|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
CNN's Iraq Story Backfires Barry Farber In 1932, when the Depression was earning its capital D-dimensions in America, the Soviet Union, then only 14 years old, got hold of a newsreel showing police beating American workers protesting outside a factory and carrying them away. The commisars couldn't wait to make hundreds of copies and show them in every movie theater in the communist nation. After all, this was an American newsreel about turmoil in America and undeniably true. They wasted a lot of film. They showed the newsreel exactly one time in one Moscow theater and then ordered it jerked and all copies destroyed. The reason: The Russian people were heard walking out of the theater saying, "Hey, did you see the shoes on those American workers they were beating? Wow! They looked like real leather shoes and they didn't even have to stuff the bottoms with old newspapers to cover up the holes!"
If our anti-Bush media were as sharp as those Soviet censors they would surely have jerked a series of interviews CNN did with a whole bunch of ordinary Iraqis on the the streets of Bagdad. They were conducting a popularity poll of American troops among the Iraqi people and almost all the comments were negative. The American troops lost that little poll by a landslide and I don't think I'm being either paranoid or prescient when I suggest the folks at CNN were pleased with that result; every bit as pleased as the Soviet propagandists were originally with the newsreel of American police beating American workers. It was only when you listened to the reason why those man-in-the-street Iraqis were down on the Americans that you realized the exploding cigar had gone off in CNN's face. Absent was any reference to "American imperialists," "foreign aggressors," "enemy thugs," "wanton immoral invaders," "modern Crusaders" or anything of the like.
Story Continues Below
Neither did they complain the greedy Americans were there to steal their oil or turn Iraq into an anti-Islamic, pro-Zionist base in the Middle East. What then? They were complaining that the American forces were failing to provide security!
In other words, the viewer could infer, if more American troops were there and the terrorists couldn't explode their bomb-rigged cars and trucks in front of police academies and in crowded markets anymore; then their antipathy toward American troops would vanish.
One of the Iraqis said, "I just don't feel safe unless I see American troops all around me."
The video piece was anti-American, alright, but very far from the kind of anti-Americanism CNN was presumably aiming for. Let's do a little thought-experiment. The older and more politically aware you are, the more you're likely to enjoy this mental journey.
Pretend there was a CNN during World War II with the ability and agility to roam and cover whatever it pleased the way it does today. Nazi forces occupied most of Europe.
Can you imagine Norwegians in downtown Oslo telling the interviewer to be sure to put him down as being against the Nazi German troops all over the place because they weren't providing security? The Norwegian people hated the invaders the way conquered and occupied populations traditionally hate invaders. If the interviewer had followed up with the question, "Well, don't you dislike the presence of German troops because they're failing to provide security," he'd have gotten brown goat cheese spat in his face. Those people wanted liberation by the Allies, not "security" performed by Nazi Germans.
Now repeat that fantasy down through Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Poland, Greece, and the western part of Russia; the part occupied by Hitler. You would hear every intemperate, profane comment about brutes, thugs, torturers, thieves, sadists, and so on and on. To hear a single complaint, though, that the German troops weren't providing security you'd have to find a terrified pro-Nazi quisling in one of those countries as the Nazi empire was falling apart and the victorious allies were closing in bringing liberation and justice.
Now move forward to, say, 1989; Cold War time. The Soviet Red Army occupied Eastern Europe. Try to imagine a CNN man-in-the-street interview with a crowd of Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, East Germans and Bulgarians saying, "We don't like the Soviet troops crawling all over our homeland because they're failing to provide security! Those peoples felt conquered and occupied and angry. And, again, if you found anybody in that entire communist bloc whose complaint about the Soviet troops was that they weren't providing security, he'd have to be a panic-stricken local communist fearing the public wrath if Soviet "security" were ever to fail! All this reminds me of the early 1980s when the buzz out of Hollywood was that Warren Beatty was going to direct and play the lead role of American communist John Reed in a movie glorifying the Lenin-led Russian Revolution. I never believed Warren Beatty was a communist. That's just the way you show "courage" in Hollywood; do something calculated to enrage us sheep who hold prevailing points of view. The movie was "Reds," and I went to see it.
I was entertained, engrossed, and confused. It was a false alarm. It was not only not a pro-communist-revolution movie. It was an anti-communist-revolution movie! But it was supposed to be a pro-communist-revolution movie. I got the story straight from the one actor who reached for the rudder and turned that whole production around.
The late writer and freedom-fighter Jerzy Kosinski was the beneficiary of Warren Beatty's directorial fixation. Just as legendary directors have always simply had to have this certain actor or that certain actress, Beatty had to have Kosinski play the role of Gregory Zinoviev, the first communist propaganda chief. Jerzy apparently saw the whole thing taking shape, and did something freedom-lovers everywhere should stand up and applaud. Jerzy told Warren he'd play Zinoviev provided he could write the dialogue. Beatty probably figured, what the hell, how much damage can he do? Instead of damage, Kosinski succeeded in undoing the damage Beatty was about to do. Instead of a Beatty-Hollywood-Zinoviev, Jerzy gave us a historically authentic Zinoviev, who showed head-on the willingness of communist revolutionaries to lie, cheat, distort, manipulate, threaten and call in the armed thugs to keep John Reed from going home to America at the agreed-upon time because his "usefulness to the Revolution was too far from exhausted."
John Reed is buried in the Kremlin wall. I don't know where the movie "Reds" is buried, but I'd love to see it again.
CNN, in hearing the Iraqis on the street rail out against the Americans, knew only that they had the right melody. They didn't realize that melody had the wrong words. Those Iraqis did not complain as people who felt conquered and oppressed. They complained as people who were under-protected. Interesting. In the Nazi and Communist examples those calling for "security" would have been the minority of collaborators with the enemy occupation. In the case of today's Iraq, judging from the massive voting turnouts, those clamoring for security against terror are the true representatives of the Iraqi people. So, let's finish the thought-experiment. Can you imagine World War II Norwegians, Danes, Greeks, French, etc. calling for more German troops? Ridiculous; those countries were conquered and occupied. Can you imagine people in communist Poland, Hungary, Czecoslovakia, Romania, etc. calling for me Soviet troops? Ridiculous. Those countries were conquered and occupied. Yet here we see on CNN Iraqis calling for more American trools. They are not conquered and occupied. They are liberated and want peace and protection. Those Iraqis apparently weren't complaining about being occupied by American troops.
They were complaining about not being occupied enough.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Print Page 
Forward Page 
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2008 NewsMax.Com |