[Media-watch] FW: Friendly Bombs - Western Benevolence, Johann Hari And "Us"

[David Miller]

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From: Medialens Media Alerts <noreply at medialens.org>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:18:22 +1000
To: Friend <david.miller at stir.ac.uk>
Subject: Friendly Bombs - Western Benevolence, Johann Hari And "Us"

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

November 19, 2003


MEDIA ALERT: FRIENDLY BOMBS – PART 1

Western Benevolence, Johann Hari And “Us”

 
Following the killing of 27 people including 19 Italian troops in Nassiriya
on November 12, Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow, asked Labour MP Ann
Clwyd:
 
"Are we now losing the Shias? That would be a tragedy."
 
We asked Snow to explain the meaning of this question:
 
“Did you mean to suggest that you view yourself as a member of ‘the
coalition’, of the British government, or both?” (David Edwards, email to
Jon Snow, November 12, 2003)

Snow responded almost immediately:
 
“NO WE AS HUMAN BEINGS I SHD THINK...FORGET THE COALITION..ANYONE GIVING UP
ON PEACEFUL ACTIVITY IN FAVOUR OF VIOLENCE IS BOUND TO BE A TRADGEDY [sic]
ISNT IT?..OR MAYBE THAT'S A CONTROVERSIAL VIEW!"
 
We wrote again on November 12:
 
“How can Clwyd, as a representative of a British government that waged war
on Iraq and is now ruling the country by force of arms, be included among
‘we as human beings’ who have not given up on ‘peaceful activity in favour
of violence'?"
 
We received no reply. We wonder if, in the 1980s, Snow would have asked a
Soviet politician at the time of the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan:

“Are we now losing the people in the Kunar region? That would be a tragedy."

Would it still have been reasonable to argue that the "we" referred to 'us'
as peace-loving human beings, the Soviet government included?

A week earlier, another Channel 4 news anchor referred to killings resulting
from a "terrorist insurgency" in Iraq. We asked Channel 4 to explain why
they had not also talked in terms of a "terrorist occupation". We received
this reply from deputy editor, Martin Fewell:

”Agree with your point. We always try to be careful when using the word
'terrorist' or describing an event as 'an act of terrorism' on Channel Four
News. I don't think we got it right this time, and we told the team that on
Friday night. It's the Pentagon, and specifically Donald Rumsfeld, who use
words like 'terrorist' and 'insurgency' to describe what's happening in
Iraq. We should have ascribed this comment to them, not repeated it as a
statement of fact.” (Email to Media Lens, November 10, 2003)
 
Two days later, Channel 4’s Jonathan Rugman declared:

"Yes, the Americans want democracy here [Iraq], but they don't want to die
for it." (Channel 4 News, November 12, 2003)

Moments later, Rugman noted that, if they "democratise too quickly", the
Americans risk handing power over to Shia clerics. It appeared not to be an
attempt at irony.

Channel 4, the BBC, ITN – all are busy reporting that the Americans are
working “to democratise” Iraq. And all are instantly contradicting
themselves by pointing out that the Americans are trying not to “rush the
process” in order to secure the democracy they “hoped for”. (BBC 1 News at
Ten, November 13, 2003)

The media forever try to convince us of the fundamental benevolence of
Western power in this way. Reinforcement is provided by encouraging viewers
and readers to believe that, together with our leaders, we form a united and
benevolent “us”. 

As a result it is easy to lose sight of the actual policymakers selected out
of the oil and arms industries - George Bush, Condaleeza Rice, Dick Cheney –
and fierce hawks like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. We
may begin to actually think in terms of a benign “us” led by individuals who
somehow act independently of their backgrounds, their declared intentions,
and the greedy vested interests of which they are a part.

Writing in the Independent on Sunday, Robert Fisk told the truth about the
lie that America and Britain are passionate supporters of democracy:
 
“We supported the Egyptian generals (aka Gamal Abdul Nasser) when they
originally kicked out King Farouk. We - the Brits - created the Hashemite
Kingdom in Jordan. We - the Brits - put a Hashemite King on the throne of
Iraq. And when the Baath party took over from the monarchy in Baghdad, the
CIA obligingly handed Saddam's mates the names of all senior communist party
members so they could be liquidated.

