None Dare Call It Reason Pro-War Talk Media Continues to Tell It Like It Isn't By Mark T. Harris
I couldn't help but overhear the young man in the retail chain store last week. He was the fellow wearing the T-shirt with the word "security" emblazoned in large block letters. He was talking to a young couple as they browsed the store's music section.
At first I thought the young man, who looked like he was in his early 20s, worked for the store. But a closer look at his T-shirt revealed in smaller letters the word "eternal" above "security," and below that a biblical reference to John 3:16. It was not an unusual message in this part of the Midwest. But what really caught my attention was what the young man was saying. Apparently, the other man was planning to enlist in the army in a few months. The man in the Jesus shirt was telling the couple about his military tour of duty in Iraq. How they shouldn't believe all the media reports about how terrible it is in Iraq.
"I mean, when you're over there and you hear that a million people got electricity last week, it's awesome, man," declared our evangelist for Jesus and foreign occupations. "Some of these people live in mud homes." The young couple he was addressing smiled and nodded their heads agreeably. "You'll see, it's not like they're saying. There are amazing things happening," the young man assured the future soldier.
Listening, I was also amazed. I wondered what this fellow knew about the modern history of Iraq. Did he know about the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report from 1990 that discussed methods at the outset of the first Gulf War for sabotaging Iraq's water treatment system? Did he know about the U.S. bombing raids then on Iraq's dams, pumping stations, municipal water and sewage facilities? Or how the post-war economic sanctions against Iraq included a ban on the chemicals and equipment needed to repair water and sanitation treatment facilities? Did he know about the approximately 500,000 children estimated to have died during the sanction years, deaths caused in significant number by disease related to the deterioration of the sanitation system?
Ironically, Iraq actually began exporting electricity to Turkey in 1987. In those days the country's electrical system had been modernizing for a couple decades. In those days the Reagan Administration was also an ally of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Then Saddam's world of helicopter gunships, chemical weapons, torture and dictatorship were not a problem for the Republican White House. In those days Iraq was at war with Iran. Then Iran's nationalist revolution was considered the major threat to U.S. oil interests. If you're a torturer with oil, Washington has a way of rationalizing unpleasantries when they happen to dovetail with the year's policy agenda.
But despite the encouragement (and arranging shipments of arms and money) from glad-handing Reagan envoy Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam's war with Iran exacted a heavy price not only in lives lost, but also in a shrinking gross domestic product. Thirteen years of economic sanctions and two wars later, Iraq is a country where prospects for a better life look about as bright as a distant star on a smoggy Los Angeles evening.
The Land of Sound Bites and Sycophants While the young veteran in the store may believe the U.S. mission in Iraq is a noble enterprise, you just have to wonder how anyone can continue to support a war that has been so discredited? It may be because the right-wing media warriors who whipped up pro-war sentiment four years ago are still at it. Indeed, despite the shattered reality of life in Iraq, you will be hard pressed to find any genuinely critical accounting of the war's course from its many talk media boosters.
At a time when an old-line right-winger like William F. Buckley bluntly admits the U.S. mission in Iraq has failed, when even professional reprobate Henry Kissinger says a military victory is impossible, talk radio stars like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and others remain intrepid defenders of the heroic rightness of the President's war. In the brave new world of the media warrior, the only challenge remains "finishing the job."
These are folks who once predicted candy and flowers for our troops (hey, Dick Cheney told them this!) and got instead a nation where polls show 61 percent of Iraq's population now supports attacks on U.S. and British troops. They also made the mistake of taking seriously the not-so-sage wisdom of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who in the weeks following the invasion could not imagine resistance to the occupation lasting more than six months.
Of course, Rumsfeld's grotesque misreading of Iraqi reality was only an early clue to what was coming. No Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) found. No textbook lessons in helping a grateful nation learn the ABCs of building a fledgling democracy. No end to terrorism. No peace. No security. A war with no end in sight.
Death everywhere.
In the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the mainstream news networks and press largely gave a pass to all the duplicitous nonsense emanating from the White House about Iraq's secret cache of weapons. But it was the talk media industry especially that played a critical role in turning the White House's recipe for disaster into a dish palatable enough for the public to swallow. Yet as the public grows ever more disillusioned with the war, the more the media warriors sound like some crude Stalinist propaganda machine, all self-righteous bluster in the name of the beleaguered theory of America as the world's only moral force for good. But beneath the bombast, the media warriors travel increasingly in desperation and delusion.
In place of edifying political thought, we instead get people like CNN host Glen Beck, a glib talker who thinks torture in the name of the red, white, and blue is highly commendable. Or the bluster of Hannity, who prattles loudly on radio and TV about things like "moral character" while explaining away the blood-drenched streets of Falluja under U.S. siege. Then there's Bill O'Reilly, whose national platform on Fox News allows him to advocate things like incarcerating "all those clowns" at Air America for treason. At least O'Reilly is opposed to the death penalty, unlike radio host Michael Savage. The latter believes former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright should be tried for treason and hanged for not preventing North Korea from buying two nuclear reactors during the Clinton era. No word from Savage on whether he would also march exiting Defense Secretary Rumsfeld up the gallows steps, since he was on the board of the engineering firm ABB when it was hired by North Korea to build those nuclear reactors.
