http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/26/iraq/print.html

To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser

What can and cannot be spoken on television

Mar. 26, 2008 | I'm going to re-post the segment I posted yesterday, from Charlie Rose's fifth anniversary Iraq show, because I want to encourage as many people as possible to watch it. If I could recommend one article or segment for Americans to read or watch regarding the current Iraq debate, it would be this interview -- the entire interview -- with Sinan Antoon and Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi professor and journalist, respectively, currently living in the U.S.:



The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media's discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation -- views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts -- ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: "virtually never."

Rose was as adversarial and argumentative -- angry, even -- as he ever gets with anyone, because he plainly did not anticipate, and did not like, that he was being exposed to such hostility towards our Freedom-spreading, Liberty-loving Liberation of the grateful, lucky (dead and displaced) Iraqi people.

To see how scripted and narrow the American media's discussion of Iraq continues to be -- as Americans are told that it is a matter of mandated orthodoxy that they believe that the Surge is Working (so much so that John McCain actually demanded yesterday that Hillary Clinton "apologize" for daring to question the pronouncements of the High, Honorable Commanding General, David H. Petraeus) -- watch the entire interview and consider how those views are never heard. For those who do not watch, I will excerpt just a few of the illustrative exchanges, such as this opening exchange:

ROSE: And obviously, what we want to accomplish on this fifth anniversary of the American invasion, or the coalition invasion of Iraq, is how they see it as Iraqis, five years later.

Give me an assessment.

ALI FADHIL: That's a big question, assessment. Well, basically, probably, I`ll kind of sum it in a few words.

It's -- we have a country where the government is not functioning after five years. We have too many internal problems. And we have the violence increasing day after day.

We have a huge crisis of refugees inside and outside Iraq. We have a total failure of the -- of the civilian -- the civilian structure and what's happening inside. We have the sectarian divisions increasing. We didn`t have that before. Now we have it.

So, basically, my assessment is we have a whole nation called Iraq, now it`s wiped out.

CHARLIE ROSE: And Iraq is worse off because the United States came?

ALI FADHIL: It's worse off because the United States came to Iraq, definitely, and because the United States did all these mistakes in Iraq.

SINAN ANTOON: So, for us, for American citizens to understand, it`s not enough just to go back to 2003 and see what mistakes were committed.

And to answer your questions, the problem we have also in the discourse is all this talk. About mistakes and whatnot. The premise of the entire war is not questioned. It`s not -- even if no mistakes were ever done...

CHARLIE ROSE: Right?

SINAN ANTOON: ... citizens need to understand that human beings, by and large, do not like to be occupied by foreigners, no matter what, and that was the case. So, even if no mistakes would have been done, people would have said in a very short period of time, thank you, bye-bye.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. But I mean, that then raises the question whether you could have done it a way that you did jot create the idea of occupation.

SINAN ANTOON: No, because...

CHARLIE ROSE: You pleaded (ph) the idea of liberation, not occupation. Unless you say that`s not possible at all.

SINAN ANTOON: It would have been impossible because the practices of the United States Army and the Pentagon reflect, also, a certain ideology and a way of looking at the Middle East and a way of looking at the past and its history. So, we don`t have time to go through all of that, but these mistakes are made -- they`re not side mistakes. They reflect the structure and the approach to the Middle East and to Iraq, and to its history. And this amnesia that I`m talking about, how would the people who have been oppressed for 35 years by a dictator that was supported by the United States, in a region where the United States supports dictators, how would they accept that America would come to spread democracy?

Yes, some of them did. Some of them believed the United States. But looking around, you know, if the United States was interested in democracy, it would maybe topple Saudi Arabia. Why go to Iraq?

CHARLIE ROSE: So we have a credibility problem when we talk about...

SINAN ANTOON: The United States has always it, and in the last five years it`s lost any credibility it might have had, I think. And this is -- this is not controversial. This is what people write in the Middle East, and you can read it, and it`s based on sound material and reality. It`s not ideological.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Projecting forward, what`s necessary for the United States to change that perception and that really?

SINAN ANTOON: Well, we`re assuming that the United States wants to change that perception.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Well, let`s assume for the sake of argument they do.

SINAN ANTOON: A recognition. What Iraqis and others in the Middle East need is a recognition of the crime committed against the Iraqis, and of the destruction of their society, the disintegration of everything that was good in Iraq in the last five years.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, should the United States not have stopped the Iraqis from pushing -- should not have repelled the Iraqis in Kuwait?

