wrbones
04-11-03, 07:53 AM
http://www.iconoclast.ca/MainPage.asp?page=/NewPage10.asp
HEARTBROKEN DOOM & GLOOMERS
-- Disappointed Dispatches From The Journalistic Left In Baghdad & At Home
"
by Lin Anderson
Less than a week before Saddam Hussein lost his very big bronze head in a square in midtown Baghdad, to the cheers of Iraqis and Americans alike, the Independent's favorite anti-American reporter Robert Fisk was envisioning a very different picture. For Bob, the pathway to Iraq's capital was "a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks and trucks hidden in palm groves."
"Anyone," intoned Fisk in that special way he has, "who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad," where "black-uniformed men of the Saddam Fedayeen with red and black 'kuffiah' scarves round their heads ... did not look to me like a 'degraded' army on the verge of surrender."
Indeed, said Bob, these Iraqis were "masters of concealment," brimming with self-confidence. "The Americans and the British never expected this resistance," he pronounced.
Boy, that's for sure.
Just a week or so later, U.S. troops were arriving and departing as they pleased from Baghdad, by ground and by air, while liberated Iraqis cheered, gave the boot and the spit to ubiquitous portraits of Saddam, and even kissed the helmeted "infidel."
It was an astonishing scene, reminiscent in many minds of the Allies' systematic routing of Axis forces in World War II, leaving behind them towns and villages of stunned and joyful men and women from whom the yoke of their oppression had at last been lifted.
Surely, even Robert Fisk could get into the celebratory spirit of the day, could he not?
Well, er, no, as it turned out.
While millions watched incomparable scenes of liberation from the very heart of the beast itself, Fisk tore off an angry screed, sounding for all the world like a spoiled little boy whose Yuletide dreams of bitter coalition carnage had been hopelessly battered when Father Christmas brought photogenic candy instead.
"The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad," Fisk tut-tutted. "But the tens of thousands of thieves ? they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty ? seem to have a different idea what liberation means."
That's right. Mr. Fisk -- now apparently serving as the stand-in for "Baghdad Bob" due to the hasty departure of the actual article -- decided to focus, on this day of days, on all that nasty looting going on here and there, as the poor residents of Baghdad decided to help themselves to a little of what the diplomatic corps and, certainly, Saddam's favored few had once enjoyed.
But this wasn't just any old looting spree, akin to the ones common following sports championships here in the West. Oh, no. To Robert Fisk's jaundiced eye, this was The Worst Looting Ever!
"It was the day of the looter," he roared. "They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag ? flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section ? as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later."
Holy hissing cats! How dare these people "fling" a European Union flag when they should have been out there burning American ones! And what kind of uncivilized mob is sadistic enough to hurl bureaucratic desks, for the love of Pete? Have they no respect for the faceless gray automotons of "Old Europe" diplomacy?
And those "screaming children" -- Mr. Fisk is here referring, of course, to the children screaming in glee at the liberation party, not the ones just recently pulled from the hell of Saddam's Children's Prison -- just look at them playing Frisbee with records (Mozart, good God!) and even displaying the gall and temerity to dump German history books from the embassy window! Why, those children should have been studying those texts to learn more about their brave champion, Gerhard Schroeder!
We shall display some semblance of pity and leave Mr. Fisk's long-faced shadow in just a moment, except to point out in passing that his tortured prose, composed during this latest war he has plunked his ass in the middle of, provides a prima-facie glimpse into the hilariously baroque meanderings of the leftist talking heads and tapping fingers throughout Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fisk offers a pluperfect sampling of the twin ultimate overriding truths about the Left in these tender years of the twenty-first century: they cannot handle freedom, and they cannot know joy.
Indeed, throughout the course of this war, the majority of the press, both print and electronic -- with the emphatic exception of Fox News, a handful of influential U.S., British and Australian dailies, and the ingeniously "embedded" reporters themselves -- have donned the pleated skirt and played at being Saddam's Cheerleader. Most of the time the 'rah-rahs' have not been quite overt enough to merit the reporters, anchorheads and columnists facing, for example, being strung up by the feet and beat mercilessly about the face and head, but there has been more than a little backchannel pep reserved for the dictator. Gimme an "S"! Gimme an "A"! Etc.
Peter Arnett's infamous comments, which got him summarily booted from any media outlet worth caring about, encapsulated much of this zeitgeist, and instantly gave the lie to any pretense that this was one "impartial" journalist just doing his job: "It is clear," Arnett opined to Iraq's state-run interviewer while the band launched into "On Saddam" faintly in the background, "that within the United States that there is growing challenge to President Bush and the conduct about the war. And it is clear that our reports here about the Iraqi civilian casualties in the war, and the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States, and it helps those who oppose the war and challenge the policies to develop their arguments."