“The Brits created all those worthy sheikhdoms in the Gulf. Kuwait was our
doing; Saudi Arabia was ultimately a joint Anglo-US project, the United Arab
Emirates (formerly the Trucial State) etc. But when Iran decided in the
1950s that it preferred Mohammed Mossadeq's democratic rule to the Shah's,
the CIA's Kim Roosevelt, with Colonel "Monty" Woodhouse of MI6, overthrew
democracy in Iran. Now President Bush demands the same "democracy" in
present-day Iran.” (Fisk, ‘How we denied democracy to the Middle’, The
Independent on Sunday, November 9, 2003)

Noam Chomsky noted recently that the current US leadership has failed to
explain when, or why, they abandoned the view they held in 1991: that "the
best of all worlds" would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam
Hussein". How does this fit with their promise to democratise Iraq now?
Chomsky adds:

”At the time, the incumbents' British allies were in the opposition and
therefore more free than the Thatcherites to speak out against Saddam's
British-backed crimes. Their names are noteworthy by their absence from the
parliamentary record of protests against these crimes, including Tony Blair,
Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, and other leading figures of New Labour.” (Chomsky,
ZNet Commentary, ‘The Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy’, October 31,
2003)
 
The kind of ‘democracy’ that is actually being built in Iraq is summed up by
Iraqi exile Sami Ramadani:

“Saddam's old right-wing friends, Rumsfeld and co, are recruiting Saddam's
security men and are prepared to drench Iraq in new bloodbaths precisely to
stop its people from achieving democracy and true liberation.” (Ramadani,
‘Iraqis Distrust The US And Its Promises Of Democracy’, letter to the
editor, The Independent, September 20, 2003)

These issues are very rarely raised by our media because they threaten to
expose far too many truths about our own society. After all, if the public
started to think about the interests opposing genuine democracy in Iraq, it
might also start thinking about the interests opposing democracy at home.
And come to think of it, why +do+ Republicans and Democrats, New Labour and
Tories, offer near-identical policies benefiting the same elite interests?
Why do we feel so disenfranchised from a political system that seems to have
nothing to do with us? How did our political system come to be structured in
a way that prevents us from making meaningful choices?


Johann Hari And The “Friendly Bombs”

Like so many journalists, Johann Hari of the Independent takes it for
granted that “we” are intent on bringing “democracy” to Iraq. Hari wrote in
January:
 
“We do not need Bush's dangerous arguments about ‘pre-emptive action’ to
justify this war. Nor do we need to have the smoking gun of WMD. All we need
are the humanitarian arguments we used during the Kosovo conflict to remove
the monstrous Slobodan Milosevic.” (Hari, ‘Forget the UN: Saddam Hussein is
the best possible reason for liberating Iraq’, The Independent, January 10,
2003)

There is, again, a simple series of questions that demand to be asked in
response to this statement. They are the same questions posed by playwright
Harold Pinter in 2000:

“Who is this ‘we’ exactly that you’re talking about? First of all: Who is
the ‘we’? Under what heading do ‘we’ act, under what law? And also, the
notion that this ‘we’ has the right to act presupposes a moral authority of
which this ‘we’ possesses not a jot! It doesn’t exist!” (Interview with
David Edwards, 1999. See Interviews: www.medialens.org)

According to Hari, all “we” need are the humanitarian arguments. But
actually what “we” need is a credible track record of compassionate,
humanitarian intervention. And as veteran Middle East correspondent Charles
Glass has noted, there is none to be found:

“The United States has one strategic interest in the Middle East: oil.
Everything else is gravy, sentiment, rhetoric... American transnational
corporations do not care about Israeli settlers and their biblical claims,
Palestinians who are losing their land and water, Kurds who are caught
stateless between gangsters in Baghdad and Tehran, victims of war or torture
in Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, South Lebanon...” (Glass, New Statesman,
November 15, 1996)

This is the reality, not the seductive, but utterly false, vision of a US
government of humanitarians, by humanitarians for democracy. We can accept
the illusion if we like, but that simply means the “humanitarians” will
continue killing for profit with impunity.

Hari writes of his support for a US-led invasion:

“Who, you may be asking incredulously, would want their country to be
bombed? What would make people want to risk their children being blown to
pieces? I thought this too until, last October, I spent a month as a
journalist seeing the reality of life under Saddam Hussein. Strangely, it's
the small details which remain in the memory, even now, three months later.
It's the pale, sickly look that would come over people's faces when I
mentioned Saddam. It's the fact that the Marsh Arabs - a proud, independent
people who have seen their marshes drained and been ‘relocated’ to tiny
desert shacks...” (Hari, ‘Forget the UN’, op., cit)

