But who is arming the Sunnis?
CNN just did a pretty good piece dutifully outlining the evidence provided by the Bush administration and the military that Iran is supplying the Shia militias, but, still, I wanted to scream.
Where is the other side of that key story? Who is arming the Sunnis?
There's floating evidence in the public space that the Sunni are being funded armed by elements in Saudi, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Pakistan. Certainly by now, after fighting almost four years in Anbar, the US military has come across more than a bit of hard evidence that the Sunni weapons and money are coming in from abroad, and yet, that's not being reported.
(There isn't a little elf workshop in Ramadi churning out RPG's, machine guns, and AA missiles.)
I think this bothers me so much because it goes to the very nub of media manipulation. The US government is selectively releasing information to force stories and shape perception, and this time, I'm afraid that it's going to work.
Most Americans don't pay enough attention to know that the vast majority of dead US soldiers are being killed by Sunni insurgents, but supplied with this inflammatory partial view, they will make the unjustified connection that the Bush administration is trying to shape, that Iran is responsible for the US deaths in Iraq.
The beauty of this media campaign is that the administration never has to explicitly make the argument that Iran is killing US soldiers. They make their case in the conditional, "If Iranians are found trying to kill US troops," and then supply the supporting evidence of Iran supplying arms. The direct connection of these two elements are left to the viewer. (Roughly a third of America still believes that Saddam was behind/involved in 9/11.)
It's all part of a very clever effort to displace blame from the administration to an outside villain.
And, if there's one truism about America, it loves to have a villain.
(Sorry, if this is rough or makes no sense. I'm in a hurry, but am so mad I had to post something. I may reedit later.)
Where is the other side of that key story? Who is arming the Sunnis?
There's floating evidence in the public space that the Sunni are being funded armed by elements in Saudi, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Pakistan. Certainly by now, after fighting almost four years in Anbar, the US military has come across more than a bit of hard evidence that the Sunni weapons and money are coming in from abroad, and yet, that's not being reported.
(There isn't a little elf workshop in Ramadi churning out RPG's, machine guns, and AA missiles.)
I think this bothers me so much because it goes to the very nub of media manipulation. The US government is selectively releasing information to force stories and shape perception, and this time, I'm afraid that it's going to work.
Most Americans don't pay enough attention to know that the vast majority of dead US soldiers are being killed by Sunni insurgents, but supplied with this inflammatory partial view, they will make the unjustified connection that the Bush administration is trying to shape, that Iran is responsible for the US deaths in Iraq.
The beauty of this media campaign is that the administration never has to explicitly make the argument that Iran is killing US soldiers. They make their case in the conditional, "If Iranians are found trying to kill US troops," and then supply the supporting evidence of Iran supplying arms. The direct connection of these two elements are left to the viewer. (Roughly a third of America still believes that Saddam was behind/involved in 9/11.)
It's all part of a very clever effort to displace blame from the administration to an outside villain.
And, if there's one truism about America, it loves to have a villain.
(Sorry, if this is rough or makes no sense. I'm in a hurry, but am so mad I had to post something. I may reedit later.)
posted by mikevotes at
12:00 PM
6 Comments:
I feel your frustration. I don't know how many times I've yelled at the TV demanding answers to, what seem to me, pattently obvious questions, in reports that are the journalistic equivalent to a songs where only every other note is sung!
And I don't even have cable! :)
By
-epm, at 2:11 PM
It makes a lot of sense and you make great points. Media manipulation gets really old and in regards to the war in Iraq it gets down right dangerous. Especially when we are talking about provoking a war with Iran.
Didn't we learn anything when we provoked a war with Iraq?!!
By
Handsome B. Wonderful, at 2:41 PM
I was just overwhelmed at the shaping of it all, and the utter willingness of the media to play along.
To some degree, you can't blame a CNN, because they have been handed a pretty big attention grabbing story on a platter, but at the same time, they do abandon their journalistic responsibility for providing information within context.
Is this Iran information a story, definitely, but reporting it this way is simply wrong. And, wrong in a very dangerous way.
(EPM, no cable? But how do you hear what Bill Kristol has to say?)
By
mikevotes, at 4:13 PM
No I think this is good the way you form it. In a way it makes sense since we are all limited by what the media feeds us: we are not there.
One thing I would perhaps venture is that at the beginning of the confilct we were told that the majority of funding and leadership for the insurgency was coming from "foreign fighters'. They named names but only in passing and always in numbers (Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iran). For most American's these are all Arab states that are virtually indistiguishable.
It is truly brilliant to now focus on Iran without clearly stating (falsely) that they were responsible for the earlier funding and leadership. Now it is assumed. When Americans harken back to the early insurgency that was led by "foreign fighters" which they never really locked down (with the possible exception of Syria) they now make the connection with Iran. The Syrian Iranian hizbolla connection helps bridge this gap. Never mind the obvious problem of Sunni vs. Shia support: if Reyes can't make the distinction, neither can the average American.
Yes, it is infuriating. But what can we do?
Blog on I suppose.
By
Praguetwin, at 5:36 PM
P.S. Obviously Iran is not an Arab state, but who in America knows that? 10%? 20%? 25% is the max. They are all the same to most Americans, sadly.
By
Praguetwin, at 5:38 PM
We are beholden to the media, but the media, in turn, in the current state of Iraq, the media is beholden to government sources, because it's not like they can go out and wander the country looking for information. That's one reason a strategy like this will work. I guess the question is the degree to which it will work.
That's a really interesting point about "foreign fighters" being such a malleable and transferrable phrase.
And, I'd put it the Arab/Persian understanding at below 10 if you were asking me. Americans do have a pretty good sense of Saudi, but that's about it. Egypt, Syria, Jordan are just objects.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 6:08 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home