The War and its Advocate: Michael Kelly Killed in Iraq

It was a sad day for the American media when Michael Kelly of the Atlantic Monthly was killed in Iraq. Kelly, who was embedded with the 3rd infantry is the first American journalist to be killed in the war. For those familiar with his columns, he fell a martyr to his cause. One may not agree with Mike Kelly (most of us wouldn’t)all the time or even most of the time, but one would have to be be a dead Easter turkey not to enjoy and appreciate the trmemndous power of his prose. Kelly was an uncompromising advocate of the war and a scathing critic of Clinton and Al-Gore.

Kelly, however, is not the first journalist to be killed in the war. Some of them were martyred to a different cause-Terry Lloyd and his teammates from ITN for example, who were supposedly shot down at close range by coalition troops. On CNN, these troops are either British or American when a battle is won and just plain and simple "coalition" when a few raving journalists who were insane enough to be travelling outside of a coalition column are shot down at close range, apparantly by "coalition" soldiers who mistook them for hostile Arabs on account of the soot and dust of battle and terrain on their faces. Terry Lloyd’s wife attended a Pentagon briefing by Powell on Friday, the 4th of April.. She just wanted to know whether there was any further information on why the mishap happened. Powell’s answer was straight out of the textbook (the one titled "The astute diplomats guide to tackling difficult questions in dangerous situations"). The investigations were on and the widowed Mrs. Lloyd would be informed as soon as accurate information is unearthed from the sands of Iraq (hopefully, that will be before the WMDs are unearthed- Iraq is known to be good hunting ground for archeologists). Of course, Powell was not as explicit about that "sands" part as I am being. An ITN correspondent interviewed on CNN on Sunday (IST), reported that the vehicle in which the ill fated ITN crew were travelling had signs painted all over. “Its impossible that they couldn’t have seen those signs”, he said. He also said that the firing was from prettyn close range, perhaps closer than 50 mts.

However, Terry Lloyd and his ill fated band of zombie wonderers will not occupy us here. The purpose of this write-up was to do a short profile of Mike Kelly’s style, one-time "editor at large" (that was actually his designation) for the supernationalist Atlantic Weekly and columnist for the Washington Post. A writer with a superlative wit, a pen that bit harder and deeper than sharpnel, and an uncanny ability to make the Democrats (Mike wouldn’t touch the Republicans)and all socialists look like a swarming bunch of entertaining chimps, Mike Kelly was the "American" par excellence. He loved his country and hated the Arabs and the North Koreans and the New York Times, which, as we all know, is so pathetically anti-American. It is always sad when a journalist of such caliber ( and renown) has to die for some insane war aimed at a wild mustachioed General who owns a lot of dirty disel and a lot of war-germs nobody has seen and with an indomitable urge to resist both, America and democracy. Now, Mike Kelly would have agreed with us about the mustachioed general but he was never very sure this war was insane. One almost wishes he were!

December 2002. An American poet is inviting a lot of flak for mentioning in one of his poems (admittedly, a rather raw piece of verse that cannot really be called a poem) a news item about five Israelis who were arrested for filming the "towering infernos" and bursting at the sides with joy (not a crime under any law). Amiri Baraka(LeRoi Jones), well known African-American poet had dared to write "Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion / And cracking they sides at the notion.". Mike Kelly’s repraisal was swift, severe and devastating. After complementing the courage and and candour that characterize these times, Kelly wrote "Plain people speaking plain truths about the world they see around them and, more, about their very own selves."

Kelly’s last editorial for the Atlantic Weekly was a satire on the anti-war group. From anti-war poets ("pacifists from the pentameter") to the Nobel Lauretate and trade theorist Paul Krugman ("he has paid a price: fame and influence as a columnist for the most important newspaper in the world.") to actors, artists, magazine editors and Jacques Chriac, all come under Kelly’s scathing and severe bite. All through this editorial, Kelly does not offer any arguement. He apparantly feels it is not necessary. Or perhaps I am wrong. Kelly’s mock praise of these anti-war pacifists,"Hard and dangerous and damned courageous and self-sacrificing and so very lonely and really scary", repeated over and over again- isn’t that as good an arguement for the war as you are ever likely to get?

In his September editorial, Kelly talks of the Iraq war as something inevitable. He is all for the war-- that same war that was to be the cause of his untimely death. He quotes the reports by the "respected and independent" International Institute of Strategic Studies that reported on Iraq’s possession of an extensive stock of biological weapons (so extensive that, like the air, it cannot be seen) ."There will be a war, and there will be an American victory, and then there will be a postwar." wrote Kelly while suggesting that America should ( and would) make one final demand on Iraq which Iraq would inevitably fail to meet. Things happened exactly as Kelly had foreseen them suggesting that as early as September last year, the war had already been decided upon and all this hoopla about Blix and associates and the Security Council was mere formality. Rather, a deliberate set-up.

In his coverage of the war, though, Kelly keeps his dry satire at bay. Somehow it is not appropriate. Even here, though, he remained thoroughly conservative and stoic. "……….. not a regular soldier -- judging from his clothes. He was lying on his back, not far from one of several burning skeletons of the small trucks that Saddam Hussein’s willing and unwilling irregulars employed. The tanks and Bradleys and Humvees and bulldozers and rocket launchers, and all the rest of the massive stuff that makes up the U.S. Army on the march, rumbled past him, pushing on "(Michael Kelly, Across the Euphrates, The Washington Post,April 2, 2003).