In place of productive discussion, we instead get anger, packaged in self-righteousness and delivered as cheap entertainment. There's syndicated radio host Mark Levin, a Republican lawyer and frequent guest on Hannity's program, who regularly delivers some of radio's nastiest name-calling rants against liberal "appeasers" of evil (meaning basically anyone who disagrees with Levin). Levin's radio moniker is "The Great One" and he's a case study in the crassness that pervades talk media. Levin is the kind of guy who in a radio exchange with actor Alec Baldwin, a Bush critic, attacked Baldwin with mocking taunts about his weight and divorce proceedings. During the recent military conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Levin more notably incited his listeners with high-decibel declarations on the need to "crush the barbarians" in Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, to "rain hell on them so they'll know what hell is like before they get there." If you happen to think otherwise, prepare to have a payload of outrage dumped on you. It's all apparently designed to appeal to Levin's perpetually aggrieved fan base. It also just gets worse. If hell is other people, as Sartre once said, then the Mark Levin Show is the show those people listen to.
They also might read the thuggish columns of Ann Coulter. On almost any topic this talk media fixture offers a grab bag of predictably disgraceful thought. To the news that a former spokesperson for the Taliban government in Afghanistan is now attending Yale University, for example, Coulter in her May 10 column asked why the man hasn't been "beaten more senseless than he already is?" Where is "an angry, club-and torch wielding mob when you need one?" asked our word-processing vigilante?
Inhale (taking deep breath)/Exhale...
Sigh...Whew...
I always want to say something to show my appreciation for excellent, insightful, informative, and emotionally touching work, but often after reading such powerful writing as this, I am a bit overwhelmed. So, well... I guess I better just go back to work...
Thank you!
by
RCG (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 348 comments) on Wednesday, Dec 6, 2006 at 11:39:31 AM
Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq are the opening salvos. As the army attacks Iraq, the US gov't erodes rights at home by suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, America Deceived (book), rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting 2 illegal wars based on lies. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier) and the US will invade Iran, (on behalf of Israel). More and more soldiers will die for these neo-con/zionist dictators.
by
Lorring II (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 87 comments) on Thursday, Dec 7, 2006 at 1:04:30 PM
It's what's been driving so many of us out here crazy!! The masses are getting, twisted, tainted, convaluted disguised as truth serum?!! It's very scary & sad, because how can you have an intelligent discussion, when the other party is loaded up on hate & lies, propagated by many evil people, who are either ignorant of the factual history of the Middle east, as it relates to the West, or they have a hidden agenda, cloaked in ignorance, arrogance & fierce nationalism(racism)...which works out beautifully for all those shareholders making gobs of $$ from defense contractors, oil co.'s, and for the Zionist Jews & Christians...who want American soldiers, and our Military killing machine--to whip out all Muslim Arabs! Never mind that the Muslims never had any anti-semetic role, up until the middle of the 20th century. They never had a problem with their Arab cousins. It was the Anglo-Christians that were the crusader's--haters of Jews!! It is good to know--that what Jimmy Carter has stated recently on his book tour--that the only place there is no intelligent discussion on Israeli- Palestinian genocide--& war crimes, is here. And That...there are on-going discussions about the atrocities commited by IDF--on Innocent Palestinians--everyday. Most Jews in Israel, U.S.--want peace--and don't agree with the Zionist warmongers. B'Shalom! Salaam!! Great article!! God Bless you, in this Holy Season of Hope, Light. mcdeacon
by
M.C. Gallagher (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 5 comments) on Thursday, Dec 7, 2006 at 4:06:09 PM
It's what's been driving so many of us out here crazy!! The masses are getting, twisted, tainted, convaluted B.S., disguised as truth serum?!! It's very scary & sad, because how can you have an intelligent discussion, when the other party is loaded up on hate & lies, propagated by many evil people, who are either ignorant of the factual history of the Middle east, as it relates to the West, or they have a hidden agenda, cloaked in ignorance, arrogance & fierce nationalism(racism)...which works out beautifully for all those shareholders making gobs of $$ from defense contractors, oil co.'s, and for the Zionist Jews & Christians...who want American soldiers, and our Military killing machine--to wipe out all Muslim Arabs! Never mind that the Muslims never had any anti-semetic role, up until the middle of the 20th century. They never had a problem with their Arab cousins. It was the Anglo-Christians that were the crusader's--haters of Jews!!
Jimmy Carter has stated recently on his book tour--that the only place there is no intelligent discussion on the Israeli- Palestinian genocide--& war crimes, is here. And That...there are on-going discussions(Europe/Israel) about the atrocities commited by the IDF--on Innocent Palestinians--everyday. Most Jews in Israel, U.S.--want peace--and don't agree with the Zionist Neo-Con warmongers.
I believe these chickenhawk warmongers along with the neocon architects of these immoral, illegal wars--should be held accountable for all the war crimes, they instigated!
B'Shalom! Salaam!! Great article!! God Bless you, in this Holy Season of Hope, Light. mcdeacon
by
M.C. Gallagher (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 5 comments) on Thursday, Dec 7, 2006 at 4:16:50 PM
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