Iraqis first, Americans last
June 19th, 2004
George W. Bush, says a New York Times editorial, should apologize to the American people for making them believe that Saddam Hussein had links with the terrorist network Al Qaeda, which the United States says was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
As if the rest of the world didn’t already know it, this was dishonest of Bush, said the Times. But “it’s not just a matter of the President’s diminishing credibility.” What the Times finds more disturbing is that “the war on terror has actually suffered as the conflict in Iraq has diverted military and intelligence resources from places like Afghanistan, where there could really be Al Qaeda forces, including Mr. (Osama) bin Laden.”
The New York Times is in short biting its nails over Bush’s diminished credibility, over Americans’ having been misled (and thus innocent of involvement in the crimes of their government), and how the invasion and occupation of Iraq has affected the war on terrorism.
No, the Times did not even hint at the possibility that Bush and the US majority that supported the war should also apologize to the Iraqi people—and no, the Times did not apologize either for its own role in abetting the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
There is certainly much to apologize for. In the run-up to the US invasion of March 20, 2003, the New York Times, together with the rest of the compliant US media, helped legitimize the justification for the Bush decision—incidentally made long before September 11, 2001—to invade Iraq.
Among other offenses, the Times depended on the self-serving circle of Iraqi exiles and defectors, led by the infamous Ahmad Chalabi, who wanted Saddam Hussein to go so they could rule in his place. In some instances, the Times cloaked its single-sourcing by attributing its “information” to unnamed “sources” in violation of at least two of the most basic principles of journalism—truth-telling and proper attribution.
In almost every case, these stories supported the Bush government’s lies, among them that Saddam Hussein had, and would use, weapons of mass destruction, and that his government was helping Al Qaeda. By so doing, it helped validate the linguistic sleight of hand of both Bush and his vice president, Richard Cheney, that Saddam Hussein had “links” with Al Qaeda, that led 65 percent of the US population to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center.
The New York Times did criticize itself more than a year later in an “Editor’s Note” entitled “The Times and Iraq” that appeared on its front page of May 26, 2004—but only for the venial journalistic sins of “relying on sketchy information” and for “coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been.”
The Times’ self- criticism ignored other, more significant offenses. In the aftermath of the US conquest of Iraq, the New York Times, again just like the rest of the US media, printed story after story that, among other results, masked the killing of Iraqi civilians by US troops by focusing on the “anguish” of the troops involved, and, at times, implying that the people killed were to blame for their own deaths.
Its coverage of occupied Iraq again relied mainly on US military sources, resulting in, among others, its failure to report Red Cross misgivings over the US’ treatment of detainees not only in Iraq’s prisons, but also in US detention centers in Afghanistan.
These sins of commission and omission, not only by the Times but by almost the entirety of US mainstream media, amounts not only to collusion in US violations of the Geneva Convention and the international conventions against torture.
Even more critically does it involve de facto collusion in the US’ violation of international law when it attacked Iraq, and its commission of crimes against humanity when its bombing campaign of “shock and awe” killed some 10,000 civilians, plus some 4,000 more, including women and children and even entire families, during the occupation that followed.
But to expect the Times and other US media organizations to admit to being wrong in these terms would be akin to expecting pigs to fly. It would be even more futile to expect them to apologize to the people of Iraq for their failure to do their jobs correctly by reporting with neither fear nor favor, and quite possibly helping prevent the Iraqi tragedy.
It would be almost in the same category of impossibility as expecting the US government, or the majority of its unthinking citizens who have always supported it, to apologize to the victims of its racist wars, and those other forms of intervention it has been using for over a hundred years to further its interests.
The US government has not apologized to the people of Vietnam for the over one million civilians it killed during its brutal war on Vietnam. It has never apologized to the people of Chile for US support for the 1972 coup that led to the murder, torture and disappearance of countless men, women and children—or for that matter, its support for General Augusto Pinochet, who seized power in the aftermath of the killing of Salvador Allende.
Instead, what we get from the US government are expressions of regret that it “didn’t do enough” in Vietnam, and evasions of responsibility for the ruin of countries like Chile—or for that matter, Nicaragua, where Saint Ronald Reagan destabilized and ousted the Sandinista government, and replaced it with his own lackeys.
From US media on the other hand, the rest of the world gets reports on the sufferings of Vietnam veterans imprisoned by the Viet Cong; the “anguish” of US troops who on hindsight have realized that it was wrong to kill babies; how the war escalated the violence in US cities; and how many US mothers are now grieving over the “senseless” deaths of their sons—who should have had better sense than to be in Iraq, in the first place.
Never has the anguish of the victims of the US drive for profit and world dominance—then as now—ever been the stuff of US media reports. Do the US media have a responsibility to count the human cost of US government policies and to report it? Yes, if only because it is US media that, from Vietnam to Iraq, have manipulated US opinion, and justified and even cheered the use of violence and military power against some of the poorest peoples of the world in the US’ mad pursuit of profit, resources and political advantage.
Those who expect Bush to apologize to the American people—the racist majority of which in the first place supported his attack on Iraq, and who can appreciate only its own suffering but not that of other peoples—shouldn’t be holding their breath.
It is true that the US does eventually get around to admitting its mistakes. But the admission usually comes when it no longer matters. The world does sometimes get expressions of US regret eventually—but long after the damage the US has inflicted on entire societies and populations is done and there is no repairing it. If this constitutes “greatness,” then greatness should be redefined to mean the capacity to commit the most monstrous crimes together with the ability to skirt responsibility for them until the bones of the dead are dust.
But although even more unlikely, a Bush apology to the Iraqi people would be of small consolation to the families that have lost children, parents, or other kin and friends in a war and occupation the US waged supposedly for freedom and democracy, but in truth solely for the foul motive of total world conquest and assuring itself enough oil resources so American moms can take their children to soccer practice and continue contributing to global warming in their SUVs.
Not all the apologies in the world can make up for the daily uncertainty the US has imposed on Iraqi lives, or for the torture and death of Iraqis whose only offense was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Add to these the total destruction of the Iraqi state, and the looting of Iraq’s cultural heritage. But add to these most of all the subterfuge of June 30, when the US will supposedly “restore Iraqi sovereignty” while keeping its 130,000 troops in over a hundred military bases in Iraqi soil.
Add all of these up, and what you have is a country, a region, and a world in flames, thanks to the United States. The New York Times should be demanding that Bush apologize to the people of Iraq first, and to the rest of the world second. Americans Bush should save for last.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com)