Los Angeles Times 2/02/05 Op Ed, by Arianna Huffungton
Quick, before the conventional wisdom hardens, it needs to be said: The Iraqi election was not the second coming of the Constitutional Convention. The media have made it sound as if last Sunday was 1776, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prague Spring, Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Filipino "People Power," Tiananmen Square and Super Bowl Sunday all rolled into one. It's impossible not to be moved by the stories coming out of Iraq: voters braving mortar blasts to cast ballots; election workers counting votes by the glow of oil lamps; teary-eyed women in traditional garb proudly holding up their purple-ink-stained fingers. It was a great moment. A Kodak moment. And unlike the other Kodak moments from this war - think Saddam Hussein's tumbling statue and Jessica Lynch's "rescue" - this one was not created by the image masters at Karl Rove Productions. But this moment, however moving, should not be allowed to erase all that came before it, leaving us unprepared for all that may come after it. The triumphalist fog rolling across the land has all the makings of another "Mission Accomplished" moment. Forgive me for trotting out Santayana's dictum that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, but, for God's sake, can't we even remember last week? So, amid all the talk of turning points and historic days, let us steadfastly refuse to drink from the River Lethe, which brought forgetfulness and oblivion to my ancient ancestors. Let's not forget that for all President Bush's rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy, a free election was the administration's fallback position - more Plan D than guiding principle. We were initially going to install Ahmad Chalabi as our man in Baghdad, remember? And the White House consented to an open election only after Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani sent his followers into the streets to demand it - and chose an election date that came after our presidential campaign was done, just in case more suicide bombers than voters turned up at Iraqi polling places. And the election doesn't change that. Let's not forget that this was a legitimate democratic election in name only. Actually, not even in name, because most of the candidates on Sunday's ballot had less name recognition than your average candidate for dogcatcher. That's because they were too afraid to hold rallies, give speeches or engage in debates. Many were so anxious about the threat of being killed that they fought to keep their names from being made public. And the election doesn't change that. Let's not forget that many Iraqi voters turned out to send a defiant message not just to the insurgents but also to Bush. Many of those voters' purple fingers were raised in our direction. According to a poll taken by our own government before the June 2004 handover, 92% of Iraqis viewed the U.S.-led forces in Iraq as "occupiers," while only 2% saw them as "liberators." And the election doesn't change that. Let's not forget that the war in Iraq has made the United States far less safe than it was before the invasion. According to a report released last month by the CIA, Iraq has become a breeding ground for the next generation of "professionalized" Islamic terrorists. Foreign terrorists are now honing their deadly skills against U.S. troops - skills they will eventually take with them to other countries, including ours. The report also warns that the war in Iraq has deepened solidarity among Muslims worldwide and increased anti-American feelings across the globe. And the election doesn't change that. Let's not forget the woeful lack of progress in the reconstruction of Iraq. The people still lack such basics as gasoline and kerosene. The country is producing less electricity than before the war. There are food shortages, and the number of Iraqi children suffering from malnutrition has nearly doubled. According to UNICEF, nearly one child in 10 is suffering the effects of chronic diarrhea caused by unsafe water - a situation responsible for 70% of children's deaths in Iraq. And the election doesn't change that. Let's not forget the blistering new report from the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, which found that the U.S. occupation government that ruled Iraq until last June has been unable to account for nearly $9 billion, having overseen a reconstruction process "open to fraud, kickbacks and misappropriation of funds." And the election doesn't change that. Let's not forget that we still don't have an exit strategy. The closest the president has come to one was on Sunday when he said, "This rising democracy can eventually take responsibility for its own security." "Eventually" being the operative word. Although the administration claims that more than 120,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained, other estimates put the number closer to 14,000, with fewer than 5,000 ready for battle. Of those we've trained, about 10,000 have quit or been dropped from the rolls in the last six months. And the election doesn't change that. And let's never forget this administration's real goal in Iraq, as laid out by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and their fellow neocon members of the Project for the