Page 118 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

108 Chapter 5

Fighting Democracy and Prosperity

A common method of discounting resistance groups is to portray them as ene-
mies of civilization, prosperity, and democracy. Will Dunham of ABC World
News Tonight speaks of the need to "guard against violence intended to derail
Iraq's parliamentary election^."^^ The New York Times worried about the possi-
bility that this "tenacious insurgencyn3' could "intimidate prospective voters,"
and "derail" or disrupt the Iraqi elections that took place in January of 2005:~
The Washington Post's editors sought to portray an inverse relationship between
an increase in rebel attacks and a decrease in the possibility of democracy. Cit-
ing bombings by the Islamist group, The Army of al-Sunna, the paper's editors
argued that the group's escalation of violence reinforces "a stark choice between
those who seek to build a new political order based on tolerance and democracy
and those who would seek to replace Saddam Hussein with another totalitarian
regime."39 While the Washington Post's portrayal of the group is clearly accu-
rate on one level, it also speaks to the failure of media to distinguish between
Islamist resistance dedicated to destroying secular democracy, and resistance
groups interested in establishing an independent government outside of not only
U.S. domination, but that of Saddam Hussein's Baath party as well. The failure
to portray such a nuanced understanding of Iraqi resistance is reinforced by the
Los Angeles Times, which views election ballots as "the Insurgent's ~nem~.'"
The paper's editors believe that "Elections would hurt the guerillas' cause by
depriving them of the claim that the nation's rulers were imposed by invaders
and thus have no legitimacy."4' However, the Los Angeles Times' editors neglect
to explain the differences between various resistance groups, referring to a sin-
gle "insurgency."
Aside from limiting democracy, resistance groups are also said to stand in
the way of humanitarian reconstruction efforts. The Los Angeles Times claims
that the Iraqi people have "suffered widespread violence" as local resistance
fighters have "festered and overtaken local police."2 Guerilla "sabotage" of "the
nation's fragile infrastructure" is seen as "thwarting economic progress" in the
post-Saddam era.43 Victor Davis Hanson of the New Republic criticizes resis-
tance forces by arguing: "the promise of consensual government, gender equal-
ity, and the rule of law may indeed save the Iraqi people and improve their own
security-but only when those who wish none of it learn that trying to stop it
will get them killed.'A4
While condemnations of guerilla sabotage of Iraqi infrastructure are also
well taken, they also draw attention away from American war crimes and terror-
ism, as seen in the heavy bombing of civilian areas and the United States' exten-
sive record of destroying Iraqi infrastructure spanning back to the first Gulf
War. Thoroughly examining the effects of this bombing on Iraq's infrastructure
is not considered a high priority in most media coverage of the war, although
such a focus has been the emphasis of reporting outside the mainstream. In his
article in the Progressive magazine: "The Secret Behind the Sanctions, How the
U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply," Thomas Nagy summarizes
Defense Intelligence Agency documents showing that, by bombing Iraqi water