This is impassioned stuff – we can imagine Hari in combat fatigues standing
stern-faced amid the rubble and chaos. But in a December 2002 article for
the Guardian, Hari described the same visit as “the mother of all package
tours” and as “a holiday”. The tour, he wrote, lasted 18 days. As for
spending this “month” as “a journalist seeing the reality of life under
Saddam”, Hari wrote:

“First, I met Julie and Phil. They seemed an almost comically suburban
couple: polite, a little posh, all golf jumpers and floral smocks... The
group had a handful of people like Phil, risk-takers craving a change from
Marbella and some amusing dinner-party anecdotes. Sean, a 36-year-old New
York restaurateur and multimillionaire, was clearly in this category... Then
there were the hardcore archaeology fiends... With this group of amiable
maniacs, I boarded the flight to Damascus.” (‘The mother of all package
tours’, Hari, The Guardian, December 3, 2002)

Hari’s first day in Iraq “as a journalist” with Julie, Phil and Sean would
have sent shivers up even John Pilger’s spine:

“Our first full day in Baghdad was pretty frustrating. The Baghdad Museum
has begun to evacuate its most important exhibits, and clay pots are not my
priority on this trip...  As we darted from museum to ancient monument, I
snatched every moment I could with ‘real’ Iraqi people.”

Occasionally Hari was stricken by bewildering moments of conscience:

“I began to experience what I quickly identified as my John Pilger moments.
If I didn't know better, I would swear that Saddam Hussein had deliberately
scattered the most dignified, stoical Iraqis and - especially - the cutest
doe-eyed children in our paths, and trained them to say lines riddled with
pathos about sanctions. As I looked at these kids on the streets, it was
tempting to work up a satisfying rage about sanctions and piously denounce
all this as the work of my own government.”

How to respond to these glimpses of dissident enlightenment? Was Hari
drawing up plans to send his CV to Media Lens? Alas, no:

“Instead I just took a valium and lay down for a few hours.”

On the basis of these experiences and other evidence, Hari claims that many
people in Iraq wanted “us” to bomb them to freedom.

In January, Hari cited “concrete evidence” from The International Crisis
Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think-tank, indicating that Iraqis would, as
Hari put it, “welcome friendly bombs”. In autumn 2002, the ICG had conducted
interviews with dozens of Iraqis – the majority from the urban areas of
Baghdad and Mosul. The introduction to the ICG report cautioned: “the Iraqis
interviewed for this briefing paper do not constitute a scientific or
representative sample”. Hari, however, made great claims for the report:

“It is time that, in light of the ICG report, we in the West admit that we
have misunderstood the Iraqi people's position. We have been acting as
though an attack on Saddam would be the beginning of another hideous ordeal
for the population, the interruption of an otherwise peaceful situation.”
(Hari, ‘Forget the UN’, The Independent, January 10, 2003)

The report describes how “a significant number of those Iraqis interviewed,
with surprising candour, expressed their view that, if regime change
required an American-led attack, they would support it’. The notion of
leaving the country's destiny in the hands of an omnipotent foreign party
has more appeal than might be expected – and the desire for a long-term US
involvement is higher than expected.” (Hari, op., cit, January 10, 2003)

This is the extent of the "concrete evidence" presented by Hari. He did,
however, provide an additional piece of anecdotal evidence: "one person I
spoke to said that 'the few soldiers who fight for [Saddam] will be defeated
in a weekend'..." Ironic words, six months into a ferocious and growing
guerrilla insurgency.

It is, we suppose, conceivable that, despite the 1991 obliteration of Iraqi
infrastructure - which "effectively terminated everything vital to human
survival”, according to one Harvard study team – and despite the 12 years of
genocidal sanctions and endless bombing, some Iraqis might still believe
“we” are sincerely intent on their liberation.

It is also conceivable that the ICG report confirms what we had already
learned about human nature from the experience of Nicaragua after years of
US-backed terror attacks and economic strangulation: namely, that if a small
country is tortured for long enough by the world’s superpower, its victims
may well agree to almost anything that promises to end the torture.

As the 1990 election campaign opened in Nicaragua, Washington made clear
that the economic strangulation and terror – waged by a US proxy army, the
Contras - would continue unless the revolutionary Sandinista government were
ousted and Washington’s candidate elected. The eventual election of the US
candidate was hailed in the US press as a triumph of “government with the
consent of the governed... To say so seems romantic, but we live in a
romantic age.”

Time magazine explained that the US’s “romantic” policy had been, “to wreck
the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted
natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves”. (Quoted Noam Chomsky,
Powers and Prospects, Pluto, 1996, p.110)

The consequences of this “triumph for democracy” in Nicaragua were
catastrophic – a 35% increase in child deaths from malnutrition, mass
starvation on the Atlantic coast, a drugs epidemic, and UN warnings that the
next generation would be “smaller, weaker, and less intelligent” as a
result.

