Yesterday the L.A. Times ran one of those deadly serious leads that only provokes uneasy laughter:
Angry Shiite Muslims pelted Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's motorcade with stones Sunday after the Iraqi leader pleaded for national reconciliation at a memorial held in Sadr City for victims of a large-scale bombing attack.
Being pelted for boosting reconciliation is not a good sign that the whole reconciliation thing is going to work out. It generally doesn't when contemporary reports on attempts at "national reconciliation" also include phrases like, "victims of a large-scale bombing attack."
Poor Mr. Maliki. He is not only in way over his head, events are way ahead of him. And in recognition of this reality, those events have now been officially redefined by NBC News as "civil war." So long, familiar sectarian violence.
The language change by a principal member of the mainstream media is a huge development, simply because words have meaning that can instantly change perceptions. And to the American public, which largely gets its news in 90-second television clips, NBC's usage of "civil war" as opposed to "sectarian violence" means American troops in Iraq are no longer battling "them" over there so "they" won't attack us here. It means, rather, that American troops are now hapless, helpless referees in someone else's vicious, internal fight.
No one knows this better than the Orwellian language masters at the White House, those happy warriors of "clean skies," "healthy forests" and "compassionate conservatism." Predictably, they reacted to NBC's phrasal change like vampires to the rising sun.
No, no, no, said the president's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. We're not in a civil war at all. All the blood and bombings and slaughter and carnage and kidnappings and dead bodies lying naked and mutilated on the streets are just a "new phase, characterized by ... increasing sectarian violence that requires us obviously to adapt to that new phase."
Got that? It's strikingly similar to Abraham Lincoln's take on Gettysburg, which he immortalized as merely another stage in the country's being "engaged in a great new phase, testing whether this nation can long endure."
Armed with his assigned talking points, Mr. Bush chimed in yesterday on the "civil war" controversy, desperately resurrecting the bogeyman of an al Qaeda-9/11 link while downplaying the bloody reality of millions of Sunnis and Shiites' mutual throat-cutting based on nothing more than ownership of a surname: "We have been in this phase for a while. There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al-Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal."
NBC News, the L.A. Times (which beat NBC News to the definitional punch), scores of social-conflict scholars, hundreds of in-country journalists and thousands of dead Iraqis all have it wrong, according to Mr. Bush. No civil war there. Just al Qaeda troublemakers. Simple as that.
Yet the saddest part for Americans and their human proxies in Iraq is that nothing will change as a result of their new education. At story time, master George sits longingly at the feet of tutoring Condi Rice, who assures her pupil that great leaders tough it out in great conflicts, no matter how much domestic flak they encounter. She further assures George that he can be one of them, that he can be Lincolnesque and Churchillian in stature, if he just toughs it out as well. Encyclopedias will love him.
No doubt the next 3000 dead Americans and their bereft loved ones will find comfort in knowing they helped to polish Mr. Bush's bio.
You forgot one important point. This war is protect Israel, so it will be continued. Is anyone in Congress going to stand up to them. I don't think Nancy "AIPAC" Pelosi will do it.
Posted by: B.S. Elliot | November 28, 2006 at 09:56 AM
The problem of perception goes much deeper than the author quite adeptly points out.
I said it all through the 2006 elections, These Republicans, because they are now perceived as habitual liars, they are only throwing more coal on the fire of their defeat by their political attack ads.
The same is true about any support they might now try to engender for their coninuance of the Iraq war.
The public hears nothing but lies.
The parallel to O.J. Simpson is wholly correct for the Republicans. Unless they actually do find the "real killers", they are going to be laughed out of existence.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine
An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life - Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807&e=1
Posted by: Don Robertson | November 28, 2006 at 12:35 PM
Iraq is a diversion. As the army attacks Iraq, the US gov't erodes rights at home by suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting 2 illegal wars based on lies. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier by Mossad) and the US will invade Iran (on behalf of Israel).
Final link (before Google Books bends to gov't demands and censors the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
Posted by: Karl F | November 28, 2006 at 02:51 PM
Christ, B.S., take off the tinfoil and join the progressive movement. Stop drinking the LaRouche koolaid.
Posted by: JPark | November 28, 2006 at 07:26 PM