Dead," the archaic possessive about who the dead belong to providing a sickening echo to plagues of old. These people didn't lose their lives; there lives were systematically taken from them as a matter of political calculus. To make Kosovo clean, the Serbs needed to do a lot of dirty work. The hygienic nomenclature of ethnic strife--much talk of cleansing and purifying--renders the personal tragedy beside the point. But now we see. The dust may settle, but the stink will remain. And because they are no longer refugees, but victims of war--and I'm not sure why this is--the Kosovars in the pictures seem like someone I might know. In his book about another pointless ethnic war, Phillip Gourevitch brings the domesticity of consequence home over and over. In We Wish To Inform You That Tommorow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, he asks Tutsi survivors about what life was like before the Hutus began hacking them to bits.

When I pressed for stories of how they had lived during long periods between bouts of violence--household stories, village stories, funny stories, or stories of annoyance, stories of school, work, church, a wedding a funeral, a trip, a party, or a feud--the answer was always opaque: in normal times we lived normally. After a while I stopped asking, because the question seemed pointless and possibly cruel.

In normal times, we lived normally ... When will life be normal in Kosovo? Right now, the dispossessed have the chance to spit on their exiting dispossessors, but even they must know that they have not seen the last of their Serbian tormentors. Perhaps NATO's interest will wane, or a new threat to Western interests will emerge, or more likely, a quieter, dirtier war will commence. And their home is not their own. Milosevic is still their landlord, even if the neighborhood cop is a friendly who doesn't speak their language.

Steve Brill argues in the July/August issue of Content that the nonstop frenzy Monica story turned the media into indiscriminate carnivores who manufacture their next meal when they can't scare up fresh meat. He uses an April 24 Post story that over-interpolated some NATO tea leaves to suggest a softening of Western resolve as a sign that rigorous, fact-based war reporting was giving way to overheated efforts to get ahead of news cycle. The Post amended itself by the second edition and there was no pounce from the rest of the press corps. And the Post proceeded to spend buckets of ink, dozens of reporters, and millions of dollars over the next two months to bring its readers a real look at a real conflict, in spite of all the ridiculous hoops the Defense Department now plants in front of any journalist trying to cover a war. I'm tired of all the Chicken Littling about how the press is going to hell. And hindsight suggests the good old days, when war correspondents were just one more part of the team, weren't so great after all.

Sorry to set this e-mail next to your morning coffee Jill, but I think I fell asleep with war news blaring from the TV.

Visualize whirled peas,
David

the breakfast table
entries
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from: David Carr

Peace as a Can Opener

Posted Wednesday, June 16, 1999, at 10:33 AM ET
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David Carr is the editor of the Washington City Paper. Jill Stewart is a political columnist at New Times Los Angeles.
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