Something to Keep in Mind When You See How Mad the World Is at Us
In the next few days you might be seeing the occasional furious crowd of protestors as President Bush travels from India to Pakistan. You might also have wondered why Muslims could get so worked up by cartoons. It’s simple: There are a lot of furious people out there right now, and the Iraq situation has a great deal to do with it.
My philosophy regarding the Middle East is that we should be concentrating on getting the energy that we need out, not putting energy back in. I’m not talking about stealing anything; just peacefully buying what the Arabs have to sell in the time honored tradition of the “suq”, or Arab marketplace. Did you know some of these ancient trading routes can be seen from space, worn into the desert floor over the eons, one camel step at a time?
What I don’t recommend is putting energy into the Middle East, as with the invasion of Iraq, and the continued occupation. In fact, if President Bush had asked me about the Iraq plan, my one word recommendation would have been "Don't". Indeed, while the pundits fret about whether a civil war is underway or about to get underway, true Middle Easterners worry that the whole region is about to go whoosh! We have put a lot of energy in and it’s coming back in the form of rage.
Frankly, I used to get nervous when things were calm and people started talking about peace. It seemed to me, if it was calm, let it remain calm. When the talk turned to peace, the real violence often started. Of course, this Iraq invasion is more violent than anything I experienced over there. No one even talks about peace now. There have been worse wars: The Iran-Iraq War in the '80s killed over a million. Ironically, back then we were helping Saddam, but why cloud the issue now?
The point I’d like to make, is why these crowds of people are so enraged. See, while we’ve been watching “Dancing with the Stars”, and “American Idol”, a lot of the Middle East has seen the actual war on TV. They’ve seen little children dying from the wounds. They’ve seen what white phosphorous did to Fallujah, vaporizing flesh to the bone. In short, they’ve seen the stuff our government doesn’t want you to see. They don’t even want you to see flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq. They claim it’s an invasion of the privacy of the grieving families, but that’s just typical spin from this sleazy White House. It’s really about preventing you from thinking too much about what’s going on.
Sure, it was nice to watch the Winter Olympics, but what we need is to hand out a bunch of medals and have a closing ceremony for the Iraq War. That's why it's not on TV. If you did see what has really been done in your name, you'd get angry, too, especially knowing this didn’t have to happen. You might even demand that it end. We haven't been exposed to the true horror of this fiasco, but lots of people outside this country have. That’s why so many of them are furious at us right now. Come to think of it, maybe it’s better we don’t look at what we’ve done here. Seeing little wounded children struggling to breathe, can take all the fun out of watching “American Idol.”
posted by Bill McDonald @ 8:50 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
There's a tremendous amount of violence being committed by Arabs against Arabs (and others) in Iraq, but why cloud the issue! What you choose to advert to is what American white phosphorus does to the body (in that rat's nest Fallujah of all places) and how Americans are wounding little children.
You know, it's fine to be against the Iraq war on any number of grounds, but I don't understand how an American finds it so natural to special plead against his own country.
There are many reasons people are seething when they do seethe, and they are not all America's fault. Nor will isolationism of the kind you prescribe provide an answer to militant Islamism.
Lindas palabras, pero de vez en cuando uno tiene que enfrentar la maldad y las amenazas del otro. La supervicencia—y la dignidad—no yace en simplemente huir de la fealdad y peligro del mundo.
If we're so proud of what we did in Fallujah, why did the US government deny it for so long? Have you seen the film of that? it was shown in Italy among many other places. White phosphorous is a cruel chemical weapon. Did you see it on Dateline or was that when Britney had the baby scandal?
My point is that the American viewing audience has been presented with a different version of the war, than much of the rest of the world. If we saw what they've been seeing we'd feel differently. Don't you agree with that?
By the way, it's not isolationist to want to be able to travel abroad without having most of the world hate us.
And the only thing the militant Islamists regret is that President Bush can't serve another term.
The U.S. could simply have flattened Fallujah but chose instead to fight door-to-door, at greatly heightened risk to its soldiers.
Yes, it used munitions containing white phosphorus, which has been common practice for it and many other armies for nearly a century. Equating it with "chemical weapons" is a propagandistic ploy, a ginned up charge to make the U.S. look like war criminals.
The U.S.'s real colors are shown by its willingness to sacrifice tactical surprise by giving advanced notice of its attack (what, five days?) in order to give civilians the opportunity to leave the area. Does it get any credit for that? No. But it can count on a chorus of people focusing on the some aspect of the necessary hell of warfare and distorting it all out of proportion (and simply lying about it) while it ignores the character of the vicious thugs that the U.S. was fighting against there. Who cares about that! And if they're sadistic animals with no respect for the rules of war, well, that's probably the U.S.'s fault too.
See how it works? The thugs of Fallujah deliberately use civilians as shields and force the U.S. into a situation that can be exploited for maximum propaganda benefit. They rely on what they know about the Western media and the gullible people who fall for this kind of manipulation. So what about Fallujah resonates in the anti-American international press, the liberal media and leftist imagination? The murder and mutilation of American contractors? The vicious thugs who genuinely committed war crimes? Nope. A manufactured story about the use of a common weapon—and that despite the Americans' applications of weapons and tactics designed to minimize the damage to the city as a whole and the harm to civilians.
