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Hirsch, Michael (Newsweek senior editor). "Stuck in the Hot Zone."
Newsweek (May 1 2006): 32-35;
http://
This article is full of wonderful examples of transparent change of history. It shows what words like democracy and sovereignty mean to a major US news editor. It also reveals how he sees US conquests as a painful sacrifice on the part of the US, and a service to the people being conquered (who are, of course, not being conquered, but freed!). As you read this article, pay attention to the view of reality presented by the author himself. It's more important than the positions taken by the US government figures interviewed. And remember, this editor is one of the people who helps to shape the views of reality of millions of people.
The article begins with a description of something that sounds like it came out of a horrifying science fiction movie: a foreign power rules the skies above the citizens, using heavily armed remote-controlled aircraft flown by the foreign conqueror's military personnel tens of thousands of miles away in a city inside the foreign power. "The exact number" of these aircraft "is classified," says the article, "but it's the largest fleet in the world." The fleet is "hovering over" the capital city of the local country, says the article, with each of its aircraft armed with missiles and sophisticated spying equipment for observing and reporting on people on the ground. And that's just a start. The newer-model remote-controlled aircraft that the foreign power will deploy "over the next couple of years are going to be bigger and better, carrying more Hellfires [missiles], and some larger JDAM bombs as well."
And, according to the article, the foreign power rules not only the skies. The remote-controlled aircraft are sending information about the actions of the citizens to the foreign power's commanders, who are prowling the streets below in heavily armed and armored fighting vehicles and tanks. "In the future," says the article, "that commander will likely be" one of the foreign power's officers "embedded in" one of the local country's own army or police units, "feeding intel to his" local "proteges."
The article quotes an officer of the foreign power's military who says that the intention of the foriegn power is not to create a local military whose job is to defend against foreign threats (This stands of reason of course, since it is being created by the foreign threat itself, but the article does not point this out), but to do "counterinsurgency". In other words, the job of the new local military will be to kill the local citizens for the foreign power, not to defend the local citizens against foreign powers.
So now we have this sci-fi description of total domination by the foreign power, spying on the citizens from the air, getting bigger bombs to drop on them in the future, dominating them on the ground, and creating a local military whose job is to control the citizens for the foreign power, whose military officers will be "embedded in" it and leading it.
The events shown here are obviously a direct contradiction of the core myths. These events show quite clearly that the US project for Iraq is the antithesis of democracy, freedom, sovereignty, or humanitarianism. The US is obviously gaining massive power at the expense of the Iraqi citizens, who have absolutely no power over those who spy on their every move and exercise absolute power of life and death over them. At least that's what one would think after reading my overview above. But that's wrong: according to the author of this article, who is a senior editor of an important US media outlet, this is sovereignty and democracy. This is helping the Iraqis. This is self-sacrifice on the part of the US. He is using a special definition of those terms for the US; of course if it were China or the old USSR doing this sort of thing, he would (rightly) be using words like tyranny and terrorism and domination and totalitarianism to describe it.
How does the author reverse the ordinary meaning of what is going on here so as to tell the story of the myths, even while the facts that he himself reveals show that the opposite is true?
He says the US is here to "secure Iraq's nascent democracy."
He doesn't say that the remote aircraft are spying on the citizens of the local country; instead he says they are "searching with uncanny clarity for insurgents and other signs of trouble". Of course, "the insurgents and other signs of trouble" are really the citizens of the local country, but somehow this language accomplishes the alchemy of making spying on them and slaughtering them into a service selflessly provided by the foreign power to . . . the local citizens, the very people it is spying on, dominating, and killing.
He doesn't say that this is domination. Instead, he says "Sovereignty issues still need to be worked out by mutual, legal agreement." The facts that he himself has presented show that this is nonsense; the foreign power is in charge of the killing force. There is no other party with power to have a legal agreement with; the foreign power will simply be signing an "agreement" with powerless locals who work for it anyway. More importantly, how could the foreign power already know what it is going to do if the local country will be the one deciding? The facts presented in the article make it quite clear that the foreign power is utterly dominant, is making absolute decisions right now about the future of the local country, and will continue to do so for the future. Yet for the author, this is not imcompatible with soveriegnty. The US has already decided what it is going to do, the US will be controlling the Iraqi military no matter what anyway, the Iraqi military's job is to kill Iraqis instead of foreign powers, and yet, magically, this is all something that the Iraqis will be choosing for themselves.
The title of this article, "Stuck in the Hot Zone," expresses the underlying assumption found throughout the article: the US is "stuck" in Iraq. The author says that that "many Iraqis know there is no alternative to U.S. troops for the foreseeable future." By putting it this way, the author is saying that these Iraqis believe that the US must stay, but he is also saying that this is the truth according to him as well, not just their opinion. (He didn't say "many Iraqis THINK there is no alternative to US troops".) This reverses the interests of the two actors, in the same way that a car dealer does: the true beneficiary (the US) is presented as self-sacrificing, and the true victims (the Iraqi citizens) are presented as the beneficiary.
There are other tricks here. Note how the author discusses whether or not the Iraqis want the US in Iraq, as if the "insurgents" that he openly says the US is trying to destroy weren't themselves Iraqis. I think we can assume that people don't like being destroyed, so the only way to make his comments make sense is to say that these people aren't Iraqis, which isn't true, as he well knows. But everyone has become so used to excluding from the category of citizen of a country any citizens of that country who are fighting US domination that he can get away with it without anyone noticing.
The author apparently sees nothing remarkable in the following statement by a US military officer that he interviewed:
"One of the issues of sovereignty for any country is the ability to control their own airspace. We will probably be helping the Iraqis with that problem for a very long time."
So ordinarily the total domination of your airspace by a foreign power means you lack sovereignty. But if the foreign power totally dominating your airspace is the US, then this increases your sovereignty.
To his credit, the author did present this quote as the opinion of the US military officer, not as truth. But it seems to fit with the position of the author himself on sovereignty (see my comments above) anyway.
These examples show that this article is full of transparent patriotic changes. The facts, even the facts that are shown right here in the article, reveal that the US project for Iraq is violently anti-freedom, and anti-democracy, that it is to the advantage of the US and horribly harmful to the Iraqis. It is a tyranny the likes of which the world has rarely seen, made possible by enormously advanced military weapons employed against the population of Iraq, who have no military of their own to defend them. It involves a science-fiction-like totalitarian control by the foreign conqueror. This is obvious even from the facts shown in the article itself. Yet, despite this, the story remains the same as always: The US is helping, not harming. The US is sacrificing, not getting. The US is bringing democracy and freedom and sovereignty.
So much for the historical patriotism. What about the moral patriotism? Predictably (after all, he says the US is bringing democracy), the author's position is not that any of this that the US is doing is a bad thing. But neither is he uncritical; in fact, he thinks the US should be criticized, but not for doing this horrible thing to the Iraqis, but for being too optimistic that it will work. Thus the editor's own moral position is that this would be good if it would work, but unfortunately it very likely won't.
Again, these are the historical description and moral position of a senior editor of a major US news source.