IF THIS BE TREASON
� then let the War Party make the most of it! Peter Arnett is 'guilty' of
real reporting, not sedition
While the battlefield success of the "coalition" forces may be the subject
of a vigorous debate, none can dispute their conquest of the American
media. They took out NBC this week, although Iraqi television flickers back
after each bombing raid. We can't be sure that Saddam Hussein was killed or
seriously injured in that first missile strike, but Peter Arnett, we know
for certain, is a goner.
The ritual slaying of a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter on the altar of
wartime political correctness is meant as a warning to "mainstream"
journalists: this could be you. Either "embed" yourself in the American
propaganda machine, or choose exile.
No one disputes the veracity of what Arnett actually said. It is true, as
the veteran war correspondent put it, that
"Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the
Iraqi forces."
American military officers in the field are saying the same thing even as I
write � but try firing them! And who can dispute the following?:
"My Iraqi friends tell me there is a growing sense of nationalism and
resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing."
We don't need Arnett or the Iraqis to tell us that resistance to the
invasion is motivated by nationalism. Invasions invariably provoke
resistance, even in the most decadent of nations. But here is what really
stuck in the collective craw of the War Party, and demanded � nay, cried
out! � for punishment:
"It is clear that within the United States there is growing challenge to
President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war.
So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the
Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who
oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments."
When a reporter, in the course of developing a story, instead becomes the
story, some grand journalistic ethic is said to have been breached. But who
made Arnett the story? NBC claims to have been inundated by 8,000 emails in
response to Arnett's broadcast � a paltry number, given that it would be no
mean feat of technology for a single person to generate that many within
hours. Arnett, intones Walter Cronkite, " hangs by a rope of his own
weaving," and various and sundry professors have been trotted out �
particularly on NBC � to verify that he "crossed the line" between advocate
and journalist.
This, from a television network that has U.S. government propaganda
designed into its logo!
Beneath each and every talking head or battle scene, in NBC's continuous
war coverage, the words "Operation Iraqi Freedom" are vividly emblazoned �
as if "freedom" had anything to do with the American imperial project. A
loud brouhaha was raised over the military attire of Arnett's interlocutor
� even as our own airwaves are filled with strutting generals in full
uniform, aiming their pointers at battlefield maps, like rapiers stabbing
at the heart of Iraq.
Is it just me, or is the fiction that we are supposed to be bringing
"democracy" and freedom to the benighted peoples of the Middle East
somewhat undermined by the ideological cleansing of the American media? The
uniformly propagandistic tone of American television coverage resembles a
Soviet propaganda film, circa 1936. Fox News, with its
all-braying-all-the-time format, was the precursor of this Sovietizing
trend, and now MSNBC is taking on the same Leninist style. The race is on
between Aaron Brown of CNN and Dan Abrams of MSNBC to see who can parrot
the party line most faithfully: the winner so far is Brown, for his David
Horowitz-like interrogation of Dan Ellsberg. But Abrams is doing his best
to keep up: the other day, he answered the query of a journalism professor
as to the provenance of the "Operation Iraqi Freedom" logo � wasn't that
"crossing the line," too? Oh no, opined Abrams, because, you see, "that is
the actual name of this operation"!
Jack Shafer, media critic at Slate.com, thinks Arnett should have been
fired � but not because of anything he said about the failure of the U.S.
war plan, or unexpected Iraqi resistance:
"It was nothing Democratic foes of the war haven't been saying for a week
and some Republicans are sharing anonymously today with the Washington Post."
Arrnett's real crime, according to Shafer, is speaking at all to the
Iraqis, in an Iraqi venue:
"That Arnett took his star turn on Iraqi state television and spoke
seriously to a uniformed member of the Iraqi military indicates that he
possesses the credulousness of a child, not the judgment of a seasoned
reporter."
At least the Iraqi interviewer had the honesty to wear a military uniform:
some of our own "journalists" might as well be wearing U.S. military
uniforms, for all the objectivity they bring to the unfolding story of this
war. Shafer has the temerity to compare Arnett to Lord Haw Haw � for the
high crime of pointing out that the Iraqis have been granting him access
for 12 years, and for referring to their "courtesy." The Enemy must never
be presented as anything but murderous � never mind courteous! This
interferes with the demonization process, and, if it became widespread,
would undermine the war effort: it might even be construed as providing
comfort to the enemy. That senile old crock Cronkite even raised the
specter of "treason."
