Column: When in Doubt, Wave the Flag and Wag the Tail
One presumes that if Bush, Halliburton & Associates should opt for regime change in, say, China, there likely would be a lot of oppressed Chinese with guns trying to kill liberating American troops and our insulted West coast lass would be just as puzzled and ticked off. This tunnel-vision opinion of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is held by 50 to 70 percent of Americans today. Their analytical wherewithal is so stunningly skimpy as to make one rethink the possible benefits of private-school vouchers.
Perhaps if the bomb-boosters at CNN, MSNBC and -- it goes without saying -- Fox were to report rather than peddle this war "24/7," those percentages would be decisively lower. Yet, compared to the printed press -- which so few Americans bother to read these days -- these electronic harlots provide little analysis as to why so many Iraqis are disturbingly anti-"liberation," or why Iraqi-regime goons aren't playing cricket on the battlefield. Cable networks dwell instead on interviewing endless streams of retired American brass promoting the offensive and decrying the enemy's tactics. The only true instructional outcome has been in discovering there are more out-to-pasture generals, admirals, colonels, little colonels and majors wanting to be interviewed on national television than there are lesbian transsexuals dialing Jerry Springer.
It is, of course, axiomatic that totalitarian regimes -- left or right, makes no difference -- are brutal, inhumane, hypocritical, violators of international law and unwilling to play by Hoyle. Nevertheless, no matter how axiomatic or obvious that may be, cable networks cannot get enough of fingering Saddam Hussein as somehow unique in these qualities. Ergo, Iraq deserves a "freedom operation" while the networks ignore -- much to the White House's delight -- America's history of buddying up to Hussein and countless tyrannical others. The networks ignore as well -- even more to the White House's delight -- that humanitarianism initially was among the lessor of Bush's rambling justifications for war.
Nor do the cable networks remind their audience that it is the United States violating international law by invading a foreign nation without provocation or with a plausible, non-risible excuse of self-defense. Presently the U.S. is, quite literally, an international outlaw. Any network discussion or analysis of this historically profound and disastrous change in American foreign policy -- that is, the inevitable boomerang effect of preemptive assaults -- is mostly absent. In its place we are treated to another Hussein horror story, after which the audience unfurls yet another American flag in self-righteous indignation.
Nor do the networks emphasize the singular constant of war: that every combatant country, no matter what its form of government, will, in time, behave atrociously. This point could (should) have been driven home while rightfully deploring Iraq's Geneva Convention violation regarding photo-airings of American POWs. Case in point: American military coroners have concluded the deaths of 2 Afghani detainees resulted from "blunt force trauma" while in U.S. custody. They were ruled homicides. That's not the American way; it's merely war's way, and brutality knows no borders.
And then there's the mouth-foaming over Hussein's trashing of genteel war "rules." The swarthy bastard is burning oil fields; ordering sniper attacks; sanctioning offensive surrenders; and in general deploying unspeakable tactics in the course of usually polite carnage. With unintended comic effect, one Brig. Gen. Benjamin Freakly let loose an officious dollop of disappointment that Hussein "is fighting an asymmetrical warfare" [sic]. And it just ain't right. The Mideast tyrant refuses to match us man for man, tank for tank and cruise missile for cruise missile as any sporting chap would. By playing unfairly he is most rudely giving the "coalition" fits. That's your typical, thoughtless dictator for you.
The fact that North Vietnam chewed up a superpower with similar guerrilla tactics eludes cable-network anchors, thereby postponing the audience's inevitable realization that once again we're in for a grueling, body-counting nightmare from which we cannot gracefully wake up.
Just as costly to America's welfare will be -- in all forms of media but especially on evening cable-network programs -- the Right's tired, 100-percent, right-or-wrong Americanism designed only to stifle dissent or any sign of independent thought. For every antiwar piece delivered on air or in print, hordes of dictatorial creatures from the Right's boobgeoisie will rant that the author or speaker is unspeakably antiAmerican, a Hussein-lover, a totalitarian rube, a commie apologist, or whatever utterly off-the-point accusation springs to mind.
It shouldn't be the case that dissenting voices must preface their remarks
with love-of-one's-country declarations, any more than it's the case that pro-war
automatons don't feel the need to. In a sane world, only pro-war voices should
be required to defend their advocacy of bloodletting versus the more peaceful
status quo. That is not a world in which we find ourselves, however, and that's
a darn shame.
© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter
Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.