You know what I mean. Rah rah rah. Wave the flag. We’re better than they are. We don’t do bad things. But when we do, it’s OK because it’s us doing it. Don’t question anything. Support it all. You know exactly what and who I mean. Show every last bit of it on national television during prime time. let the people see exactly what they are supporting.
This new editorial from The Nation provides some background info I was unaware of, and which helps put the whole story in perspective – http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/scahill:
Wow.
Could there be any better illustration of this admistration’s arrogance, intolerance for contradiction or criticism and complete contempt for innocent human life?
Well, I guess, in that instance, al Jazeera would have been the “voice of the enemy.”
Of course, Fallujah had almost nothing to do with al Qaida, and the “enemy” happened to be the local people whom we had alienated, following Moqtada Sadr in his attempt to throw off U.S. occupation (while grabbing some power for himself, of course), rather than either the Ba’athists whom we had overthrown or the “outside” agitators that we claimed were causing all the problems.
You mean “the voice of everyone that is not with us” ?
The funny thing about that formulation is that there ARE, after all, two choices; And whereas from their own immediate interests folks might not choose to be against us, if the price of exiting the “against” camp means you have to sign on to stuff that is just too icky, the ticket to ride may be too costly.
When bartlet says the story is “outlandish” it ignores longstanding military policy targeting communications facilities–didn’t we slam the Serbian TV station the first night out of the box?
I think there’s no doubt that to bush it was the enemy and I have no doubt that he was all set to go just like the story. They’re sitting too hard on it to be otherwise. Goldsmith has never bofore run out an official secrets warning as here.
They straight up murdered 3 or 4 al j stringers, and one is still in gitmo I think, or just recently out.
No. Given the formulation that Dishfunctional originlly presented, that of being the resource used to convey the thoughts of those who oppose the U.S., if al Jazeera was the only outfit broadcasting from within Fallujah, they would have been that “voice.” (We might still be able to quibble over the issue if al Jazeera never interviewed any fighters within the city. If they only reported the fighting, then I would still not make them a “voice” of the “enemy,” but I do not know whether or not they were interviewing Sadr’s fighters.)
It is simply a description of a situation.
I do not agree that al Jazeera was the “voice” of al Qaida, because if al Jazeera had not existed, bin Laden and his buddies would have simply moved on to any number of other outlets. (And, once they had their six hours of breaking lead time, al Jazeera always passed on copies of the al Qaida tapes to the other news agencies–all of which played those tapes.)
Frankly, I did not think of the Fallujah situation in the earlier discussion for two reasons: I had not known that al Aribiyah was not also broadcasting on the one hand, and, more importantly, Fallujah was a situation that we created. Sadr may have been a power hungry climber, but the decision to “invade” the city was our choice. As you noted, they were those who “were not with us,” but we did make them enemies (particularly from the perspective of Bush).