On the Wings of a Lie - American Propaganda Run Amok
S. Smith
On the wings of a lie
http://www.vallejonews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=30152&webpage=79&s=1
By Vicki Gray
Vallejo News
Ever hear of Willis Conover? Probably not. Willis, however, was known round the
post-war world as the world's preeminent jazz expert. You didn't hear of him, because
his venue was the Voice of America (VOA), the official U.S. government radio station,
which by law is not allowed to broadcast in the United States, lest the government
propagandize its own people.
Willis is gone. So too is the U.S. Information Agency that oversaw VOA. And, sadly,
so are the inhibitions against the U.S. government propagandizing the American
people. Let me be very clear, over the past two years, especially over these last six
months, you have been propagandized by the United States government -- aided and
abetted by the broadcast media -- into believing that Iraq poses an imminent threat
to the United States that must be eliminated by an aggression known officially and
euphemistically as preemptive war.
In this propaganda the Administration and the media have played fast and loose with
history, sometimes distorting it beyond recognition. Some examples?
September 11
Over and over, the President has raised September 11 as the bloody shirt in this
foolish adventure we're now involved in. Fact is, Iraq was not there on September 11.
The terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, an ally or so we're assured. Osama bin Laden?
Al Qaeda? There are no links to Iraq but plenty to Saudi Arabia.
The President, moreover, has invoked September 11 as a unique watershed. Other
countries, he contends, do not understand the uniqueness of our pain. And that pain,
he adds, justifies actions that, before September 11, would have been unimaginable.
Oh? Fact is neither he nor the American people understand how uniquely insulated we
were over the course of the last century. Indeed, the shock of Europeans and Asians
at our bellicosity stems from the fact that they have endured far worse over the
course of the past hundred years.
I will not, dare not, denigrate the suffering inflicted upon us on September 11, but
I do sense, that in its wake, we have lost all sense of historical perspective.
Indeed, it's almost as if we've lost our moral bearings in our search for revenge.
We would do well to eschew the one-liners of talk show hosts and the boycotts of
French wines and recall that others have endured far worse. Yes, the symbols of our
economic prowess and, much more importantly, the lives of 3,000 people -- Americans
and foreigners -- were destroyed on September 11. But how many Americans recall the
suffering of the millions who died in and the many more who survived not only the
Holocaust, but the five-year occupation of Paris, the bombings of London and
Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden and Würzburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the rape of
Nanking, and the over 20 million Russians killed in cities like Leningrad and
Stalingrad?
The history of those latter cities cries out for understanding in the current
context. Driving back from church last Sunday, I listened on my car radio to one of
those many retired generals opine about the coming battle of Baghdad. There were, he
said, two historical models -- the siege of Leningrad and the street-to-street
fighting in Stalingrad. He discussed the tactical "pros-and-cons" of both, without
addressing the historic or moral ghosts of the innocent civilian deaths of
Leningraders or the suffering of Russian and German soldiers in Stalingrad. Nor, did
he mention that those attacking those cities were the cannon-fodder of Nazi
over-reaching, the soldiers of an army that had invaded the Soviet Union. Are these
fit "models" for Americans?
Israel and Palestine
And, last Friday, almost as a throwaway line, the President mumbled some words about
a "road map" for Israel and Palestine -- to save Tony Blair, not the Israelis or
Palestinians who have been dying in their thousands during this past year of American
fixation on Iraq. What a waste! What a monumental misunderstanding of history! Why do
Arabs hate us? Why are there Muslim terrorists? The answer lies in the harshness of
the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the one-sided support of a right-wing
American government for an even more right-wing Israeli government. Looking at the
pictures of Rachel Corrie, in a bright orange jacket megaphone in hand, about to be
plowed into the earth by an Israeli bulldozer, can you feel at last the rage of the
Palestinians? Can you understand how Europeans might mentally morph those Israeli
bulldozer drivers into similarly young Nazis who visited "collective punishment" on
cities such as Lidice?
And, in our support of that Israeli occupation, our blindness to historic evidence
approaches monumental ignorance. The full history of the region is not contained in a
movie called "Exodus" but passes through such real world wounds as Deir Yassin and
Sabra and Shatilla. These are places and events that inform European and Arab
perspectives but are seemingly unknown to Americans.
Iraq
We are also woefully ignorant about the history of modern Iraq, the country we're
about to rule. That sad and tortured history began where "Lawrence of Arabia" ended
-- with betrayal and British colonialism. Ever wonder why Lawrence was so
disappointed at the end of the movie? Ever wonder about those incredibly straight
lines that pass for borders? The rationale for Kuwait? Ever heard of the Sykes-Picot
agreement that divvied up the Middle East between Britain and France after World War
I? Are you aware of America's role in a variety of coups in Iraq or how many times
we've hung the Kurds out to dry? Do you recall that we backed Iraq in its 1980s war
with Iran, supplied Saddam with biological and chemical agents and stood by silently
when he used them?
Other wars and the UN
An example of media complicity in historical distortion can be found in a recent CNN
pop-up box during a story on the Security Council debate. Not to worry, it suggested,
there have been many wars undertaken without UN approval. Touted among such wars were
Algeria, Vietnam, Kosovo and the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But
Algeria, at the time, was, according to Paris, a province of France. Its war there --
which I opposed -- would be akin to our attacking Puerto Rico. I doubt in such an
unlikely event, we'd tolerate UN "interference" in an "internal" matter. Vietnam was
another war I opposed -- marching in my opposition with a now-silent John Kerry. But
I do recall that at least we were invited in by the Saigon government and that LBJ
went to great -- albeit less than truthful -- pains to convince the American people
that we were attacked in the Tonkin Gulf. Kosovo? In that case there was an ongoing
genocide that cried out for intervention. My only objection -- along with Elie Wiesel
-- was that NATO should have gone in sooner on the ground. When it did, it did so as
a regional collective defense organization envisaged by the UN Charter and on behalf
of the United Nations. Hungary? Czechoslovakia? How dare anyone roll out those Soviet
atrocities as "models" or in any way suggest that they provide reference points for
American actions anywhere.
And then there's Rome
A final note, invoking a far longer perspective is in order in these ides of March.
The arrogance of American hyper-power has not been lost on "historians" such as Gary
Trudeau. In an op-ed piece masquerading as a comic strip on Monday, Duke, that
consummate CIA operative, insists that his erstwhile Maoist sidekick address him
properly on their balcony overlooking the minarets of Baghdad. She complies and,
thumping her breast, shouts "Ave, proconsul!"
Speaking of Latin, the resignation letter of John Brady Kiesling (one of three senior
Foreign Service officers to resign this month, the others being John H. Brown and
Mary Wright) quoted Caligula: "Oderint dum metuant" or, roughly, "Let them hate us,
just as long as they fear us." Is that what we've become in our hubris? At this
critical moment upon the ides of March, I urge our President -- and my fellow
Americans -- to heed the far wiser advice of another eminent historian and observer
of human nature, William Shakespeare: "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal."
Finally, as you look at pictures tonight of the Tigris and Euphrates, I would urge
you also to ponder yet another history lesson involving Caeser. When he crossed that
infamous Rubicon in 49 B.C., Roman democracy was doomed. I fear that in espousing the
morally foreign, thoroughly un-American concept of preemptive invasion -- again, a
euphemism for aggression -- we have crossed a Rubicon of sorts in American history.
The deed is done. There's nothing more to do now but pray -- for our sons and
daughters in Iraq, for the millions of innocent Iraqis, for a victory that's as quick
and bloodless as possible -- and for American democracy.