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This War is Different
Author: Raine    Date: 04/07/2022 12:27:35

At the beginning of this atrocity being forced upon Ukraine, Daniel Johnson - former infantry in Iraq - made a pretty prescient prediction. He believed that Russia's war on Ukraine would be the most documented in history. He wrote this about 24 hours after the invasion began:
It takes time, people, and equipment for media organizations to produce live reports on any event, especially a conflict. It is those things that will limit news organizations in their efforts to establish a full picture of what’s occurring. What is coming out of Ukraine is simply impossible to produce on such a scale without citizens and soldiers throughout the country having easy access to cellphones, the internet, and, by extension, social media apps. A large-scale modern war will be livestreamed, minute by minute, battle by battle, death by death, to the world. What is occurring is already horrific, based on the information released just on the first day.

The official messages coming out of Ukraine may sometimes seem garbled and confused, but very few governments, if any, could keep up with all the narratives that are occurring. Such confusion creates an ample opportunity for misinformation to spread and for actors to exploit—which they already have.

When I was a U.S. Army journalist/photographer in Iraq in 2016, a same-day turnaround was considered quick by Department of Defense standards. If I could get footage and interviews from a firebase outside Mosul on Christmas into the living rooms of Americans back home before the New Year, that was a win. In fact, it ended up taking me “only” two days.

Now, that’s way too slow.
I have heard other military people saying the same thing, more and more lately. We would not have known as much as we do without this technology. I, like many others, have a bad feeling that what we are seeing out of Bucha is just the tip of the iceberg.

Dachau Concentration Camp opened in 1933. It would be nearly 13 years until U.S. military forces liberated Dachau, in 1945, The world didn't know about these death camps but they would find out, too late for millions of souls.
Many of the ghastly pictures were at first held back from the broader public, partly out of concern for those with missing relatives.

The concentration and extermination camps were liberated one by one as the Allied armies advanced on Berlin in the final days of the 1939-1945 war.

The first was Majdanek in eastern Poland, which was freed on July 24, 1944, by the advancing Soviet Red Army.

But it was only the following year that media coverage was encouraged by the provisional government led by General Charles De Gaulle set up after the liberation of France.
The world learned slowly what Hitler had done, few people had televisions and news was mostly print publications or radio. WW2 and other wars of the twentieth century were simply not shown like this. I have no illusions that the atrocities will be quite similar to what happened in Europe such a relatively short time ago. We are witnessing the brutality of war in real-time, and this is unlike anything in history. No government can stop this information from being shared. I know that Putin is trying but that psychotic fever can't last forever.

History is happening minute by minute because of the technology in the military and the technology from journalists (citizen & professional). What is happening in Ukraine feels different because it is different than other wars, It's actually being reported in real time. We see the trauma, undiluted and uncensored. It's is horrific. Maybe we will see an end to this sooner rather than later; one can hope.

We are seeing evidence of war crimes. We are seeing crimes against humanity in real-time. We are seeing genocide. It is being documented. While there will be investigations, the amount of evidence is all there.

The sooner history shows how unkind it can be to the likes of Putin and his allies, the better the world can be.

Prayers for Ukraine

Raine
 

13 comments (Latest Comment: 04/07/2022 16:49:28 by TriSec)
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