Similarly, it is quite possible that the “exhausted natives” of Iraq might
choose even violent invasion over genocidal Western sanctions. For Hari to
interpret this as Iraqis “cheering us on”, however, is obscene.

We noticed that Hari described the ICG, somewhat tentatively, as “by no
means pro-war”. In fact ICG is packed with establishment figures. Its
president and CEO, Gareth Evans, for example, was formerly Australian
foreign minister. In this last role he was described by John Pilger as “a
functionary of a superpower” notable for his “appeasement of East Timor’s
mass murderers” in Indonesia. (Pilger, Hidden Agendas, Vintage, 1998,
pp.260-1)

Evans wrote last February:

“The real question, the first-order one, goes back simply to threat: Is
Iraq's present leadership such a threat to international peace and security
that it must be overthrown by military force?

”If this question can be answered affirmatively, war would be justifiable.”
(‘The question for Powell’. Comment by Gareth Evans in the International
Herald Tribune, February 3, 2003)

Another member of the ICG’s board, Ken Adelman, said recently:

"It bothers me that people in Britain don't see it as people in America see
it. We did a beautiful thing." (Quoted, 'How Blair Lost By Winning',
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The New York Times, October 8, 2003)

Other luminaries on the ICG board include Morton Abramowitz (former US
assistant secretary of state and ambassador to Turkey), Richard Allen
(former US national security adviser), Saud Nasir Al-Sabah (former Kuwait
ambassador to the US and UK), Wesley Clark (former NATO supreme allied
commander), and many other high-ranking state and corporate figures.

In reality, pre-war polls showed that Iraqis were of course keen to avoid
yet another war. In March, Jonathan Steele of the Guardian sampled the views
of some of the 300,000 Iraqi refugees, students and businesspeople living in
Jordan. Steele reported:

“According to a Guardian straw poll, a majority is opposed to war, giving
the lie to those who claim that the imminent attack by US and British forces
has the overwhelming backing of the Iraqi people.

“The Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, is deeply unpopular, but only 35 per
cent of those asked see the use of massive force as the correct way to oust
him.” (Steele’, ‘Exiles voice fears as conflict looms’, The Guardian, March
19, 2003)

Steele added:

“This was not a scientific survey, but phone calls home from Amman to Iraq
have surged in the last few days. These anxious Iraqis, who are in regular
contact with Baghdad and other cities, probably reflect the mood of Iraqis
in the country with a high degree of accuracy.”

Hari insists that +he+ listened to the authentic will of the Iraqi people
whereas peace campaigners in the West  “interpreted events in Iraq through
the filter of their own prejudices.” He continues:
 
“Whenever there is a development in that battered country, they do not
bother to think about the views of actual, real Iraqi people; no, they
simply and arrogantly assume that they already know what Iraqis think.”
(Hari, ‘The last thing Iraqis want is for Britain and America to leave their
country’, The Independent, August 22, 2003)

Hari doubtless knows what British and US leaders think and have planned for
Iraq. Plans which, if Hari is to be believed, amount to a compassionate
revolution in US foreign policy. Quite when Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
stormed the gates of corporate greed is not clear.

Curiously, Hari doesn’t explore +why+ Iraq is such a “battered country”. He
never explains why, in the past, he failed to demand that Bush and Blair
recognise the wishes of the Iraqi people by lifting genocidal non-military
sanctions costing a million lives.

The passionate concern, then, is for Iraqi democracy - Iraqi genocide is
unworthy even of mention.


Part 2 will follow shortly...


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for
others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to
maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Email: j.hari at independent.co.uk
 
Ask Hari why he is so sure that the West is intent on bringing democracy to
Iraq. 

Ask him if he is aware of the long and bloody US/UK history of selecting,
arming and installing dictators in the region. What makes the regime of
Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney so much more compassionate and moral
than earlier US regimes? When and why did this compassionate revolution take
place, and why did nobody notice? Why has there not been a peep of protest
in response to this unprecedented subordination of profit to people in the
right-wing press?

Ask how many times in the past Hari called for Bush and Blair to recognise
the wishes of the Iraqi people by lifting the genocidal non-military
sanctions.

Importantly, please copy your emails to Simon Kelner, editor of The
Independent:

Email: s.kelner at independent.co.uk
 
And also to us at Media Lens: editor at medialens.org
 
Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

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