A Just Resolution in Iraq

Etretat, France (photos by terrette unless otherwise noted)

While many debates in TV LAND U.S.A. about U.S. policy in the current occupation and assault on Iraq are most often reduced by the duopolistic political machine and the media power that shapes and sustains it to questions of "procedure" and "efficiency," it is worth underscoring what a just policy would look like if the concerns were not only "how to do things easily" or "how to win." Imagine: to win at perpetrating a crime. That gives you a measure of the discussion's merit as broadcast daily across the United States. And it is worth underscoring that the spectacle of TV LAND U.S.A is in this case, as in many others, at odds with real public opinion in the United States.

Consider what historian Paul Street has written about the just resolution facing U.S. leadership and weigh, if you will, the magnificence distance between what Street proposes and what is both being said and done with respect to the occupation in Iraq today by leadership from the two major parties within the highly crafted but loud and persistent voice-and-image-factories of TV LAND U.S.A.

Here is what a civilized United States – a U.S. that actually cared about democracy, human rights, international law, and the people of the Middle East and the world – would “do about Iraq.” It would stop talking about the occupation of Iraq as a “mistake” and start speaking accurately and honestly about O.I.F ("Operation Iraqi Freedom") as a CRIME: a great international transgression for which the U.S. must make reparations and be held legally and morally accountable. It would end its military invasion and occupation and work with international agencies and other states (within and beyond the region) to guarantee Iraqi security with an international peacekeeping force. It would dismantle all permanent U.S. military installations in Iraq. It would abolish all laws/rules opening the Iraqi economy to foreign and predominantly U.S multinational corporate exploitation. It would renounce all U.S. designs on Iraqi petroleum reserves. It would convert a massive portion of the sum it currently spends on militarily attacking Iraq to the provision of basic health, social, and infrastructural services and reconstruction in Iraq. It would work with Iraqis and international agencies to assist and enable the holding of genuinely free and fair Iraqi elections devoid of U.S. pressure.

It would pay massive reparations for the staggering damage it has inflicted on Iraq over many years and indeed decades, not just during the current open military assault. In determining the nature and scope of these reparations, it would inquire into and then responsibly tend to the needs of the victims. It would work with international authorities to investigate, prosecute, try, and sentence the top guilty parties behind the invasion in accord with the well-known Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and numerous national and other international legal and policy instruments.

Those in my opinion are reasonable alternatives. You start by ceasing and desisting from illegal aggression. You begin by calling off the assault. You move to meeting others needs and accepting responsibility. You offer your criminal “leadership” up for accountability. You acknowledge, apologize, and pay for what you have done – the hundreds of thousands you have killed and maimed, the water systems and food supplies and roads you have destroyed and polluted, the resources and opportunities you have stolen, the exodus you have forced, etc. You contribute to healing as best you can. You ask for help from international others and empower those others in proper accord.

Doing the right... thing along these lines is in obvious concurrence with elementary principles of civilized internationalism. It is also very much in lines (sic) with reputable surveys of U.S. public opinion on foreign policy. Under current U.S. political, institutional and ideological conditions, however, it is nearly impossible to have a reasonable and relevant public conversation about these basic alternatives. (Quotation from "The Empire and Inequality Report," Issue no. 8, January 26, 2007)

This is the right note to close on, for sure. In my own phraseology, it is nearly impossible to find in TV LAND U.S.A a reasonable discussion of a just resolution of U.S. violence in Iraq.

U.S. Media Tirelessly Creating Evil Dictators

Majdanek: Where corporate efficiency and bigotry meet

Here is a typically pro-war corporate news article, brought to you by the beautiful people at CNN (no single author takes responsibility for the piece). The title is patently absurd and irresponsible. It is designed to scare Americans and get them to hate Chavez by making them think that Chavez hates them; when, in fact, his comments were obviously directed at particular corporate-controlled U.S. critics of his government. The beginning of the article is meant to solidify in the mind of Joe and Jane Public the image of Chavez as a dictator. Did he speak of Marxism? Ooh, scary! Does he like Castro? That's evil! However, nowhere in the article is it mentioned that Chavez is the most popular leader among his citizens in all of South and Central America. Nowhere in the article are readers reminded that, far from hating Americans, Chavez has made serious efforts to provide cheap heating oil or reduced gas prices to impoverished communities in the U.S.

Despite its propagandistic tone, the article is not air-tight. It lets in two inconvenient details concerning life in Chavez's Venezuela.

One: the price of gas is 12 cents a gallon in that terrible socialist country. Oh my, socialism sounds terrible, doesn't it? 12 cents a gallon! Where is God in that country? Is this some kind of mind control? Gas should be at least 2 dollars, with 1 dollar and 88 cents of profit going to a couple of oil corporations who occasionally lease their executives into the halls of government. That's the free American way, right? Just as God meant it?

Two: the final line squeaks out a little inconvenient truth: Chavez was reelected in a landslide victory. Gee, I wonder why the leftist dictator is so popular? Didn't he say that gringos should go to hell? Doesn't that mean that he is evil? Since, you know, the U.S. is God's country, and all the company men who come from it necessarily carry out the intentions of God wherever they spread criticism of foreign governments?

Or is there something missing in CNN's comic-strip portrayal of Chavez?

You Want Toughness? Ask for Democracy Now!

