Tuesday, November 16, 2004
al Guardian's Sickening Bias
It's no wonder this piece by Madeleine Bunting entitled "The screams will not be heard" was reprinted in jihadi propaganda site Khilafah.com
With fitting irony, one of the camps used by the US marines waiting for the assault on Falluja was formerly a Ba'ath party retreat occasionally used by Saddam Hussein's sons. Dreamland, as it was known, has an island in the middle of an artificial lake fringed by palms.
Now the camp's dream-like unreality is distorting every news report filed on the preparations for the onslaught on Falluja. We don't know, and won't know, anything about what happens in the next few days except for what the US military authorities choose to let us know. It's long since been too dangerous for journalists to move around unless they are embedded with the US forces. There is almost no contact left with civilians still in Falluja, the only information is from those who have left.
The whole column is staggering in its bizarre logic. The Marines are to be condemned for fighting in a population center, but not a word about the terrorists who have chosen to to use it as their base. Ms Bunting seems to miss the point that the essence of asymmetrical warfare is the picture of a weak cowardly terrorist hiding behind a hostage.
Fisking a piece so steeped in moral equivalency seems futile from the start:
Assaults on cities serve symbolic purposes: they are set showpieces to demonstrate resolve and inculcate fear. To that end, large numbers of casualties are required: they are not an accidental byproduct but the aim. That was the thinking behind 9/11, and Falluja risks becoming a horrible mirror-image of that atrocity. Only by the shores of that dusty lake in Dreamland would it be possible to believe that the ruination of this city will do anything to enhance the legitimacy of the US occupation and of the Iraqi government it appointed.
No military force, excepting Israel, has ever gone to such lengths to developed weapons, tactics, and policies to minimized civilian casualties. To have Ms Bunting baldly state that the our goal is to slaughter civilians exposes more than just ignorance. Thankfully someone else has apparently recognized her true sympathies, which is no doubt why she was bitterly typing her report in a room on the outskirt of Fallujah, rather than embedded with the troops.
With fitting irony, one of the camps used by the US marines waiting for the assault on Falluja was formerly a Ba'ath party retreat occasionally used by Saddam Hussein's sons. Dreamland, as it was known, has an island in the middle of an artificial lake fringed by palms.
Now the camp's dream-like unreality is distorting every news report filed on the preparations for the onslaught on Falluja. We don't know, and won't know, anything about what happens in the next few days except for what the US military authorities choose to let us know. It's long since been too dangerous for journalists to move around unless they are embedded with the US forces. There is almost no contact left with civilians still in Falluja, the only information is from those who have left.
The whole column is staggering in its bizarre logic. The Marines are to be condemned for fighting in a population center, but not a word about the terrorists who have chosen to to use it as their base. Ms Bunting seems to miss the point that the essence of asymmetrical warfare is the picture of a weak cowardly terrorist hiding behind a hostage.
Fisking a piece so steeped in moral equivalency seems futile from the start:
Assaults on cities serve symbolic purposes: they are set showpieces to demonstrate resolve and inculcate fear. To that end, large numbers of casualties are required: they are not an accidental byproduct but the aim. That was the thinking behind 9/11, and Falluja risks becoming a horrible mirror-image of that atrocity. Only by the shores of that dusty lake in Dreamland would it be possible to believe that the ruination of this city will do anything to enhance the legitimacy of the US occupation and of the Iraqi government it appointed.
No military force, excepting Israel, has ever gone to such lengths to developed weapons, tactics, and policies to minimized civilian casualties. To have Ms Bunting baldly state that the our goal is to slaughter civilians exposes more than just ignorance. Thankfully someone else has apparently recognized her true sympathies, which is no doubt why she was bitterly typing her report in a room on the outskirt of Fallujah, rather than embedded with the troops.
papijoe 7:17 AM
|