Media Lens, April 28th 2010
On April 15, news media broadcast the first of three live, 90-minute “prime ministerial debates” between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the leaders, respectively, of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. By the end of the second debate on April 22, the word ‘Iraq’ had been mentioned a total of five times over the course of the three hours of discussion.
One day later, April 23, a wave of bombings in Baghdad were reported to have killed 58 people and wounded more than 100. Seven people also died that day in a series of bombings in the western town of Khalidya. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8639223.stm)
As usual, the carnage was mentioned in passing - presented as routine in the way of a traffic snarl on the M25 - and then forgotten. By the end of the following day, the death toll had risen to 85 with hundreds seriously wounded from a total of 16 bomb attacks.
Over the previous week, the BBC reported, “US and Iraqi forces said they had killed three al-Qaeda leaders”. For our media, there never has been an indigenous nationalist resistance movement opposing the illegal occupation of Iraq, just “al-Qaeda”. (In Afghanistan they‘re called “Taliban”. In an earlier time they would both have been labelled “Communists”) Iraq under Obama is still very much at war and very much under occupation.
Also on April 23, the World Socialist Web Site published an interview with Iraq war veteran Josh Stieber, whose infantry company can be seen in the harrowing “Collateral Murder” video posted by WikiLeaks showing a July 2007 US massacre of civilians, including two Reuters staff, in Baghdad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0). Stieber commented:
“When I started to see the way the video was framed and the discussion flowing from it, I guess I was surprised too at how extreme it was made out to be. Coming from my background, I can see why the common viewer could see it as pretty extreme, but for me it wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary.” (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/stie-a23.shtml)
He continued:
“One policy that we had that was fairly similar or even more extreme than this was that if a roadside bomb went off then we were supposed to shoot anyone standing in that area. So it pretty much got to the point that the philosophy was to out-terrorize the terrorists. We were told that we needed to make the local population more afraid of us, so that maybe if they see someone trying to plant a bomb they’ll try and stop them rather than having to face whatever we might do afterwards.”
Stieber was asked if an aim of his training was to dehumanise the Iraqi people:
“Yes, this was a definite part of it. We’d have battle cries like ‘Kill them all, and let God sort them out.’ They’d have us sing very dehumanizing songs as we were marching around, talking about killing women and children. There were so many things that were designed to eat away at your common humanity and to stop you from thinking in those terms.”
Yesterday, the BBC reported that an officer of the regiment detaining Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel worker who was tortured and beaten to death by British troops, said his soldiers held the view that “all Iraqis were scum”.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/27/baha-mousa-inquiry-soldiers)
In the first prime ministerial debate, Iraq was mentioned twice, in passing, both times by David Cameron. He noted that “over the last decade... we have had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” and “We brought in helicopters from Iraq.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_04_10_firstdebate.pdf) That was the sum total of mentions in the discussion.
In the second debate, ostensibly on foreign policy, Iraq was mentioned three times in all, each time by Nick Clegg, who said:
“We shouldn't be facing allegations of complicity in torture, we shouldn't have invaded Iraq.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/23_04_10_seconddebate.pdf)
Clegg added:
“Clearly, the principle of the reason why we went into Afghanistan, why I supported our mission in Afghanistan, unlike the illegal invasion in Iraq, is to keep us safe.”
Clegg also argued the need to “equip our troops so they don't get so terribly overstretched, as they were in fighting two wars on two fronts in Iraq and in Afghanistan”.
It is easy to become desensitised by the lack of sincerity, honesty and moral concern in the mainstream - even Clegg‘s level of dissent can seem impressive. But in the five years since the last UK general election, Iraq has continued to be torn to shreds - four million refugees continue to live in traumatised exile and misery, afforded negligible media coverage. Iraq is one of the great criminal acts and human disasters of modern times. Gordon Brown - who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote the cheques to fund the war - is directly responsible. David Cameron is also deeply complicit. While it is true that the Liberal Democrats opposed the war, they discontinued that opposition the moment British troops began fighting. By any reasonable standard, Clegg’s unwillingness to seriously address these issues was shocking.
During the second debate, the three leaders were asked: “Given our involvement in Afghanistan, if there is another multinational operation to remove Al-Qaeda or another terrorist group from a failed state, would the UK participate?”
Revealing everything about what would be in store if he gained power, Clegg followed up on his comment that Britain had intervened in Afghanistan “to keep us safe”:
“So, from that principle, if we need to do that again, we should.”
Brown responded:
“To keep the streets safe in Britain, we have to take on Al-Qaeda wherever it is.”
Cameron was more evasive:
“I would want to think very carefully what's in the national interest, what will make us safer here in the United Kingdom?”
He waffled about the need “to plan properly” and to use the “proper equipment” - clearly, the answer, again, was ‘Yes’.
Clegg then responded to Brown and Cameron’s comments:
“I think everyone is agreed that if we were to do this again, which is Stuart's question, we need to make sure that we've got the right equipment, the right resources.” After all, “then maybe you can equip our troops so they don't get so terribly overstretched”.
The pragmatic concern, then, in the wake of the limitless havoc we have unleashed on Iraq and Afghanistan, is the risk of overstretch and lack of resources. This is the familiar psychopathology of a political establishment for which the Western monopoly on high-tech violence is just too valuable to be seriously challenged.
Submitted by Sullivan on Wed, 2010-04-28 12:17
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