It doesn't get much more blatant than that. And because it doesn't, other pontificators have had, for the most part, to satisfy themselves with fomenting an atmosphere of doom with just a tad more delicacy.
Take the New York Times' R.W. "Johnny" Apple -- please! The portly Mr. Apple has, during the present conflict, let go with more flatulent columning than you'll find in a year's worth of journals directed at digestive tract specialists. Unlike Fisk -- who can torture a narrative like nobody's business -- Apple hasn't even the virtue of florid style to save him.
In his now-classic March 30 paean to Incipient American Disaster, Mr. Apple let go this newsroom-clearer: "With every passing day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein."
Well, it certainly proved a "diplomatic debacle" -- for the Turks. And as for those "gross military misjudgments," the horrible ramifications are still being keenly felt over there on Bizarro World.
But that wasn't all. "Already," Apple tooted ominously, "the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and their officers had foreseen. 'Shock and awe' neither shocked nor awed."
Awe, shocks.
Perhaps getting a whiff down the hall there, Times reporter David Sanger joined in the gloom party in the same day's edition. "There is a White House that is scrounging for evidence that it warned the nation all along that this could be a long slog," Sanger poo-pooed, "even in the face of predictions by Vice President Dick Cheney and others that, in all likelihood, the war would be quick and that 'the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy.'"
If you're hanging out waiting for the Times to loft a "good call!" Cheney's way, you'd better be prepared for, well, a long slog.
The distaff side of the Doomsters was shortly to be heard from as Maureen Dowd -- who at this point must be blaming it on the martini regimen -- let us know in early April that, "The president and his war council did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance in Iraq. And they really did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance at home."
Ah, yes. That much-anticipated wild battle for "hearts and minds" on the homefront. Let's capsulize this one quickly: its highlight was when demonstrators in San Francisco vomited in unison and group-shat upon the city streets. If the radical anti-war movement, so hungry for the atmosphere of the 1960s -- back when the decrepit professors participating in the current "action" were actually getting a little "action" themselves from their bemused students -- expected to be taken seriously in the present conflict, that lame heave-and-leave put the kibosh on those plans right there. There's very little you can do for an encore after a -- well, ****ty performance like that.
Not that some knuckleheads wouldn't try.
more: http://www.iconoclast.ca/MainPage.asp?page=/NewPage10.asp
HEARTBROKEN DOOM & GLOOMERS
-- Disappointed Dispatches From The Journalistic Left In Baghdad & At Home
"
by Lin Anderson
Less than a week before Saddam Hussein lost his very big bronze head in a square in midtown Baghdad, to the cheers of Iraqis and Americans alike, the Independent's favorite anti-American reporter Robert Fisk was envisioning a very different picture. For Bob, the pathway to Iraq's capital was "a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks and trucks hidden in palm groves."
"Anyone," intoned Fisk in that special way he has, "who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad," where "black-uniformed men of the Saddam Fedayeen with red and black 'kuffiah' scarves round their heads ... did not look to me like a 'degraded' army on the verge of surrender."
Indeed, said Bob, these Iraqis were "masters of concealment," brimming with self-confidence. "The Americans and the British never expected this resistance," he pronounced.
Boy, that's for sure.
Just a week or so later, U.S. troops were arriving and departing as they pleased from Baghdad, by ground and by air, while liberated Iraqis cheered, gave the boot and the spit to ubiquitous portraits of Saddam, and even kissed the helmeted "infidel."
It was an astonishing scene, reminiscent in many minds of the Allies' systematic routing of Axis forces in World War II, leaving behind them towns and villages of stunned and joyful men and women from whom the yoke of their oppression had at last been lifted.
Surely, even Robert Fisk could get into the celebratory spirit of the day, could he not?
Well, er, no, as it turned out.
While millions watched incomparable scenes of liberation from the very heart of the beast itself, Fisk tore off an angry screed, sounding for all the world like a spoiled little boy whose Yuletide dreams of bitter coalition carnage had been hopelessly battered when Father Christmas brought photogenic candy instead.
"The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad," Fisk tut-tutted. "But the tens of thousands of thieves ? they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty ? seem to have a different idea what liberation means."
That's right. Mr. Fisk -- now apparently serving as the stand-in for "Baghdad Bob" due to the hasty departure of the actual article -- decided to focus, on this day of days, on all that nasty looting going on here and there, as the poor residents of Baghdad decided to help themselves to a little of what the diplomatic corps and, certainly, Saddam's favored few had once enjoyed.
But this wasn't just any old looting spree, akin to the ones common following sports championships here in the West. Oh, no. To Robert Fisk's jaundiced eye, this was The Worst Looting Ever!
