Ukraine: porn without shame

Here I am, early in the morning, binging on war porn. Just as I’ve done in every major conflict I’ve witnessed from afar as an adult. Vietnam, Tiananmen Square, Kuwait, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, 9/11, Tahrir Square, Libya, Syria to name but some.

I witnessed only one first hand: Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain. For the rest, I and millions like me have been reliant on the likes of John Simpson, Peter Arnett, Jeremy Bowen and now the BBC’s Lyse Doucet and Clive Myrie. Brave people, for sure, earnestly presenting perspectives and telling stories that can only ever be part of the picture. For in a conflict, as it unfolds, there are truths, lies and ambiguities. No journalist can fully disentangle the strands. And even when it’s over, whose truth prevails?

Often, in the kind of conflict that has erupted in Ukraine, there’s a brief period – before conventional means of communication are shut down – when reports flood in from everywhere. Very different from events like the Asian tsunami, when a catastrophic disaster wrecks everything, and it’s only hours or days after the event that graphic evidence from people on the ground starts trickling through.

We’re in that initial phase now, when the instigators are unable to sustain their stream of carefully crafted disinformation. When Comical Ali continues to lie as American tanks can be seen through the window behind him rumbling through Baghdad.

Sooner or later we will know Zelensky’s fate. We will see bodies of Russians and Ukrainians. We will see tanks on the streets of Kiev. Will there be any surprises, as happened when Yeltsin clambered on to a tank outside the Russian Parliament and a regiment from Tula crushed the coup attempt against Gorbachev? Unlikely. This drama has been carefully scripted.

There are times when I want to turn away from clips of the defiant wounded, of tearful refugees and of relatives grieving for victims of bombs and shells. Please, no more, I want to say, yet I still turn back. Because war is addictive. And if you ignore it you feel guilty for blanking out the suffering of others. But if you watch it, perhaps you do so out of more than concern for those involved. You do so because it’s so far from your own lived experience, because a thousand fictional portrayals of war are less powerful than the real thing, yet your constant gorging of fiction, history and perhaps video games prepare you for the raw meat, but when that comes along it almost feels mundane.

Do you watch with a shudder – there but for the grace of God go I? Do you ask yourself whether you would find the courage to resist the inevitable? Do you wonder what’s in it for you? How will your life be affected? Do you feel that your beliefs are vindicated and pump yourself up in a self-righteous fury? Stop the War, Let’s Go Brandon, or fuck Boris and his oligarch-enabling chums? Or do you watch with a knowing smile at the naivety of those who thought that our somnolent continent would never again witness a war on our doorsteps? All of those things, perhaps.

No matter. War is different things for different people. For the reporters it’s a mission to explain, and sometimes persuade. For their employers it’s a business – a means of upping the ratings and revenues by serving up the tastiest morsels of action and opinion to us consumers. And for us, it’s OK to watch. We can do so without the furtiveness with which we might view writhing bodies on grubby little websites.

In other words, it’s porn we can watch without shame.

But I still feel ashamed. And weary. And yet still fascinated.