What the Islamists, Arabists and general thugs will really regret is when there ceases to be grotesque bias such as this. They've been working it for decades now and they'd sure hate to see it go.
By all means, let's face the horrors of war—beggining with those poor bastards jumping out of the WTC, which the networks were so concerned to hide. Let's look deeply into the daily atrocities committed by the various factions of barbarians in the Middle East and wherever radical Muslims are bloodying their borders. And let's also pay a little more attention to the good that American forces and their allies do day after day, largely unsung.
So yes, I agree, I think, but I'd put it differently: if the Arab/Muslim world and American audiences weren't saturated with the kinds of propaganda that is typical, they'd probably look at world affairs quite differently.
To your other point: wishing to travel around the world without people hating you is entirely consistent with an isolationist foreign policy. I took you to be articulating such a preference when you recommended against the U.S. "putting energy into the Middle East." If you're just against the invasion and occupation, I respect that. But something had to be done with Saddam, and some kind of change in policy was needed in the Middle East.
Something had to be done with Saddam? How about containing him with sanctions and flyovers of two thirds of his country. That is why both Colin Powell and Condi said he wasn't a threat to his neighbors or us.
That is the disconnect I believe you're suffering from. You still view this as a defensive action because you have to. Otherwise you're advocating a policy of preemptive strikes for any reason the invaders want to dream up. Then you're saying might makes right, which is the definition of a thug philosophy. What's different from Saddam deciding he wants to invade Kuwait?
And if you believe the intelligence was all wrong you haven't been paying attention. That is spin. The intelligence was fixed around the policy. It was distorted, manipulated, and manufactured. Cheney continued to lie about somethings long after they were disproven. This was a marketing campaign. It was not a war of necessity.
Finally, I was opposed to the Iraq war primarily because I thought it was a stupid idea that we'll be paying for for 50 years. Even if something had to be done with Saddam, as you say, that doesn't mean just do anything, especially if we create more Saddams along the way. Something had to be done with Osama. Too bad he didn't oblige us and move to Iraq so we could catch him when we got sidetracked there. I know, how about waiting till he throws a 5-year anniversary party for 9/11 and try to sneak up on him then?
9/11 was cynically hijacked by the Neocons, they used it to get what they wanted all along. But it's not working as planned and lots of young Americans are paying the price. it's now just a matter of how big a disaster this will be.
One other thing: We used to help Saddam.
Some of these same officials like Rumsfeld. And we knew he was using chemical weapons because we helped supply him with them. Would you at least admit that was a mistake or is this a case of, "If America did it, it has to be right"?
I had to run out the door so I didn't get to the topic of white phosphorous. There are Pentagon documents describing these weapons as chemical, especially in relation to Saddam's use of them on the Kurds. They have applications where they illuminate a battle field or provide a smokescreen. That wasn't the case in Fallujah which is why the US military denied using these weapons there, before the video evidence was shown in other parts of the world. If you think I'm engaging in propaganda by calling these chemical weapons, I suggest you contact the Pentagon and ask them why they sometimes say the same thing.
Hey Bill,
I love the Born to slack show. It should be syndicated nationally. Why? Because it is the truth. There are several videos to back everything you and james have been saying and get this, they are available at the library. Orwell rolls in his grave explains what has happened to our media. Yes, it is now controlled. Bush family fortunes the best democracy money can buy, is another that really pisses me off. There are several others that are very enlightening. It would not surprise me if the bush administration was behind 9/11 to put the PNAC into effect, those corrupt bastards should be inprisoned. Anyway, Keep up the good work, hopefully America will wake up and realize what we already know.
I don’t think you’re engaging in propaganda if you really think you're just reporting. I just think you're too willing to consume a certain kind of anti-U.S. propaganda.
Whatever the reasons of the Pentagon's initial denial, WP is a very common weapon component and the reaction to its use strikes me as a captious attempt to seek to make U.S. forces look bad while shrugging off the kind of enemy they faced, the precautions they took to minimize civilian casualties and the risks they took by fighting street-to-street. What angers me is that if there’s any shred of plausibility that can be focused on and magnified to make allied forces look bad, some people will seize on it while remaining studiedly unappreciative of the precautions they take and while being utterly insouciant about the vile character of the adversaries they face. In fact, these people are manipulated by the enemy with astonishing ease. I’m also disappointed that you are too willing to give credence to this aggressively prejudiced way of reporting on the U.S.
With regard to your comments from the previous post, containment wasn’t going to work in the long run. I don’t know about “defensive action”; I would call it a matter of strategic prudence, which certainly does have a defensive dimension on a longer time frame.
The might-makes-right talk is fatuous. In the first place, Saddam was in violation of the terms of peace and actual hostilities were ongoing. You can argue that discretion argued against the invasion, but to say it was a preemptive action out of nowhere is ridiculous, no matter how many people repeate it however many times. To hearken to a historical analogy, the British and French would have acted entirely correctly if they had moved against Germany in the 1930s for the latter’s illicit military build up. Also, to even begin to suggest that the U.S. action could be analogous to a dictator's conquest and annexation of Kuwait into his own domain, for his own enrichment and aggrandizement is beyond a stretc.
I have no problem with your arguing that something other course could have been taken.
The fact that the U.S. helped Saddam in the past may or may not be problematic in itself. The allies helped Stalin too. If the U.S. gave Saddam illicit weapons, that’s wrong.
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