Saturday, May 22, 2004
Cause and Effect?
A reader writes:
A perfect example is the recent attempt (first observed by us coming from CNN's resident Wall Street flunky Lou Dobbs) to change the subject from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal to the failure of the Arab media to condemn the killing of Nick Berg.
While everyone with a beating heart should condemn the killing of Nick Berg--or the killing of anyone, for that matter, but that's a different subject--it takes a special sort of committed, self-deluded, propagandistic myopia to think the Arab world would give two s**** about the killing of one American at this point.
Why is it even possible for any American to think they would? Because the U.S. media until recently has not shown Americans the reality of the Iraq war that Arabs see every day.
Arabs turn on their TV's and see dead bodies stacked up; the week Nick Berg was killed they saw photos and video of Arab men and women being systematically beaten, sexually humiliated, and even murdered by U.S. soldiers.
Americans not only don't see the stacked corpses, they barely were allowed to see the prison abuse. Indeed, the majority of Republicans in Washington stated flatly that no one should see them--just as the Bush administration has decided that no one should see the caskets of returning servicemen and women.
But looking at unpleasant realities is the responsibility of the self-governed. It is our job to judge these matters. By preventing Americans from exercising that responsibility, the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress and the media have effectively withheld evidence from the jury of our democracy: the citizens.
Frankly stated, the Arab world knows they are in a war with us, and what that means. The open question is how many Americans would continue to support the Iraq war and accept its rationales if they were seeing the whole truth, including the thousands of dead bodies--of Arabs and Americans.
Understand that 201k is not arguing the Arab side in this issue. But we are pointing out the enormous hypocrisy needed for any American to expect the "Arab street" or its media to bother condemning the admittedly horrific murder of an American civilian looking for work in Iraq at the hands of individual terrorists when they are consumed with hatred for acts committed against them as a matter of U.S. policy.
It is blind folly to expect them to care about poor Nick Berg, and Lou Dobbs knows it. Because he knows what Americans haven't seen, and haven't been told.
The point is that without its control of the U.S. media, the Bush administration and its right-wing allies would never be able to avoid the laws of "cause and effect"--because the "effects" of their policies would be seen by all Americans.
But as of yet they have not been.
Have you noticed that this administration never seems to equate cause and effect? They take one course of action against all advice that bad things will happen, then bad things happen and they disclaim all responsibility.Great point. We think the answer is that they start with an agenda, not a desire to do what makes sense or is right for the country. In pursuit of that agenda they argue their way past the objections, then deny the consequences. What the reader recognizes as "cause and effect" are just impediments they have to deal with--which they do through marketing, courtesy of the right-wing media machine.
Don't you think there's a great deal of similarity between the arguments they used to flout the Geneva Convention and normal rules of law for people they wanted to detain and the arguments they used to promote the Patriot Act? In both cases when people screamed that they would have no protection under the rules of law and that this sent dangerous precedent and left the door open for abuse, they pooh-poohed that and reminded us that, after all, we're Americans and we don't do that sort of thing, just trust us.
How many abuses of Americans' civil liberties will be disclosed as we see what the consequences of the Patriot Act?
Cause and effect...what an interesting concept...
A perfect example is the recent attempt (first observed by us coming from CNN's resident Wall Street flunky Lou Dobbs) to change the subject from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal to the failure of the Arab media to condemn the killing of Nick Berg.
While everyone with a beating heart should condemn the killing of Nick Berg--or the killing of anyone, for that matter, but that's a different subject--it takes a special sort of committed, self-deluded, propagandistic myopia to think the Arab world would give two s**** about the killing of one American at this point.
Why is it even possible for any American to think they would? Because the U.S. media until recently has not shown Americans the reality of the Iraq war that Arabs see every day.
Arabs turn on their TV's and see dead bodies stacked up; the week Nick Berg was killed they saw photos and video of Arab men and women being systematically beaten, sexually humiliated, and even murdered by U.S. soldiers.
Americans not only don't see the stacked corpses, they barely were allowed to see the prison abuse. Indeed, the majority of Republicans in Washington stated flatly that no one should see them--just as the Bush administration has decided that no one should see the caskets of returning servicemen and women.
But looking at unpleasant realities is the responsibility of the self-governed. It is our job to judge these matters. By preventing Americans from exercising that responsibility, the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress and the media have effectively withheld evidence from the jury of our democracy: the citizens.
Frankly stated, the Arab world knows they are in a war with us, and what that means. The open question is how many Americans would continue to support the Iraq war and accept its rationales if they were seeing the whole truth, including the thousands of dead bodies--of Arabs and Americans.
Understand that 201k is not arguing the Arab side in this issue. But we are pointing out the enormous hypocrisy needed for any American to expect the "Arab street" or its media to bother condemning the admittedly horrific murder of an American civilian looking for work in Iraq at the hands of individual terrorists when they are consumed with hatred for acts committed against them as a matter of U.S. policy.
It is blind folly to expect them to care about poor Nick Berg, and Lou Dobbs knows it. Because he knows what Americans haven't seen, and haven't been told.
The point is that without its control of the U.S. media, the Bush administration and its right-wing allies would never be able to avoid the laws of "cause and effect"--because the "effects" of their policies would be seen by all Americans.
But as of yet they have not been.
