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November 18, 2004
Long Live Free Fallujah, And More
Topics: Middle East News and PerspectivesArticle at Tech Central Station, Nov 19, by Stephen Schwartz.
Almost time to retire, and then comes along a perfect companion article to earlier Hyscience posts today:
Image from Stephen Schwartz article (too beautiful to pass-up)
Click to enlarge
With the liberation of Fallujah and the fall of the jihadist regime in the town, it is apparent that American media intend to keep their story on message: the message being that the U.S. military operation there has failed and that Fallujans, and Iraqis in general, still hate the intervention forces.
At the same time, other reports tell a more significant and eloquent story: the jihadists had set up a Taliban-style dictatorship, in which women who did not cover their entire bodies, people listening to music, and members of spiritual Sufi orders -- that is, ordinary Fallujans -- were subject to torture and execution.
The Fallujans have learned the same lesson the Shias learned before them, and the Afghans before them: U.S. boots on Muslim soil may be onerous, but American military action is preferable to the unspeakably vicious criminality of Islamist extremists financed, recruited, and otherwise encouraged by Wahhabism, the state religion in Saudi Arabia.
When Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge almost 30 years ago, Western media reported it as the liberation of a city. Noam Chomsky hailed the forced evacuation of Cambodian towns as a noble social experiment. But many journalists were soon forced to record the truth about Khmer Rouge cruelty.
It took longer for Western, and especially American media, to stop glamorizing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Stalinist guerrillas in El Salvador, and to admit that the masses of people in those countries rejected their claims to represent them. An editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, where I worked, on the day after Violeta Chamorro (remember her?) won election in Managua in 1990, told me, "Nicaragua is no longer a news story for us." I asked, "is that because there will be no more violence?" He said, "No, it's because the U.S. is no longer a target." I am sure he meant "a target of our reporting."
Some day in the future, many years from now when the terrorist crisis has ended and our children and grandchildren are old, someone will write a similar article. But at that time we will be included in the 'picture' painted by Stephen in his article, and those that are living at that time will be looking back to our time and before saying, "yes, that helps to put it all in perspective." Hopefully, even prayerfully, they won't need it!
Posted by Hyscience at November 18, 2004 9:25 PM
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