Page 121 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Railing Iraqi Resistance 111

and as an "illegitimate religious leader7'-his followers nothing more than
"a bunch of Some writers tried to separate Sadr from the majority of
Shiites. Fareed Zakaria claimed that "the 'weightier elements' within the Shia
community, like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani do not support the firebrand cleric
. . . nor does Al-Sadr have a large following."56 Some, however, have resorted to
racist stereotypes against the entire Shia community. Steven Vincent of the Na-
tional Review denounces Sadr for "lead[ing] his nation off a cliff' by resisting
the U.S., explaining, "there is something unstable and ungovernable at the heart
of Shiism-something that is not specific to Sadr's intifada, but which in fact
runs through the entire religious sect: a deep attachment to lost causes, alien-
ation, failure, and death."57 The Chicago Tribune deemed Sadr a "troublesome
cleric," with the "potential to thwart U.S. hopes for a resolution" of re-emerging
Iraqi sectarian tensions, questioning whether he "can be tamed, disarmed, prod-
ded back into the political process or perhaps military crushed."58
Largely exempt from mainstream reporting and framing of the conflict is
the argument made outside the mainstream press that resistance groups, al-
though decentralized and diverse, represent a nationalist rebellion against the
American occupying authority. In light of his research into, and hands-on ex-
perience interviewing members of various resistance cells, Zaki Chebab explains
in his book Inside the Resistance, that guerilla cells often seem to be comprised
of between 5 and 8 people: "small cells ensure the continuation of the resistance
in case the American forces arrest them," as the capture or death of the members
of one small cell has little effect on other resistance cekS9 In Tom Dispatch, a
progressive news source and Left blog, Michael Shwartz also repeats claims of
decentralized resistance. Schwartz addresses the "assumption that [Iraqi resis-
tance] is organized into a familiar hierarchical form in which the leadership ex-
ercises strategic and day-to-day control over a pyramid shaped organization."
This type of structure, "described by both military strategists and organizational
sociologists as a 'Command and Control' structure, " is problematic, according
to Schwartz, as it may "apply well to a large bureaucracy or a conventional
army, but invariably provides a poor picture of a guerilla army, which helps ex-
plain American military failures in Iraq." In light of this decentralized nationalist
rebellion, military "progress" in the suppression of various groups seems to have
been limited, as critical reporting suggests. Patrick Cockbum of the Independent
of London reports from Iraq that, "military progress claimed by Bush is largely
illusory. . . [the U.S.] is confronting the five million-strong Sunni Arab commu-
nity which can carry on the fight as long as it wants. . . . The Sunni community
has also learnt that its armed resistance is very effective in achieving its aims."60
The mainstream media has occasionally admitted that attacks on the U.S.
are driven by nationalist aspirations for a sovereign Iraq. The New York Times,
for example, acquiesced that A1 Sadr's anti-occupation Mahdi Army is "less a
discrete military organization than a populist movement that includes everyone
from doctors to policemen to tribal sheiks."' USA Today reported that "the in-
surgents. . . seem to be gaining broad acceptance" in Iraq, and that "more than
half of Iraqis say killing U.S. troops can be justified in at least some ca~es.''~
Along the same lines, the Associated Press addressed the fears of American