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16
US soldiers were killed in an attack on a US CH-47
Chinook helicopter near Fallujah.
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In light of a military campaign
gone wrong and mounting casualties, the Bush administration in
collusion with the Pentagon is masterminding a new wave of media
manipulation by consistently suggesting, repeating and insisting
that the violence of resistance in Iraq is not domestic in
source and nature, but exported by foreign elements.
The media has heard various explanations as to why US and (to a
lesser extent) British soldiers are starting to come home in
body bags.
The preferred explanation is that the violence in Iraq
is due to foreign fighters, or jihadis, as some military
officials have seen fit to label them. These jihadis are
considered to be disgruntled Muslims (they may come from
anywhere in the Arab world) who see Iraq as a battleground against what they term the “evil American
Empire.” These jihadis, US officials claim, either are directly linked to Osama bin
Laden’s Al-Qaeda or sympathize with such organizations.
This explanation works wonders for US media. It exonerates the
Iraqi people who were meant to have greeted US soldiers with
song and dance, flowers, and rice when Baghdad
was “liberated.” Although the little Hollywood
charade never really materialized, blaming foreign insurgents
leads one to believe that, at the very least, the Iraqis don’t
mind having US occupying forces in Iraq, and at the very best, that Iraqis
want US forces to occupy
their country. By shifting the blame to foreign fighters, the
White House and the Pentagon create the illusion that only
foreign fighters are in Iraq, thereby discrediting the claim that Iraqis do not want US
forces. The public is then led to believe that the invasion of Iraq
is going smoothly, that Iraqi society is moving ahead but is
being disrupted by foreign Islamic elements.
These foreign Islamic elements are also a convenient scapegoat
to connect the invasion of Iraq
to the events of September 11. Prior to the war, virtually every
White House official barked and bellowed that Iraq
was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade
Center
and Pentagon. Vice-President Dick Cheney continues to insist
that there is a link despite the overwhelming evidence to the
contrary. The bottom line is that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, one of the principal
reasons for invading Iraq (the second was weapons of mass destruction; there is also no
evidence to support that claim). When the US public demanded
proof and got nothing in return, the White House created a new
battleground –Iraq– citing that Iraq was where America was
waging war against terrorism.
On November 3rd, President Bush told reporters “We are taking
the war over there [Iraq] rather than let them bring it here.” Since no Iraqi brought
the war to American shores, and no evidence was found to support
such a claim, creating the threat of foreign Islamic militants
infiltrating Iraq will allay the
US public’s fears and confusion.
But it won’t do the same with the Iraqi people who are not as
easily fooled. The US administration is trying to lick its wounds in the
US public domain but is forgetting that it is meant to win the
hearts and minds of the Iraqi people first and foremost. In that
it has failed miserably.
The second explanation meted out by the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) and its proxy, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC),
is that the violence in Iraq is largely due to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his
most loyal Baathist supporters or the dreaded Fedayeen fighters.
Every time an explosion is heard in
Baghdad or an Iraqi civilian dies, members of the CPA and the IGC
quickly point to Saddam. In the wake of the downing of the
Chinook helicopter near Fallujah, which killed 16 US
soldiers, the CPA and the Pentagon were at a loss for words. How
could they account for this momentary military defeat? Blame
someone that is invisible, of course – Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri,
former Iraqi Vice-President and Saddam’s most trusted ally who
is thought to be hiding in Mosul.
US
media was quick to broadcast images of Al-Douri and sound bites
from various Arab and regional conferences. “He called the
Kuwaitis sons of dogs,” said one MSNBC commentator, as if
insulting the Kuwaitis was proof enough that Al-Douri was behind
the killing of US soldiers. What US media did not mention is that Al-Douri is thought to be an
invalid, dying of cancer at the ripe old age of 78.
There is a problem with the second explanation, however, because
it does not account for the great depth, veracity, frequency and
success of recent attacks. How could Saddam’s forces be so
mobile, agile and quick? US military commanders have in effect
started to admit that they face an invisible enemy, an enemy
they have vanquished more than six months ago when President
Bush declared the war over. The second explanation on its own
presents the White House with a public relations fiasco.
Enter the surefire columnist who knows what Iraqis feel without
ever really being in Iraq or talking to Iraqis in their own country. These media pundits
introduce yet another explanation – a hybrid of both
explanations above; the Baathists are importing foreign
fighters. And they are doing it from Iran
and Syria.
“We thought we won the first Iraq war in 100 hours, but lost
the peace to Saddam and his Baathist followers. We thought we
won the second Iraq war decisively in one week, but Saddam’s
murdering class and his imported terrorists chose to run and
fight from underground,” William Safire, a proponent of the
Iraq invasion, says in The Washington Post (November 3, 2003).
The picture now becomes all the clearer. The US
is fighting home-grown terrorists (the Baathists) and the
Islamic terrorists who brought down the Twin
Towers (Al-Qaeda), and Iraq is the proving ground. To any buffoon this simply says that the
US
must “stay the course,” as President Bush said last week,
and fight to the last man in Iraq.
Suddenly,
the reasons for going to Iraq
are no longer about weapons of mass destruction (David Kay has
been embarrassed into reclusion because he came up empty.); they
are no longer about freeing the Iraqi people or creating the
Arab world’s first democracy. They are about converting a
fertile country into a depleted uranium cemetery for Al-Qaeda.
Never mind that Iraqis live there, too.
This explanation might go down well with the common lot in North America, but it is an insult to the Iraqi people themselves. On the one
hand, it says that no one really cares about them, and on the
other, it insults them by saying they can’t fight or fend for
themselves.
And that is the precise root of the problem. The grievances of
the Iraqi people are being tossed aside, which may better
explain why resistance in Iraq
is increasing, becoming ever more ferocious, and why more
US soldiers die every day.
Firas
Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage.
Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has
eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and
gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
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