The Homey Taste Of Lies

In ways similar to the invention of gunpowder and the nuclear bomb changing the course of war, advancements in communications technology have changed the way wars happen, or at least the way they are reported. The fog of war has become so dense that it is now almost impossible to know what is going on. Decades ago, there used to be the respected and almost institutional presence of the war correspondent, who was informed in military history, had the courage to be on the battlefront and could report with measured responsibility. Martha Gellhorn was among the first women war correspondents when she reported on the Spanish Civil War in 1937 for Collier바카라�s magazine. Towards the end of the Second World War, when she was refused permission to accompany the allied forces landing on Normandy beach because she was a woman, she used the subterfuge of posing as a member of the medical team. The reporting of the Vietnam war is believed to have led to the kind of opposition back in the US that meant the war could not be prolonged. Throughout the 1990s and from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, emerged the phenomenon of the 바카라�embedded바카라� journalist, chaperoned to the front with the troops, with the obviously biased consequences on the report filed, that this entailed. In the ongoing Gaza conflict, the Israelis have restricted the entry of foreign correspondents with the patronisingly unconvincing excuse of the battle zone being too unsafe. On a few occasions in late 2023, BBC and CNN journalists were taken to the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to 바카라�show바카라� the tunnels that were hidden underneath.

In India, we seem to have created the category of the 바카라�general in his simulated studio바카라�, when television anchors not only behave unprofessionally but also in the most atrocious ways. The recent round of fighting between India and Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack, has given us the most incredible spectacle of anchors reporting completely fabricated news such as the one that Karachi Port had been attacked by the Indian Navy바카라�s INS Vikrant. The Indian media바카라�like the dogs of war that are let slip to create chaos바카라�is out of control. Its harmful consequences on Indian society will be felt as one of the biggest threats to democracy as it eliminates the existence of an informed and public minded citizenry.

Lessons from History

Learning the lessons of history is imperative to cut through the fog of war and deliberate disinformation. Unfortunately, journalism more generally, and very specifically the parody of the profession that the current Indian mediascape has become, seems entirely bereft of the slightest hint of history. Uncritical consumers of Indian media, egged on by excitable anchors and supposedly 바카라�knowledgeable바카라� strategic experts, seemed oblivious to the very real dangers of a military conflict between two nuclear power neighbours like India and Pakistan, escalating into outright nuclear warfare. While India has a No First Use policy (NFU), Pakistan has not committed itself to such nuclear restraint. Nuclear warfare risks the elimination of millions of lives, a dreadful reality that Indian television media did not feel the need to countenance. Amazingly, there was among the hawkish, disappointment at the ceasefire that was agreed to by both sides as a result of US mediation. Sadly, the soft-spoken and decent foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, whose press briefings had the professional demeanour of old-style diplomacy, became the target of vicious social media trolling. Drawing from the insight of history, Nicholas John Wheeler and Syed Ali Zia Jaffery writing in The Conversation (May 6, 2025) recalled the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and suggested the need for a hotline of immediate communication between India and Pakistan to bring about rapid de-escalation of military flare ups.

Those who hanker for war forget that the mightiest of Goliath-like-militaries have been humbled by the smallest and less equipped Davids of guerilla organisation. The US was humiliated with the fall of Saigon in Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the 50th anniversary of which fell recently. The prolonged military embroilment in Afghanistan spelt the end of the Soviet Union. There is an element of the inconclusive about modern warfare in terms of no clear winners and losers. This state of inconclusion is filled in by claims and counter-claims of each side that is more in keeping with the demands of domestic consumption, rather than the external aggression that war is usually about.

The net effect is the continued whirring of the war machinery that fuels the insatiable expenditure on global arms sales. With the end of the Cold War, the US military industrial complex looked for newer theatres of war. The First Gulf War of 1991 was prompted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 that was followed by the second Gulf war of 2003 when the US and its ever-faithful sidekick, the UK, invaded Iraq on the infamously false pretext of weapons of mass destruction. This was despite massive protests and demonstrations against the war on the streets of major Western capitals like London in February 2003. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted the same western war machinery and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansionism back into action, to the extent that there have been suggestions that an end to the conflict was possible in the spring of 2022, six weeks after the beginning of hostilities, only to be thwarted by the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

War in the Name of Democracy

The West has fought many wars in the name of democracy and has also, since the Second World War, justified them in the name of a principled fight against fascism. The fight against the fascism theme was used by US President Joe Biden in his opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was also the theme that Putin used to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when he suggested that Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine were doing what their fathers and grandfathers had done when they fought Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has constantly used the Nazi label to characterise Hamas and to justify Israel바카라�s military actions since the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks, all the while playing up the claim that Israel is the only functioning democracy in the region.

The argument for democracy as a principled justification for going to war is stretched to the point of incredulity, especially when it is embellished with the fight against the fascism argument. Western governments were noticeably absent in the fight against Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War as major powers such as the UK and the US professed neutrality that prevented the Republican side opposing Franco, from buying arms. Franco himself was militarily supported by Nazi Germany and Mussolini바카라�s Italy with the Republican side receiving support from the Soviet Union. George Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War, captured the disingenuity in the fight for democracy argument in his book Homage to Catalonia when he observed: 바카라�As for the newspaper talk about this being a 바카라�war for democracy바카라�, it was plain eyewash.바카라� Some lines later, Orwell observes in his terse manner: 바카라�That meant the general movement would be in the direction of some kind of Fascism.바카라�

The Fight Against Jihadi Terrorism

In India, we have witnessed a remarkable level of admiration for Israel and the way that the country handles 바카라�jihadi바카라� Islamist terrorism. A complete lack of historical perspective is obvious in the way the media frenzy fuels the desire to be more like the Israelis. Western cities have witnessed intense levels of opposition to Israeli military actions in Gaza over the last 17 months, resulting in a clear movement of public opinion against Israel, with a Pew Research Center poll in early April 2025 revealing 53 per cent of Americans with an unfavourable opinion. In stark contrast in India, we have seen very little and indeed negligible opposition to Israeli actions.

The more the world has rallied against Israel, the more we in India have expressed support for a state seen as an international pariah. Ronen Bergman바카라�s book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel바카라�s Targeted Assassinations, is a deep dive into the country바카라�s policy of targeted assassinations that have been pursued since the establishment of the state of Israel back in 1948. Bergman informs us in his book that since the Second World War, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world. The question arises whether this has been the solution to the problem.

The events of October 7, 2023, would certainly belie the claim. The war on terror initiated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the US did not end terrorism. Solutions to the problems that wars supposedly address come at the end of wars, once the dust of battle has settled and we should now add, once the fog of war has lifted.

(Views expressed are personal)

Amir Ali teaches at the Centre For Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi

This article is part of Outlook바카라�s 1 June 2025 issue, 'Gated Neighbourhood', which examines the state of diplomacy, media, and democracy in the wake of the ceasefire. It appeared in print as 'The Homey Taste of Lies.'