Published on Friday, November 26, 2004 by The Nation
Kerry and the Gift of Impunity
by Naomi Klein

Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old Marine from Appalachia who has been christened "the face of Falluja" by prowar pundits and "The Marlboro Man" by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller "after more than twelve hours of nearly nonstop deadly combat" in Falluja, his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips.

Gazing lovingly at Miller, Dan Rather confessed that, "for me, this is personal.... This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it, study it, absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't dampen, you're a better man or woman than I." A few days later, the LA Times declared that its photo had "moved into the realm of the iconic." In truth, the image just feels iconic because it is so laughably derivative: It's a straight-up rip-off of the most powerful icon in American advertising (the Marlboro Man), which in turn imitated the brightest star ever created by Hollywood (John Wayne) who was himself channeling America's most powerful founding myth (the cowboy on the rugged frontier). It's like a song you feel like you've heard a thousand times before--because you have.

But never mind that. For a country that just elected a wannabe Marlboro Man as its President, Miller is an icon, and as if to prove it he has ignited his very own controversy. "Lots of children, particularly boys, play 'army' and like to imitate this young man. The clear message of the photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a cigarette," wrote Daniel Maloney in a scolding letter to the Houston Chronicle. Linda Ortman made the same point to the editors of the Dallas Morning News: "Are there no photos of nonsmoking soldiers in Iraq?" A reader of the New York Post suggested more politically correct propaganda imagery: "Maybe showing a Marine in a tank, helping another GI or drinking water, would have a more positive impact on your readers."

Yes, that's right: Letter-writers from across the nation are united in their outrage--not that the steely-eyed smoking soldier makes mass killing look cool but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the grave crime of smoking look cool. It reminds me of the joke about the Hasidic rabbi who says all sexual positions are acceptable except for one: standing up, "because that could lead to dancing."

On second thought, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the status of icon--not of the war in Iraq but of the new era of supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of course, a different Marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of 2-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble. Inside the United States, these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared only briefly, if at all. Yet Miller's icon status has endured, kept alive with human interest stories about fans sending cartons of Marlboros to Falluja, interviews with the Marine's proud mother and earnest discussions about whether smoking might reduce Miller's effectiveness as a fighting machine.

Impunity--the perception of being outside the law--has long been the hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have deepened since the election, ushering in what can best be described as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are assaulting civilian targets and openly attacking doctors, clerics and journalists who have dared to count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales--the man who personally advised the President in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva Conventions are "obsolete"--as Attorney General.

This kind of defiance cannot simply be explained by Bush's win. There has to be something in how he won, in how the election was fought, that gave this Administration the distinct impression that it had been handed a "get out of the Geneva Conventions free" card. That's because the Administration was handed precisely such a gift--by John Kerry.

In the name of "electability," the Kerry campaign gave Bush five months on the campaign trail without ever facing serious questions about violations of international law. Fearing he would be seen as soft on terror and disloyal to US troops, Kerry stayed scandalously silent about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. When it became clear that fury would rain down on Falluja as soon as the polls closed, Kerry never spoke out against the plan, or against the illegal bombings of civilian areas that took place throughout the campaign. Even after The Lancet published its landmark study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion and occupation, Kerry repeated his outrageous (and frankly racist) claim that Americans "have borne 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq." His unmistakable message: Iraqi deaths don't count. By buying the highly questionable logic that Americans are incapable of caring about anyone's lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its supporters became complicit in the dehumanization of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea that some lives are insufficiently important to risk losing votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the election of any single candidate, that allows these crimes to continue unchecked.

The real-world result of all the "strategic" thinking is the worst of both worlds: It didn't get Kerry elected and it sent a clear message to the people who were elected that they will pay no political price for committing war crimes. And this is Kerry's true gift to Bush: not just the presidency, but impunity. You can see it perhaps best of all in the Marlboro Man in Falluja, and the surreal debates that swirl around him. Genuine impunity breeds a kind of delusional decadence, and this is its face: a nation bickering about smoking while Iraq burns.

Great piece.

Thats fucking absurd.

Which part?

Start to finish. I am not in the mood to argue here but I find poor analysis of the American psyche a bit disconcerting. Also I faill to see the correlation between a battle-weary marine having a smoke and Dubya getting carte blanche for future military operations. Doesnt that seem like a stretch and an oversimplification?

