Why would Afghan elders “tip off the Taliban” that U.S. soldiers were in their village?

On Monday night, NBC Nightly News had the perfect opportunity to answer this question that is at the root of our military failures in Afghanistan. They had the chance to produce a piece of journalism that could have helped shape U.S. policy, informed the voting public, or, at a minimum, expose misguided strategies.

But along the way they forgot they were journalists.

Instead, Richard Engel’s report from the front lines was a well-executed propaganda piece – pure violence, guns, and entertainment disguised as “news.”

Despite NBC’s attempt to describe it as an “incredible story,” there really was no story. It was four minutes of guns, guns, and more guns, presented in a stylish video game format, with the sole aim of entertaining viewers.

Brian Williams – whose voice inflections can make a Ladies Club tea party sound like a Martian invasion – introduced the story:

“If you have never been in a live fire situation…or around guns fired in anger…Richard Engel might just bring you as close as you can possibly get…”

“What you’re about to see is violent, but put it this way, if you have a kid in this war, this is what your kid’s been up to.”

Apparently this is no longer a war where people kill other human beings. Now it’s merely “a live fire situation” where “guns are fired in anger.” Strange. I thought the only reason machine guns were invented in the first place was to fire them in anger.

Stranger still was Williams’ flippant quip about “kids at war.” Were we supposed to feel good about the fact that our kid is “shooting guns in anger” in a “live fire situation?” As opposed to the kids who just shoot responsibly while duck hunting?

The story follows a platoon of American troops marching to a village, worried that “local elders have tipped off the Taliban.”

NBC selectively edits screenshots to make the village appear completely empty of people, families, and children (except for, we are left to assume, only those elders that snitched to the Taliban…).

[...screenshot from NBC's story "Facing Down a Firefight in Afghanistan" showing the "empty" village where all the shooting was taking place...]

Yet when the soldiers first arrive at a crumbling old house to dig in before the battle begins, the village is clearly visible in the immediate foreground. But empty villages make for convenient war zones: eliminates that nasty problem of collateral damage.

Then the embedded reporter, Richard Engel, tells us what is obviously the highlight of his story: one of the soldiers is wearing a camera on his helmet.

Because what better way to make war look like Nintendo first-person shooter video games then with a helmet cam.

[...uber-cool helmet cam shot to please the future soldiers of America training on their PlayStation 3...]

Now all those kiddies at home that aren’t yet old enough to fire a real gun in anger can feel more like they are killing people when they pop in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or Grand Theft Auto.

The split-screens that NBC uses to show us “multiple, simultaneous angles inside a firefight” feel more like a macabre Brady Bunch intro than a war where people are dying.

But I guess that’s entertainment. Or news. Or whatever-the-fuck NBC claims to be.

In a post-production narrative, Engel tells us they are under fire from “10 or so” Taliban fighters that are “close.” Apparently not close enough to see with the helmet cam. During the action, Engel says they are taking fire “from at least two positions.” After the firefight, the soldiers “think they killed 3 or 4 Taliban fighters.” If they were so close (and with all those cameras), why are they guessing about numbers of fighters, positions, and casualties? So many unknowns are a recipe for collateral damage.

After all, Engel says the soldiers used so many bullets they were running low on ammo, used rockets and grenades (one helmet cam shot shows a soldier blindly launching a grenade over a wall)…

[...where's that grenade going? Who knows...but what a cool helmet cam shot...]

…“more than 40 mortars” (fired up into the air and allegedly so precise they only landed on the “10 or so” Taliban fighters in “at least two positions” somewhere in the hills)…

[...nothing quite as accurate as mortars. Just ask the Israelis and Palestinians...]

…and even called in air strikes (which made for some nice smoke, but again, no one’s sure what was hit).

By not showing viewers a single enemy, NBC effectively removed the human equation, creating a sanitized – yet sensationalized – depiction of war. The enemy becomes a faceless concoction of our imagination, based only on our stereotypes of a deranged Taliban Muslim who wants to cut everyone’s head off.

[...at this point, can you even tell which are NBC shots and which are video games?...]

By prefacing the battle with an “empty” village, NBC insinuates that innocent civilians were not harmed. There could be no collateral damage if there were no villagers.

And by telling viewers at the beginning of the story that the platoon leader was worried because “local elders tipped off the Taliban,” viewers may draw the conclusion that this is an “enemy” village, and any villagers remaining are informers and snitches. A village of Taliban sympathizers aren’t innocent. Thus, they can’t be considered collateral damage, and are either legitimate targets or deserving of any stray bullets, grenades, mortars, or air strikes.

Historically, imperial powers have over-estimated the willingness of the public to endure collateral damage in counter-insurgency wars. Given this context, and after watching the massive amount of munitions and artillery that was used in an “empty village,” it seems a responsible journalist would have tried to answer the obvious and relevant question:

Why would local elders tip off the Taliban?

If we are to ever understand why our troops in Afghanistan have bogged down, why the insurgency continues to gain support, or why the Taliban are able to recruit new fighters, that’s the story that needs to be told.

That’s what real journalists would do.

But that would require public examination of U.S. policies that use collateral damage, civilian deaths, and force of arms to win Afghan “hearts and minds.”

That would mean eschewing the helmet cam and video-game presentation in favor of reality, something that puts education before profit or entertainment.

Unfortunately, our media is too busy fawning over a mutilated, pedophilic has-been to worry about real news that actually affects our lives, our future, and our world.