Page 113 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Railing Iraqi Resistance 103

Falluja created a picture of resistance fighters as raving lunatics, as opposed to
one of nationalists fighting an illegal or illegitimate occupation.
It is difficult to argue that the reporting about the Falluja attack was not
intended to evoke passionate condemnations of the Iraqi actions in the eyes of
the American people. But while media's condemnations of the attacks as acts of
murder may have been justified, the demonization of those attacking U.S. forces
in Iraq also lacked an understanding of the nature of Iraq's anti-occupation resis-
tance. By reducing all attacks against American forces in Iraq to little more than
the acts of murderers, thugs, foreign and domestic terrorists, Saddam-Loyalists,
and irrational resisters to democratization (however accurate those labels may be
depending on which group is in question), the media ignored, and continues to
neglect the nationalist underpinnings evident in attempts to expel American in-
vaders from Iraq. The nationalist character driving the violent factions has been
more of a focus, however, of framing in the Independent-Left American press.

Erasing Resistance to Occupation

Over the last few years of the occupation, the mainstream media consistently
reported the war in Iraq in a way that represented the American presence as a
democratizing, humanitarian agent, and framed resistance fighters as foreign,
malicious, fanatical, and repressive. Under this archetype, those who attack U.S.
occupying forces are viewed as "one of the biggest thorns in the side of the
Americans," as the New York Times aptly puts it.I5 The goal of such framing is
obvious: the American media has sided with the Bush administration in attempt-
ing to convince the American people that the "pacification" campaign is neces-
sary in order to assist Iraq in a transition to democracy, or at least to prevent
civil war. Nationalistic pressures arising in the media, amongst the public, and
from the Bush administration portray those standing against American occupa-
tion as enemies of the state. At the same time, US. complicity and culpability in
supporting Iraqi paramilitary groups that have escalated ethnic tensions in Iraq
has been neglected in most reporting on Iraq's emerging civil war. Rather, such
portrayals have been left to other news media outside the establishment press.
The growth of these pararnilitaries, as well as the corporate media's limited re-
action to them, is addressed throughout this chapter.
The American mass media views the significance of Iraq's violent resis-
tance factions to be limited to a very specific range. At best, they are standing in
the way of the country's "progress"; at worst, "they," often inaccurately lumped
together in the singular, represent a cruel and conniving campaign to destroy
American lives for the sake of irrationality, greed, power, and various other self-
interested motives. Media condemnations of anti-occupation groups take many
forms, some implied, and others more overt. Some of the main negative and
condescending labels used to refer to resistance fighters include: "rebels," "mili-
tants," "terrorists," "insurgents," "militiamen," "anti-American insurgents,"
"foreign fighters," "Islamic extremists," "foreign rebels" "extremist Shiites,"
"rebel militias," "radical Shiite clerics," "foreign guerillas," "anti-American