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America slowly confronts the truth
The old media dog sniffed the air, found power was moving away from
the White House, and began to drool
By Robert Fisk
12/03/05 "The
Independent" -- -- Watching the pathetic, old,
lie-on-its-back frightened labrador of the American media changing
overnight into a vicious rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures
of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this
phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary.
In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the American
presidency and Israel's continued settlement-building in the West
Bank was originally treated with the disdain all great papers
reserve for those who dare to question proud and democratic projects
of state. In The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bonner
managed to chide me for attacking American journalists who - he
furiously quoted my own words - "report in so craven a fashion from
the Middle East - so fearful of Israeli criticism that they turn
Israeli murder into 'targeted attacks' and illegal settlements into
'Jewish neighbourhoods'."
It was remarkable that Bonner should be so out of touch with his
readers that he did not know that "craven" is the very word so many
Americans apply to their grovelling newspapers (and quite probably
one reason why newspaper circulations are falling so disastrously).
But the moment that a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam
war veteran in Washington dared to suggest that the war in Iraq was
lost, that US troops should be brought home now - and when the
Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned - the old
media dog sniffed the air, realised that power was moving away from
the White House, and began to drool.
On live television in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of
America's folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown - who
allowed me to have my picture taken in his brand new pale blue
Stetson - exuded warmth towards this pesky Brit (though he claimed
on air that I was an American) who tore into his country's policies
in the Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit
sorry - though only for a millisecond, mark you - for the guy in the
White House.
All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to
Los Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qa'ida attacks is
replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the east coast, too, the
editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh,
that blessing to American journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib
torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat
with revelations that US commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency
is now out of control.
When those same Iraqi gunmen this week again took control of the
entire city of Ramadi (already "liberated" four times by US troops
since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television
with Bush's latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi
forces - who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they
are a knife in America's back - will soon be able to take over
security duties from the occupation forces.
Even in Hollywood - and here production schedules prove that the rot
must have set in more than a year ago - hitherto taboo subjects are
being dredged to the surface of the political mire. Jarhead,
produced by Universal Pictures, depicts a brutal, traumatised Marine
unit during the 1991 Gulf War.
George Clooney's production of Good Night, and Good Luck, a
devastating black-and-white account of Second World War
correspondent Ed Murrow's heroic battle with Senator McCarthy in the
1950s - its theme is the management and crushing of all dissent -
has already paid for its production costs twice over. Murrow is
played by an actor but McCarthy appears only in real archive
footage. Incredibly, a test audience in New York complained that the
man "playing" McCarthy was "overacting". Will we say this about
Messrs Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld in years to come? I suspect so.
And then there's Syriana, Clooney's epic of the oil trade which
combines suicide bombers, maverick CIA agents (one of them played by
Clooney himself), feuding Middle East Arab potentates - one of whom
wants real democracy and wealth for his people and control of his
own country's resources - along with a slew of disreputable
businessmen and east coast lawyers. The CIA eventually assassinates
the Arab prince who wants to take control of his own country's oil
(so much for democracy) - this is accomplished with a pilotless
aerial bomb guided by men in a room in Virginia - while a Pakistani
fired from his job in the oil fields because an American
conglomerate has downsized for its shareholders' profits destroys
one of the company's tankers in a suicide attack.
"People seem less afraid now," Clooney told an interviewer in
Entertainment magazine. "Lots of people are starting to ask
questions. It's becoming hard to avoid the questions." Of course,
these questions are being asked because of America's more than 2,000
fatalities in Iraq rather than out of compassion for Iraq's tens of
thousands of fatalities. They are being pondered because the whole
illegal invasion of Iraq is ending in calamity rather than success.
Yet still they avoid the "Israel" question. The Arab princes in
Syriana - who in real life would be obsessed with the occupation of
the West Bank - do not murmur a word about Israel. The Arab
al-Qa'ida operative who persuades the young Pakistani to attack an
oil tanker makes no reference to Israel - as every one of bin
Laden's acolytes assuredly would. It was instructive that Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 did not mention Israel once.
So one key issue of the Middle East remains to be confronted. Amy
Goodman, whom I used to enrage by claiming that her leftist
Democracy Now programme - broadcast from a former Brooklyn fire
station - had only three listeners (one of whom was Amy Goodman), is
bravely raising this unmentionable subject. Partly as a result, her
"alternative" radio and television station - how I hate that prissy
word "alternative" - is slowly moving into the mainstream.
Americans are ready to discuss the United States' relationship with
Israel. And America's injustices towards the Arabs. As usual,
ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press
and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media
boys and girls will catch up with their own people.
Copyright The Independent
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