If this be treason, then what Cronkite and his fellow television reporters
did during the Vietnam war is equally so, and there is no statute of
limitations on such a serious crime, as far as I know. But of course it
isn't treason: it is truth-telling. As Arnett pointed out in his piece for
the [UK] Mirror, the U.S. didn't want him transmitting pictures and
viewpoints from besieged Baghdad in 1991, and they don't want it now.
Shafer gives voice to the pro-war intelligentsia's latent desire for a
wartime dictatorship by taking Arnett to task for even reporting the Iraqi
claim that the U.S. has started using cluster bombs. According to Shafer,
this was supposedly refuted by NBC's Pentagon reporter a few hours later.
But so what? A cynic might look at Arnett's reporting as quite useful if
the goal is to underscore the laughable incompetence of Baghdad's
propaganda campaign.
Arnett is in Baghdad, not at "coalition" headquarters in Kuwait or
Washington, and is naturally reporting on the Iraqi perspective. The point
is that there is to be no Iraqi or Arab perspective on this war, at least
on American television. No other perspectives but the semi-official one,
granting a subtle variation or two here and there.
Shafer is outraged that Arnett considers the antiwar movement a significant
factor. Why, it was "rattlebrained" to have said so. But that oft-cited 70
percent-plus in favor of the war is decidedly soft, and the center is
notoriously fickle. They are just now waking up to the costs of this war,
and the opposition, on the other hand, is considerably more hardened. The
pundits and the pollsters smugly assume that what is happening, today, will
continue indefinitely, but such hubris is what got Rummy and the war
planners in trouble with their own soldiers in the field to begin with.
NBC, for its part, at first defended Arnett, and then caved in less than 12
hours later, which lends credence to his claim that NBC "came under great
commercial pressure from the outside" to fire him. Arnett is not the first
person to lose a job due to war hysteria, and he won't be the last. The
neocons have Bob Novak in their sights, and I'll be greatly surprised if
Pat Buchanan and Bill Press are allowed to stay on at MSNBC unless they
button their lips � in both cases, I trust, highly unlikely.
And so we are to be given a diet of straight war propaganda, 24/7, a thin
tasteless gruel of televised hectoring and verbatim reading of Pentagon
press releases. There is to be no end to this, at least until the present
phase of the war comes to a climax with the taking of Baghdad � and that,
alone, is reason enough to hope for a rapid American "victory."
Sans Arnett, the tedious unanimity of televised reporting on this war is
like the droning of cicadas on a warm summer night, lulling us all into a
troubled sleep. As we go about our business, pretending that God is with us
and the U.S. military will make it all right, dreams of disaster steal into
our brains, subverting the national sense of certainty under cover of
night. Yet even if expression of these doubts is expressly forbidden,
instead of merely enforced by means of strong social and economic
sanctions, there is no way for the War Party to achieve its dream of a war
without patriotic dissent. The media elite may have signed on to "Operation
Iraqi Freedom" with no questions asked, but Operation American Freedom
still commands the allegiance of millions.
I suppose I could go into a little spiel, right about here, explaining why
"alternative" media like Antiwar.com are so vitally important in wartime,
and especially for the duration of this war. I could tell you, once again,
that if we don't raise another $20,000 in this quarter, you may come up
with an error message the next time you try to log on to this site.
But I'm so damned depressed about the prospect of having to listen to Aaron
Brown, Christiane Amanpour � who lied her way straight through the Kosovo
war � and the rest of the usual clowns droning on for months if not years,
that I just can't bring myself to do anything but direct your urgent
attention to this link. Click, my friend, and give Antiwar.com your support
in the form of a contribution. In the meantime, I think I'll go curl up
with a good book � perhaps the newly-released collection of Garet Garrett's
antiwar editorials, beautifully packaged by the Caxton Press � and treat
myself to some peace and quiet.
NOTES IN THE MARGINS
For a useful collection of tidbits documenting the latest idiocies of the
War Party, Check out the new weblog at Chronicles magazine, Winds of War.
While we're on the subject of antiwar conservatives, Bill Berkowitz, over
at WorkingforChange.org, notes David Frum�s smear of right-wingers opposed
to this war, including myself, but can't really bring himself to utter a
word of protest. I�ll remember that when John Ashcroft and his newly
reconstituted Red Squads start rounding up troublemakers like Berkowitz and
his leftie pals. Gee, whatever happened to "the people united will never be
defeated"?
In my last column, I mistakenly described this website, 911-strike.com, as
anti-Semitic. It is actually just plain loony, and not anti-Semitic as I
first surmised. My apologies.
� Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j040203.html
