"Patriotic" Americans and the Dogs of War

American pro-war supporters cheer a speech during a rally in Chicago.

Bush’s folly is deflating Americans and American interests to the lowest. Following Muslims and Arabs in their creative moral resistance, a boycotting campaign of American products and brand names is growing in both Germany and France, along with many parts of the world. American foreign policy of hammer and sweet poison has never witnessed such daring opposition. The Russian administration promised to veto any Security Council resolution (in retrospect, of course) that would legitimize the war on Iraq after the military operation is finished – just like what happened in Kosovo. Bush’s picture is to join Hitler, Milosevic, and even Saddam in the world gallery of war criminals – even though he is making the latter, the mass murderer, a hero of anti-imperialism.

And domestically, freedom of speech, the ultimate gem that crowns American political culture, has been hijacked. With all the control and pressure put on anti-war intellectuals, speakers, and protestors, medieval history is reincarnated in modern America. Even the difference between CNN International and CNN in America is more than striking: no honest reporting of the deaths, nor the anti-war protests that shake the world. Even the pictures on civilian “casualties” are given little to no attention. Only the barren of bringing democracy, by force of course, and prosperity, by destruction and annihilation, is to be heard. For an outsider, through the New York Times, for example, the lack of anti-war literature and opinion makes it seem as if every American is eagerly beating the drums for a holy war.

Patriotic Americans and all… Now and forever.

With the media blackout in America, the American public is unaware of the other side of the war. What did CNN, ABC or CBS say about the losses? The war has become nothing but what statements of White House and Pentagon Spokesmen – along with some footage from Baghdad – make out of it. American corporate media have willingly adopted state-directed pseudo-patriotism in their sinister propaganda. With the Pentagon manipulating the news on the war, after ordering some 300 reporters to leave Baghdad right before the war started and their “security review” over the news, one way information is a given.

The same way the American public stopped the war in Vietnam, the same way they rightfully sided with the African National Congress (ANC) against Apartheid, they can stop this atrocity. With the Iraqi resistance showing uncompromising defiance to the invasion forces, prolonging the goals of the inexcusable incursion, there can be some hope of stopping this war.

Other than the demonstrations taking place in the US and all over the world, there is a strong campaign of circulating alternative news. The hacking of the Aljazeera website, the closing down of some American websites such as YellowTimes.Org, all show the fear of such counter-force in unmasking the hawks and their crimes. I hereby ask for the start of a massive campaign to circulate pictures of the war in America and Britain. The war is the time to start, to fight the hawks’ empire exactly where they fear: freedom of expression and an independent conscience.

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Tarek A. Ghanem is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He is specialized in comparative politics and is currently assistant to the English section in Al-Siyassa Al-Dawliya (International Politics), a quarterly journal published by Al-Ahram Foundation, Cairo, Egypt.