New American Century back in 1998, when they urged President Clinton and Congress to take down Hussein "to protect our vital interests in the Gulf." These vital interests were cloaked in mushroom clouds, WMD that turned into "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" and a Hussein/Al Qaeda link that turned into, well, nothing. Long before the Bushies landed on freedom and democracy as their 2005 buzzwords, they had their eyes on the Iraqi prize: the second-largest oil reserves in the world and a permanent home for U.S. bases in the Middle East. This is still the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the election, as heartwarming as it was, doesn't change any of that. *** The following item appears on Yoshie Furuhashi's blog Critical Montages. American journalism sank to a new low in its coverage of the "demonstration elections" in Iraq, measured by the number of American journalists who challenged Washington's micro-managing of election coverage while on air: zero. Just watching broadcast and cable television in the United States, you had no way of knowing that journalists were "limited to filming at only five polling stations," unless you happened to catch ITN's Julian Manyon on CNN International's program International Correspondents: MANYON: . . . You know, I have been out in the last couple of days a couple of times, but one goes out fearfully in the knowledge that one might either be shot at or in the extreme worst case -- one prays it will never happen -- actually kidnapped. Beyond that, it must be said, there is also another wide range of factors which are actually preventing journalists from covering this election properly, and one of those factors, for example, is the way in which the American handlers who are actually running the Ministry of Information's affairs here in real terms, have designed the whole thing. I would say that along with the violence, it is just as serious an impediment for journalists. Why, for example, we've been limited to filming at only five polling stations, and we discovered when the list of the five polling stations was published that four of those five polling stations are actually in Shia areas, and therefore by definition will shed very little light on whether Sunnis vote or not. (emphasis added, "Media Coverage of Iraq," Interantional Correspondents, CNN International, January 29, 2005, 21:00:00 ET) Few Americans would have heard Manyon's sharp criticism of US censorship because CNN International (CNNI) is "the branch of CNN the rest of the world sees but which Americans normally don't" (Brendan Bernhard, "Box Populi: How AMERICAN Is It? Fox News vs. CNN International," LA Weekly, May 2 - 8, 2003). What's the difference between CNN and CNNI? "On CNNI, which reaches 170 million households in over 200 countries, there is no Aaron Brown or Judy Woodruff, and retired generals are as scarce as bleeding hearts on Fox. Instead there are anchors with names like Zain Verjee (a woman, in case you're wondering), Daljit Dhaliwal (ditto), Anand Naidoo (male) and Michael Holmes (Aussie, mate)" (Bernhard, May 2 - 8, 2003). More importantly, CNNI "dwelled at length on civilian casualties" in the Iraq War, from which CNN, as well as other networks, apparently must protect Americans (Bernhard, May 2 - 8, 2003). The biggest difference, however, is CNNI's freedom of criticism. CNNI, for instance, allowed journalists to discuss the "demonstration elections" staged by Washington in light of "international standards." Manyon's candid assessment of the Iraqi elections is that "it's disturbing quite frankly because it's very difficult to see how these elections can live up to international standards in terms of dispassionate supervision and policing of the polls" (emphasis added, "Media Coverage of Iraq," January 29, 2005, 21:00:00 ET). What makes him say that? MANYON: . . . I mean, we've got a situation in Mosul, for example, where American troops, we now discover because the Iraqi employees of the election organization have deserted en masse, it's American soldiers who will be transporting the ballot boxes around when they are full of votes. This is really very far from ideal, and if it were happening in any other country -- I mean, one could mention Ukraine, for example -- there would be a wild chorus of international protest (emphasis added, "Media Coverage of Iraq," January 29, 2005, 21:00:00 ET) The difference between CNN and CNNI is an example that illuminates the US power elite's contempt for, as well as fear of, Americans. On one hand, the power elite, of whom the media elite are part, hold the intelligence of Americans in lower regard than they do that of the rest of the world, as they evidently believe that Americans, unlike all others, are content with the narrowest range of information and political opinion available on the corporate media in the world. On the other hand, the power elite fear how Americans would react were they to see the naked reality of the American empire. As Daniel Ellsberg says in Hearts and Minds, a 1974 documentary film about the Vietnam War directed by Peter Davis, "It is a tribute to the American people that our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled." _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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