Extermination as Protection

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with international war reporters, this article interrogates dominant meanings for warfare and for the civilian death that results. It takes as a case study the 2016 to 2017 battle for Mosul, Iraq. Lauded reportage from Mosul revealed official underestimates of US-caused civilian harm in anti-Islamic State operations, exemplifying journalism's ability to “speak truth to power.” Yet in questioning official death tallies, journalists failed to challenge the rationale offered for this death: an accidental exception or necessary excess to justified violence. The article demonstrates how a humanitarian turn in war reportage transforms war from the effects of policy on populations to the effects of violence on the innocent. Emphasizing the morality of militarism while mystifying its political logic, news coverage of civilian death, widely presumed to function as a critique of mass violence, serves to sanction official rationales for global war.