SINAN ANTOON: No, but we always have a conflation.

I was in Iraq. A lot of Iraqis were not for the invasion of Kuwait. But it's one thing to eject Saddam`s army from Kuwait, and it`s another to bomb the power plants, all the bridges. I was living there. All the bridges throughout Iraq, 115 bridges, were bombed. What did that have to do with Kuwait? And for a general to say, "We bombed them back to the preindustrial age" . . . .

CHARLIE ROSE: So, are you saying then -- I`m going to get back to you in just a second -- you`re saying that for anybody who is demanding political reconciliation, it`s a fool`s errand?

SINAN ANTOON: But these concepts -- you know, first you need to have a functioning society with electricity and water, and you can walk down the street. And then you have reconciliation...

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. So you can`t have political reconciliation until you have cured problems of sanitation, electricity, security, and...

SINAN ANTOON: Of course. And it's a crime after five years that electricity is not back to prewar levels, because Saddam Hussein, who was a dictator I detested, was able to have electricity back in 45 days. So, why is the United States not having achieved that in five years? It's not just miscalculations.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why?

SINAN ANTOON: It`s a host of complex reasons. But that was never a priority.

The priority was, you know, to make sure that the oil flows. Sorry, but that is true.

The only sector that`s working well right now is the oil sector. It`s not the schools, not the hospitals, not the reconstruction. The oil sector is working.

CHARLIE ROSE: So where do we go from here? Five years after the invasion of Iraq, what is a wise American policy?

ALI FADHIL: Let me start with telling you what is happening right now, what is the American policy right now in Iraq.

It`s so shame to say that America is in Iraq right now, and particularly the State Department and also the Pentagon as well, the U.S. Army in Iraq. They're going back to Saddam`s policies in everything.

If you, you know, name it, name the most successful project of the surge -- outcome of the surge, the (INAUDIBLE) councils. You know, these insurgents, the Sunnis, even Shiites.

CHARLIE ROSE: The so-called awakening.

ALI FADHIL: Awakening council, exactly. They're giving them money to protect their own neighborhoods.

Isn't that the same what happened under Saddam? I mean, I am an Iraq. I remember very well that the Ba`ath Party regimes -- who many of these people, by the way, are there from the Ba`ath Party regime -- they were money from the government to have their night shifts in the neighborhood. You know, going around, making sure if some youth gather at some streets to know exactly what they`re seeing.

It`s the same. This is one thing.

The second policy about the tribes, the U.S. Army is paying for the tribes in the south and the west to guard their own areas. You know, part of the awakening councils. That`s exactly what Saddam did. He was giving...

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Would you like for the United States` military -- Senator Barack`s proposal is that we make a date certain, within 16 months, withdraw.

Is that a wise policy, in your judgment?

ALI FADHIL: Definitely. Definitely.

CHARLIE ROSE: Just get out of Iraq in some kind of ordered way?

ALI FADHIL: You are -- the Americans in Iraq are like a virus, like a disease. And for us we need to get rid of the Americans, because the Americans just don`t know what they`re doing.

They`re -- anything they do -- probably even in good intentions -- is bad for us, everything they do, everything. There`s nothing they`re doing is right.

And that's what is going to happen. It's just prolonging the diaspora of the Iraqis.We're suffering more and more every day. We need, you know, to start the salvation (ph).

SINAN ANTOON: American citizens have such a long time -- come such a long time to understand that it was an occupation. For three years people would say -- they`d call it an occupation.

The president today said something really obscene to my mind. He said Iraq is witnessing the first Arab uprising against al Qaeda.

We did not have al Qaeda in Iraq before. We had a ruthless dictatorship.

The reason for this is clear. The American media has a script to which they loyally adhere. The U.S. can make mistakes and government leaders can be criticized for incompetence, but we can never do anything that is actually destructive or evil or which justifiably provokes hatred towards us by people in other countries -- not even bombing them and occupying them for years and imprisoning tens of thousands of them with no charges and replicating the behavior of their hated dictator. Any views that suggest such a thing are simply not heard.

After I posted this Charlie Rose segment yesterday, Wired's Ryan Singel emailed me about this amazing ABC News broadcast that he transcribed from the night in March, 2003 when we began dropping our loving, liberating Freedom Bombs on Baghdad. Jennings' entire broadcast that night -- as was true for virtually every establishment press outlet -- was dedicated to the storyline that we were marching into Iraq to depose the Evil Dictator, Saddam Hussein, to rid him of his wicked weapons and finally free the Iraqi People and give them Freedom and Democracy. Freedom was on the march -- and still is.

