Dispatches From the Edge_ A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival - Anderson Cooper [41]
It was the first time I saw the U.S. military and the U.S. media in action up close. American troops came ashore under the glare of camera lights, broadcast live around the world. Soon after, the military sent in its public affairs officers, PR troops waving lists of free rides on choppers and tours of ships, for journalists desperate to file a story. It seemed that everybody was spinning in those days, crafting the message for mass consumption. Photo ops, exclusive sit-downs, walkabouts. Uncle Sam gave you access if you made a deal.
It was a game you could get trapped in. You needed them because they controlled the scene; they needed you because they wanted their message out. They fed you, you ate it up, and tried not to soil yourself along the way.
Several days after the invasion, I rode on a chopper out to the USS Tripoli—just me and a newspaper reporter and photographer.
“What do you think about this?” the navy press officer yelled to the print reporter, above the din of the helicopter. “The entire crew of the Tripoli on deck spelling out ‘Thank you, America’?”
“Sounds like a front-page photo to me,” she said grinning.
SOMALIA HAD ITS own rules, its own codes, very different from our own. All I saw the first time was the starvation, the gunmen, but the picture was far more complex. There was an order to it; I just didn’t realize it at first. It was like walking into a darkened theater; it took time for your eyes to adjust.
In the beginning, Somalis seemed thankful that the U.S. military had arrived, but the longer we stayed the less welcome we all became.
One day, a French military jeep stopped in front of the hotel; the squeaking of brakes got my attention. A Somali woman wrapped in bright fabric got out of the passenger seat. Out of the swirl of the street a hand grabbed her. Someone called her a whore. The crowd seemed to gel. Fists and feet thrust at her; she twisted about. She may have cried or tried to explain, but I couldn’t hear her above the yells of the mob. The men in back pushed for a better view, jostled for their chance to strike.
The woman spinned, grabbed a knife from one of the watermelon sellers outside the hotel entrance. I climbed onto the wall of the courtyard and turned on my camera. With one eye I peered through the viewfinder at the woman in grainy black and white striking out at the crowd with the knife. With the other eye, I watched, in color, the men laughing as she tried to fend them off. She was close, just below me. Between us there was only a parked car. I could have jumped down, tried to lift her to safety. I thought about it, but did nothing. I worried that the mob would grab me as well, or that I might make things worse for her by intervening. Maybe I was just scared.
Someone took the knife away from her; her top got ripped, exposing one of her breasts—a shocking sight in this covered-up culture. A convoy of U.S. marines drove by; they slowed to honk at the crowd. A few marines craned their necks to see what the commotion was about, but the crowd let them pass. The convoy sped on.
A pipe whizzed past my head, landing in the courtyard behind me. Some Somalis began yelling at me and at a couple of other reporters who were watching. They didn’t want us taping them.
I suppose I should have stopped then, climbed down from the wall. I knew the video probably wouldn’t make air—the attack was of no real consequence—but that didn’t matter to me at the time. I thought that by taping this attack, I was somehow taking a stand, showing these men that they were being watched, that people saw and cared what they were doing. It sounds so foolish now.
I closed my outer eye and watched through the viewfinder, detached in black and white as the men faced me, shouting,