That's because "pieces" like this, don't seek to find truth by objectively analyzing facts....Instead they foster, by exploiting fear, a feeling of togetherness in these "dark times."

This article is to this board what creationism is to the public school system.

I'm finding that ardent Bush supporters have reached a point of no return. They have moved past making arguments, and now simply make accusations based on assumptions, or sometimes they just throw around bizarre nonsense. Basically, they behave just like Bush does. They have also moved past the possibility of reform, so there is no point in convincing them they are wrong, in most cases.

What we need is a principled, honest, and articulate candidate. Russ Feingold 2008!

Yeah, making assumptions, for example the one you made about my support of George Bush. Talk about bizarre nonsense.

Basically, if I behave just like Bush, you behave just like an asshole, and have moved past the possibility of reform, there is no convincing you are wrong, in most cases.

Now, care to address some of the points I made and stop hiding behind baseless libel. Start with how this is an accurate analysis of the American psyche, then please enlighten me as to how there is a correlation between this marine firing up a smoke and the sitting President being able to indrescriminately force his will upon the world. But be careful, I am relatively intelligent.

This is why I started talking about accusations, assumptions and bizarre nonsense.

1. This piece wasn't about the American psyche. There was only a mention of the cowboy myth... which hardly constitutes something as diverse as the American psyche.

2. There is no attempt to make a correlation between between the battle-weary marine and W. getting carte blanche. The piece was blaming John Kerry for W. getting carte blanche and the media for endorsing the cowboy myth that Bush feeds on to get votes from the red states.

So forgive me if I don't undestand what the fuck you were saying. Hey, at least you admitted you weren't in the mood to argue,

I suppose you got me there. But I am right to say you didn't vote for Kerry? Who did you vote for?

This part:

"In the name of "electability," the Kerry campaign gave Bush five months on the campaign trail without ever facing serious questions about violations of international law."

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't Kerry vote to allow this war? The author now expects him to run around saying that he voted for violations of international law?

I find it extremely interesting that the anti-Bush factor of this nation are so desperately looking for someone to blame, when the reality is that collectively, they are all to blame.

wow...sounds like you're talking about this administrations rhetoric to me....

"Iraq is a serious threazt"
"The smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud"
"9/11, 9/11, 9/11...."
"If John Kerry is elected we will be hit harder then we ever have before"

i guess one person's fearmongering is anothers safety blanket, eh?

I find it extremely interesting that the pro-Bush factorconstantly try to change the subject and argue nonissues to get out of the real issues.

Yes, John Kerry voted for the use of force IF DIPLOMACY FAILED. What diplomacy did we try other than bribing other countries to join our coalition, that is?

I didn't change the subject. The question was what part was absurd. I answered and now I'm changing the subject? Kerry didn't vote for anything that said "after exhausting diplomatic avenues" did he? No, he didn't. Was that bad decision making? Perhaps, but still, he voted for it. You want him to run on a campaign of "Oh yeah, I fucked up too, but still, vote for me"?

Haha.

First off, the Laws of War and Geneva Convention goes out the window if the enemy is breaking those Laws of War. The problem with laws of war, is that the second you erect them, your enemy is going to break them.

It's sad that civilians were killed and wounded in Fallujah, how many more weeks did they want us to blanket the city telling them to leave before we made our offensive?



That was the best part of this thread. We bribed our allies and didn't attempt diplomacy. Even though we were in the UN for MONTHS. The irony of it all is that diplomacy failed within the UN because of...well...bribes. Way to go buddy.

how did we bribe them??? ummm how about forgiving the debts and new/more aid for any country who joined the colaition of the willing? How about selling them new/more weapons if they joined (daddy Bush's carlyle group is the biggest arms dealer to them, btw)

As for the UN, my bad, I could've sworn Bush pulled the resolution out BEFORE it was voted on because he knew it would be rejected.

Thanks for the encouragement pal!

Why are you quoting me? I didn't say that. I didn't say either of those things.

Here we are, 20 months down the road, dying at the rate of 4 per day desperately trying to liberate a people who don't want us there. Anarchy reigns anywhere the US military doesn't happen to be. It's amazing to me that there are still people who think this was a good idea.

my bad, it's changed