The Bullshit Chronicles: Yes, It's What We Unleashed (They Want to Say That This Is Not Even Just About Iraq, But About Islamic Radicalism from Nigeria to Pakistan)

No one saw it coming.

So "they" are now saying (again).

Except for the hundreds of thousands of citizens who opposed, marched, and wrote thousands of essays against it. And the millions who were positively influenced by them but whose supporting opinions were ignored purposely by the powerful decision makers.

For years.

If it's not Tricky Dick Cheney and his prancing twisted spawn dominating the TV channels spooz, it's some uncredentialed largely unknown "expert" in a large venue magazine who's being paid by someone also unknown who wants to explain (once again for you slow ones) how the U.S. is only in the Middle East (and much of Asia and all of Africa) in order to straighten out the values of those browner people and bring those poor stupids the liberty and freedom to purchase McDonald's burgers and Wal-Mart jeans and stop worshipping any ridiculous vengeful gods except our own capitalist buddy* Christ (h/t Kevin Smith's Dogma and Chasing Dogma).

As one Time reader said his march sign responded:

"Stop Operation Iraqi Fiefdom", "Support the Troops. Oppose the War." and "'1984' isn't an instruction manual."

Talk about "mission accomplished."

June 25, 2014

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

TIME On Iraq War: What Did We Do To Deserve This?

by Peter Hart

With Iraq in crisis, many corporate news accounts treat the US war there as if it was something that was done to us, and the ensuing chaos proof that the good intentions of a US superpower cannot overcome tribal grievances.

Michael Crowley's cover story for Time (6/19/14), "The End of Iraq," might be the quintessential example. He writes:

The rapid march by ISIS from Syria into Iraq is only partly about the troubled land where the US lost almost 4,500 lives and spent nearly $1 trillion in increasingly vain hopes of establishing a stable, friendly democracy.

We tried to bring them a stable democracy, and look at what they're doing.

Crowley's statistic, of course, dismisses roughly 99 out of 100 human lives lost as a result of the invasion of Iraq.



(Photo: fair.org)

But he wants to say that this is not even just about Iraq, but about Islamic radicalism from Nigeria to Pakistan. To Crowley, Osama bin Laden's "fundamentalist ideology – and its cold logic of murder in God’s name – arguably has broader reach than ever." And so in Iraq, the story is less about the brutal US invasion and more about inevitable history, a place where

ancient hatreds are grinding the country to bits. Washington has reacted with shock – no one saw it coming – and the usual finger pointing, but today's Washington is a place where history is measured in hourly news cycles and 140-character riffs. What's happening in Iraq is the work of centuries, the latest chapter in the story of a religious schism between Sunni and Shi'ite that was already old news a thousand years ago.

Why feel too bad about a 10-year-old invasion if what's really happening is "the work of centuries"?

The notion of an intractable, tribal religious war is popular in the press, but it has been questioned; see Murtaza Hussain's "The Myth of the 1,400-Year Sunni/Shia War" (Al Jazeera, 7/9/13), for instance.

And it functions as a way of letting the US off the hook for unleashing it. As Crowley writes, "To Americans weary of the Middle East, the urge is strong to close our eyes and, as Sarah Palin once put it so coarsely, 'let Allah sort it out.'"

To be clear, Crowley doesn't agree with regional expert Palin:

As long as the global economy still runs on Middle Eastern oil, Sunni radicals plot terrorist attacks against the West and Iran's leaders pursue nuclear technology, the US cannot turn its back.

Time's view of the Middle East, a place where "hatred, greed and tribalism" overwhelm "the spirit of liberty." (Photo: fair.org)

One might assume that "nuclear technology" is code for weapons; Iran says it has no interest in the bomb, and there is no evidence that they do.

But Time knows otherwise, as Crowley later writes of "Shi'ite Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon." 

The language about "turning its back" seems to want to let the US off the hook for starting the Iraq War – and give a green light for intervening in its next phase with a clear conscience.

If you don't think that line quite does it, Crowley also writes:

What Leon Trotsky supposedly said about war is also true of this war-torn region: Americans may not be interested in the Middle East. But the Middle East is interested in us.

Crowley is back to arguing that the region's problems are due to a religious conflict the West simply cannot fathom, as he wonders: "But how could the secular West hope to understand cultures in which religion is government, scripture is law and the past defines the future?"

The piece closes by stating its premise quite clearly, with Time explaining:

On a deeper level, the blame belongs to history itself. At this ancient crossroads of the human drama, the US's failure echoes earlier failures by the European powers, by the Ottoman pashas, by the Crusaders, by Alexander the Great. The civil war of Muslim against Muslim, brother against brother, plays out in the same region that gave us Cain vs. Abel. George W. Bush spoke of the spirit of liberty, and Obama often invokes the spirit of cooperation. Both speak to something powerful in the modern heart. But neither man – nor America itself – fully appreciated until now the continuing reign of much older spirits: hatred, greed and tribalism. Those spirits are loosed again, and the whole world will pay a price.

We offered them the spirits of cooperation and liberty and the modern heart, and this is the thanks we get.

It's almost as if some people don't appreciate being invaded.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Peter Hart is the activism director at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting). He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra, and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly" (Seven Stories Press, 2003).

Comment:

Justaman 

I regard it as a screaming, flashing, giant sign of the times (no pun intended) that such unmitigated bullshit could be printed and disseminated in this freak show of a nation. We should all be very afraid, because the absolute denial of reality is rising to that same level seen as when little king George II (and his daddy) destroyed the functioning state of Iraq.
We fucking bombed Iraq back to the stone age in the first gulf war, continued to bomb and sanction them for 12 more years and then dismantled what was left after we invaded, and that jackass Crowley has the gall to blame Iraq's tragedy merely on a historical feud? If what he's smoking has the ability to alter reality to that extent, I want some it.

And the price tag?

We won't tell you, but here's our opening bid:

Obama Requests Nearly $60 Billion to Continue Endless War

The Plunder of Detroit and Iraq

“Iraq was invaded with soldiers, guns and bombs. Detroit was invaded by the corporate ‘suits’ who made a fast buck for themselves.” Both are plundered by the same bandits.

. . . The coup de grace was delivered by big banks like UBS, Bank of America and Barclays, which sold risky derivatives schemes to corrupt Detroit politicians. When the financial deal inevitably headed south, the banks were the creditors first in line for a payout.

. . . Just as Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed, Detroit residents now live without basic services which ought to be regarded as the right of every human being. In the United States, a country which boasts of its high level of advancement, residents of a major city must plead to the international community for the right to access water.

A Secret Plan to Close Social Security’s Offices and Outsource Its Work

Secret Plan

Test your comprehension skills by trying to understand the Seckrit Plan without doing massive re-readings to enhance clarity.

There oughta be a law.

*  

How a church that centers its devotion upon a Savior who chose to die rather than conform to this world's standards of success can dare to take "success" as a serious goal is one of the bewildering questions of our time.