Despite the highly successful propaganda that makes many Americans believe that "the media is liberal," when actual liberals try to determine how it is that so many Americans have been led to vote against their own economic self-interests by right-wing war-mongers and corporate fat cats, the most solid hypothesis liberals can settle upon is that the same war profiteers and corporate tycoons just happen to control 95 percent or more of widely-diffused media in the land (not to mention abroad). The most reasonable conclusion they can draw from this is that, to better educate their fellow citizens, they should see that, in one way or another, the media does actually start to reflect concerns that are not only "liberal," where this means a well-defined voting block of progressive voters and issues, but "liberal," where this means "representing the overwhelming majority in its undisputable economic self-interests."


Soldier in Warsaw Who Never Saw War (photo by terrette)

Given this scenario, which I have stumbled into time and again as a blogger and in other folds of my existence, the least I can do, it seems to me, is to point out that Democracy Now! is an incredible resource for anyone who understands the mission, as set down in the Constitution of the United States, of the so-called fourth estate (as Carlyle first understood the term). In other words, if anyone, of whatever political stripe, acknowledges that the press should be critical of power and not take government press releases, speeches, and other potential tools of propaganda, at face value, then compare, will you, the coverage on virtually any issue of national importance as covered by the big-mouth, noise-punctured, intelligence-insulting, busty-and-bar-belled packaging it gets from the networks, from the incisive and penetrating analysis and healthy cynicism that Democracy Now! provides consistently, and all on the strength of a small, financially-strapped team of devoted citizens.

We've seen for years the Republican Party try to monopolize images of manliness, bravado, machismo, testosterone, and toughness... even to the point where Michael Moore, in a recent speech, gave credence to this well-organized posture of bulging masculinity and steadfastness on the extreme Right. The truth, however, puts the posture to shame. One could easily replay the well-known history of the many chicken hawks within the Republic Party who always preach war when, in their youth, they dodged the call to fight, or who always preach increased profits for the few bosses and increased hardships for the many laborers, when we know that they never worked an honest minute of their lives and have only ever lived in a seat of luxury secured by few merits or little toil of their own. But I would rather point to the voices of these different camps and draw attention to the types of lives they have led and, on the basis of that comparison, ask who is truly tough.

Pick your info-babe from anywhere in the vast world of hyped-up-corporate-entertainment-disguised-as-news-as-we-used-to-know-it-
in-some-semi-mythical-past and ask yourself, what has this primped up air-head ever undertaken in her life that could even come close to the notion of courage? For that matter, pick your loud-mouthed angry white guy from the next corporate dial over, and ask, has this bitchy little multi-millionaire prick ever put himself in front of a hostile weapon, or defied unjust powers that were far greater than he, simply because those powers were unjust? If you can name me a single example, please do so.

The big-mouths and pretty faces have been paid off and market-tested long before any dignity has been won by any of them. Moreover, being paid off as they all are assures us that dignity and courage will forever remain catch-phrases for them, rather than elements of their own character and experience. Georges Monbiot, author and editorial writer for the Guardian, has written some memorable lines under the rubric of "careers advice" for journalists.

This career path [that is, the path set out by journalism schools everywhere and tailored for a job in the mighty halls hysterical network self-promotion that we have all learned to call "news"]... is counter-educational. It teaches you to do what you don't want to do, to be what you don't want to be. It is an exceptional person who emerges from this process with her aims and ideals intact. Indeed it is an exceptional person who emerges from this process at all. What the corporate or institutional world wants you to do is the complete opposite of what you want to do. It wants a reliable tool, someone who can think, but not for herself: who can think instead for the institution. You can do what you believe only if that belief happens to coincide with the aims of the corporation, not just once, but consistently, across the years (it is a source of wonder to me how many people's beliefs just happen to match the demands of institutional power, however those demands may twist and turn, after they've been in the company for a year or two).

Indeed. And it's no wonder that Georges Monbiot is one of the many, many voices that is often featured on Democracy Now! From his online biography, we read of Monbiot that,

During seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria. In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He was hospitalised by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle bone.

Now, compare that track record to all the Hollywood-packaged toughness of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who needs to own something like 17 SUVS to assure himself that, off-screen, too, he is a big, tough guy. The host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, was severely beaten with rifle butts by thugs from the U.S.-backed and U.S.-supplied Indonesian Army as she stood between them and defenseless and non-violent protestors from East Timor, who were out marching to show their opposition to the violence of the occupying forces. The report Goodman filed with the reporter whose skull was crushed in the same incident is presented in her book, The Exception to the Rulers.

"Conservatives" and Green Bay Packer fans out there who feel that you can solidify your manhood by latching onto the block-heads in the Republican Party better think twice about who is truly tough, and who is just play-acting. Who was tougher in 1930s Germany? The henchmen who oiled Hitler's way to power and had their butts wiped by brown shirts, or the few journalists who resisted the onslaught of fascism and paid for it with imprisonment, exile, or the firing squad?

Not that I NEED toughness and courage in every figure who undertakes journalism... it's just that, in setting out to write this post, I find myself in a far-off land from which my appreciation for Democracy Now! has grown by the week. It is, after all, a sign of political health in the plutocratic regime known as the United States that a widely-available engine of news and critical thought is produced in New York City without intervention from the State (the same State that did not hesitate to bomb the headquarters of Al-Jazeera when that news engine dared to report the misdeeds and brutalities of U.S. commanders in Fallujah).