"It was the day of the looter," he roared. "They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag ? flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section ? as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later."
Holy hissing cats! How dare these people "fling" a European Union flag when they should have been out there burning American ones! And what kind of uncivilized mob is sadistic enough to hurl bureaucratic desks, for the love of Pete? Have they no respect for the faceless gray automotons of "Old Europe" diplomacy?
And those "screaming children" -- Mr. Fisk is here referring, of course, to the children screaming in glee at the liberation party, not the ones just recently pulled from the hell of Saddam's Children's Prison -- just look at them playing Frisbee with records (Mozart, good God!) and even displaying the gall and temerity to dump German history books from the embassy window! Why, those children should have been studying those texts to learn more about their brave champion, Gerhard Schroeder!
We shall display some semblance of pity and leave Mr. Fisk's long-faced shadow in just a moment, except to point out in passing that his tortured prose, composed during this latest war he has plunked his ass in the middle of, provides a prima-facie glimpse into the hilariously baroque meanderings of the leftist talking heads and tapping fingers throughout Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fisk offers a pluperfect sampling of the twin ultimate overriding truths about the Left in these tender years of the twenty-first century: they cannot handle freedom, and they cannot know joy.
Indeed, throughout the course of this war, the majority of the press, both print and electronic -- with the emphatic exception of Fox News, a handful of influential U.S., British and Australian dailies, and the ingeniously "embedded" reporters themselves -- have donned the pleated skirt and played at being Saddam's Cheerleader. Most of the time the 'rah-rahs' have not been quite overt enough to merit the reporters, anchorheads and columnists facing, for example, being strung up by the feet and beat mercilessly about the face and head, but there has been more than a little backchannel pep reserved for the dictator. Gimme an "S"! Gimme an "A"! Etc.
Peter Arnett's infamous comments, which got him summarily booted from any media outlet worth caring about, encapsulated much of this zeitgeist, and instantly gave the lie to any pretense that this was one "impartial" journalist just doing his job: "It is clear," Arnett opined to Iraq's state-run interviewer while the band launched into "On Saddam" faintly in the background, "that within the United States that there is growing challenge to President Bush and the conduct about the war. And it is clear that our reports here about the Iraqi civilian casualties in the war, and the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States, and it helps those who oppose the war and challenge the policies to develop their arguments."
It doesn't get much more blatant than that. And because it doesn't, other pontificators have had, for the most part, to satisfy themselves with fomenting an atmosphere of doom with just a tad more delicacy.
Take the New York Times' R.W. "Johnny" Apple -- please! The portly Mr. Apple has, during the present conflict, let go with more flatulent columning than you'll find in a year's worth of journals directed at digestive tract specialists. Unlike Fisk -- who can torture a narrative like nobody's business -- Apple hasn't even the virtue of florid style to save him.
In his now-classic March 30 paean to Incipient American Disaster, Mr. Apple let go this newsroom-clearer: "With every passing day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein."
Well, it certainly proved a "diplomatic debacle" -- for the Turks. And as for those "gross military misjudgments," the horrible ramifications are still being keenly felt over there on Bizarro World.
But that wasn't all. "Already," Apple tooted ominously, "the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and their officers had foreseen. 'Shock and awe' neither shocked nor awed."
Awe, shocks.
Perhaps getting a whiff down the hall there, Times reporter David Sanger joined in the gloom party in the same day's edition. "There is a White House that is scrounging for evidence that it warned the nation all along that this could be a long slog," Sanger poo-pooed, "even in the face of predictions by Vice President Dick Cheney and others that, in all likelihood, the war would be quick and that 'the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy.'"
If you're hanging out waiting for the Times to loft a "good call!" Cheney's way, you'd better be prepared for, well, a long slog.
The distaff side of the Doomsters was shortly to be heard from as Maureen Dowd -- who at this point must be blaming it on the martini regimen -- let us know in early April that, "The president and his war council did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance in Iraq. And they really did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance at home."
Ah, yes. That much-anticipated wild battle for "hearts and minds" on the homefront. Let's capsulize this one quickly: its highlight was when demonstrators in San Francisco vomited in unison and group-shat upon the city streets. If the radical anti-war movement, so hungry for the atmosphere of the 1960s -- back when the decrepit professors participating in the current "action" were actually getting a little "action" themselves from their bemused students -- expected to be taken seriously in the present conflict, that lame heave-and-leave put the kibosh on those plans right there. There's very little you can do for an encore after a -- well, ****ty performance like that.
Not that some knuckleheads wouldn't try.
more: http://www.iconoclast.ca/MainPage.asp?page=/NewPage10.asp