The unfortunate poster boy
The U.S. military airlifted 12-year-old Iraqi orphan Ali Abbas to Kuwait for better medical care. But he's still angry that we killed his family. What's his problem?
Topics: Iraq war
Ever since the war began, I’ve wished the American media would pick up on the stories and images the rest of the world is seeing, especially when it comes to Iraqi civilian casualties. Now that they have, I wish they’d stop.
On Tuesday, cable news networks discovered the plight of Ali Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi boy. Ali’s suffering is almost surreal: He lost 15 relatives, including his parents and three siblings, as well as both of his arms, in an errant missile strike on a Baghdad suburb in the early days of the war. His mother was five months pregnant with a fourth child. He’s got burns all over his body, some of them are infected, he’s in constant pain, and he’s had to be moved from hospital to hospital thanks to looters.
Ali’s been a favorite story outside the United States for weeks. “Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands?” he was widely quoted asking reporters. “If I don’t get a pair of hands, I will commit suicide.” London tabloids launched appeals to readers on Ali’s behalf, and camera crews have come from all over the world to capture his misery.
Clearly, some journalists have used Ali as a poster boy for the human costs of the American invasion, and the amazing 12-year-old called them on it earlier this week. “The journalists always promise to evacuate me. Why don’t they do it now?” he asked. “Please take me out of Iraq to be safe and cured.”
But if Ali was used by the media up to this point, the manipulation and misunderstanding are over the top now that he’s been discovered by American journalists. Ali had been mentioned a few times in the U.S. media before this week, but once the American military was involved in airlifting him to Kuwait, he officially became A Big Story — a redemption story, the kind we like. “Armless boy becomes symbol of war,” was the headline on CBS News.com Wednesday. And from Tuesday night through Wednesday morning, MSNBC and CNN were All Ali, all the time.
Much of the coverage was just plain hokey, like these musings from MSNBC’s Mike Taibbi: “You wonder where are his tears, this little boy who lost both arms, both parents, and most of the rest of his family, almost everyone and everything in his 12-year-old world in an American bomb run three weeks ago. Is he feeling better? Less pain?”
Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America." More Joan Walsh.



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