But on ABC that night, something disrupted the script. In the frenzy of the evening, ABC producers were desperately trying to get Iraqis to go on the air and say how grateful they were for our Freedom Bombs, but a couple of them ending up saying the opposite -- quite angrily -- just as the two Iraqi interviewees disrupted Charlie Rose's script. As Singel wrote:

Cracks in television media facade are so rare. Absurdities, on the other hand, can be found aplenty -- but the machinery is usually very finely tuned and rarely breaks down like this.

The relevant sections, which do not do justice to Jennings's palpable discomfort and his disbelief that his producers would actually put him on the phone with Iraqis who did not support the American invasion . . . .

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) How nice to hear your voice. I'll ask you the dumbest question in the world. How are things?

DOCTOR WAMIZ OMAR NAZMI

Well, they are, you know, the bombardment of Baghdad has been taking place over the night, and, you know, people are angry at the destruction of the, their house, this very ancient or long history city. They see no point in all this destruction and American bombardment of this old city. . . .

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) That's a, that's a very good point, sir. I, I raise it because I've just been handed a note which says that you're a former member of the Baath party, but more than 40 years ago, and that you are interested in more democracy and an end to the repression by the regime of the Shiites and the Kurds. And so I wondered whether or not you think that the targets which have been hit represent the regime or represent Iraqis as a whole?

DOCTOR WAMIZ OMAR NAZMI

Well, I will ask you a question. If, if somebody bombarded the Pentagon, would you say it is a targeted for the American regime or just a target against all Americans?

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) I think most Americans, the overwhelming number of Americans, sir, would say for all Americans. And is that your answer, vis-...- vis, what has been attacked in Baghdad tonight?

DOCTOR WAMIZ OMAR NAZMI

Yes, and what you have referred about me is quite the truth. But I don't think that war and destruction will bring democracy to the Iraqi people and the necessary civilized for the Kurds and for the Shiites and for all the population of Iraq. In fact, what the Americans are doing are destroying the whole country and I don't think at all that democracy and political reforms will appear for this war.

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) You're also described to me as someone who has openly criticized the Baath party, and the regime. Do you believe that the United States is arriving in your country to liberate you from the Baath regime?

DOCTOR WAMIZ OMAR NAZMI

Well, when the United States choose someone who has drawn us to be an international thief for the job of being a prime minister in Iraq, you call this liberation or subjugation of the Iraqi and Arab people for the will of Mr. Bush and his clique?

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) I did not know, sir, that the United States had chosen anybody to be the prime minister of Iraq. In fact, the Bush Administration says almost on an hourly, if not a daily, basis that it's up to the Iraqi people to choose their own leaders.

DOCTOR WAMIZ OMAR NAZMI

How, by, by killing the Iraqis and destroying their cities and ruining their lines of communication? Is this is the way you bring democracy to other countries?

A second interview went exactly the same way:

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) And do you believe that the United States has come to your country to save the country or to harm the country?

DR. MOHAMMED MOTAFFER ADHAMI

Well, is this saving the country, bombing every city in Iraq? Killing the people? For no reason? Only to occupy the country?

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) Do you believe, . . .

DR. MOHAMMED MOTAFFER ADHAMI

This is, you know, this is actually, I believe now, this is a crime. And they are behaving, the American Administration is behaving according to the law of jungle.

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) Doctor Adhami, you, . . .

DR. MOHAMMED MOTAFFER ADHAMI

So the people are dying.

PETER JENNINGS

(Voice Over) Doctor Adhami, again, I apologize for interrupting. I think Americans believe that there are millions of Iraqis who would be free, who would be happy to live free from the leadership of President Saddam Hussein. Do you believe that to be the case?

DR. MOHAMMED MOTAFFER ADHAMI

Well, let me tell you something, that the only period that Iraq shows development was in these 30 years we live. Before that, during the British occupation, Iraqis were suffering. And the British were stealing our oil. It seem that now, the Americans want to do the same. So I think, you know, that's why, that's why now if you go to the street, you won't find any disturbance. All the people stick together and all the people saying, Allah Akbar, when they saw the rockets hitting their city.

To be honest, sitting in this newsroom for the last many hours, I'm not quite sure how we get people on the phone. But we've had two phone calls like that tonight and the very least they are an admonition that if Americans end up in Baghdad, perhaps not everybody is going to welcome them. We'll continue with "Nightline" in just a minute.

-- Glenn Greenwald