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thedrifter
02-06-09, 09:08 AM
Former Marine covered Iraq war from both sides

By Darrell Laurant

Published: February 4, 2009

One thing hasn’t changed over the last four years for Josh Rushing — he’s still trying to explain war.

What’s different is the scope. As a Marine Corps captain and part of the military’s information service, Rushing found himself answering reporters’ questions about the American presence in Iraq. Now he’s on the other side of the notebooks and microphones, working on a documentary series about why nations in general take up arms against one another.

“It’s been really amazing,” said Rushing, who spoke at Randolph College on Wednesday night. “In one segment, I went back to My Lai with a soldier who had been involved in the My Lai massacre, and he met some of the survivors. Another episode has some interviews with Shining Path guerillas in Peru.”

Yet this project (posted now on http://www.joshrushing.com) isn’t what has raised eyebrows in the U.S. Rather, it’s the fact that in 2005, Rushing left the Marine Corps to go to work for Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Upon hearing that, some American media outlets reacted as though the 38-year-old Texan had enlisted in the Taliban.

“Former Marine in media glare as he joins Al Jazeera,” read the headline in USA Today.

Rushing, however, doesn’t see his job switch as some sort of defection. His motivation, he said, was summarized in the title of his 2007 book: “Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World.”

“I still think of myself as a Marine,” he said. “I’m still proud to be an American. But I also think we need to learn all we can about other countries, especially those in the Middle East. Why does wanting to know more cause people to call you a liberal?”

Essentially, Rushing said, most Americans “don’t really care” about the Arab world, and the citizens of the latter view the U.S. through a distorted lens.

“Conspiracy theories are pretty much a sport in the Middle East,” Rushing said, “and America is also at the center of them.”

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera — once praised by the Bush administration as a model of democratic free speech in the region — fell into disfavor when it began showing footage of civilian casualties from U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. Eventually, the Al Jazeera station in Kabul was, itself, bombed.

“We said it was an accident,” Rushing said, “but a lot of people thought we were trying to send a message.”

When he was with the Marines in Iraq, Rushing was assigned to be the primary contact for a group of Al Jazeera reporters. What he soon discovered was that they weren’t what he had expected.

“They were actually very good news people, and quite objective,” he said. “I grew to respect them. Donald Rumsfeld used to say they showed footage on beheadings, but I found out they didn’t. It was against their code of ethics. I found them to be genuinely interested in America and Americans, and why we did things.”

Rushing became an inadvertent star of the documentary “Control Room” in 2004 when his give and take with the Al Jazeera reporters became a central theme. After the movie came out, his superior officers told him not to discuss it any more in public.

“Later, when Al Jazeera started their English-speaking station in Washington, they called me,” Rushing said. “I was out of the Marines by then, and I decided it was something I wanted to try.”

In recent years, Rushing has spoken at West Point, the Naval Academy and the National Defense University. Part of his message is that war very quickly takes on a momentum all its own when it begins.

“Once the troops are in place, it becomes unpatriotic to criticize the decision that put them there,” he said. “When you think about it, there has never been a time without war. As one is winding down, another is already starting.”

Ellie