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Falling
At The Feet Of Power
Blair's
Sincerity And The Media
by
David Edwards and Media Lens
Dissident Voice
March
22, 2003
"Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to
destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore
your rights!" (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798)
"Our
armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as
liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men... The people of
Baghdad shall flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their
sacred laws." (General F.S. Maude, commander of British forces in Iraq,
1917)
Introduction - Laughing At The New Generation
Anyone
who has seen the footage of Hitler giving his rasping, demonic speeches must
surely wonder how anyone could have taken him seriously. Now, of course, Hitler
strikes us as plainly mad, a case study in egomania - we feel sure we have
grown beyond the gullibility of the past.
But
established power never loses its capacity to mesmerise. Psychologist Stanley
Milgram noted the disturbing fact that there is "a propensity for people
to accept definitions provided by legitimate authority", not because those
definitions are rooted in reason, but because "those in authority acquire,
for some, a suprahuman character". Philosopher Henry Thoreau identified
one interesting consequence:
"Every
generation laughs at the old generation, but follows religiously the new."
Thus,
while we casually mock the lunacies of the past, some people, notably
mainstream journalists, nod soberly at the lunacies of the present. Consider,
for example, the media response to Tony Blair's March 18 speech to parliament.
Impassioned
And Impressive - How To Fool The Press
Blair
is no Hitler, but in his speech he deployed a classic combination of
impassioned rhetoric and breathtaking distortion. The response of the free
press was as uniform as it was lamentable. Consider, for example, the next
day's editorial in the Daily Telegraph:
"Any fair-minded person who listened
to [Tuesday's] debate, having been genuinely unable to make up his mind about
military action against Saddam Hussein, must surely have concluded that Mr
Blair was right, and his opponents were wrong."
The
Sun declared:
"With passion in his voice and fire
in his belly, Tony Blair won his place in history alongside Winston Churchill
and Margaret Thatcher. In the most momentous speech of his political life he
set out the pressing reasons why there must now be war on President
Saddam."
The Guardian described how historians,
"will look back to read an impassioned and impressive speech by the prime
minister which may give future generations some inkling of how, when so many of
his own party opposed his policy so vehemently, Tony Blair nevertheless managed
to retain their respect and support".
The
Independent's editors wrote:
"Even those who most disagree with
war on Iraq have to salute the leadership qualities of the man who is about to
commit British forces to it. If there was one occasion in his premiership to
which Tony Blair needed to rise, it was yesterday's critical Commons debate. He
did so. Tony Blair's capacities as a performer and an advocate have never been
in doubt. But this was something much more... this was the most persuasive case
yet made by the man who has emerged as the most formidable persuader for war on
either side of the Atlantic. The case against President Saddam's 12-year
history of obstructing the United Nation's attempts at disarmament has never
been better made."
Even
the profoundly anti-war Mirror wrote:
"Even though the Mirror disagrees
strongly with Tony Blair over his determination to wage war on Iraq, we do not
question his belief in the rightness of what he is doing. It is one thing to
have principles others disagree with, another altogether to have no principles.
"Mr Blair and Robin Cook have helped
to restore the integrity of parliament at this crucial stage in the nation's
history. Both have made compelling arguments on each side of this debate - and
both have been listened to with respect."
All
of these reports focused heavily on the emotional intensity of Blair's speech.
What is so remarkable is that none of them, on the eve of surely one of the
most cynical, barbaric and outrageous war crimes in all history, were able to
expose the fraudulence of what Blair actually had to say.
In
his speech Blair said:
"We are asked now seriously to
accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history and intelligence,
[Saddam] decided unilaterally to destroy these weapons. I say such a claim is
palpably absurd."
It
is, however, as we have described many times in our Media Alerts, the claim of
UNSCOM weapons inspectors, who say that Iraq was "fundamentally
disarmed" (90-95%) of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) between
1991-98 without the threatening 'stick' of war - cooperation was in response to
the 'carrot' of lifted sanctions. Amazingly, on the very brink of war, the
resignation speech by Robin Cook, leader of the House of Commons, contained the
first ever mention we have seen in the media of this forbidden truth:
"Iraq probably has no weapons of
mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term."
This,
from a former foreign secretary and cabinet insider with access to Blair's much
vaunted intelligence information, undermined still further the government's
pitiful case for war. The Guardian, however, chose not to mention the claim in
its reports on the resignation, instead allowing Cook to repeat himself deep
inside the paper on page 26. In response to a complaint from Media Lens,
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger responded: "doing much more tomorrow.."
(Email to Media Lens, March 18)
Nothing
appeared - the entire mass media passed over Cook's claim as somehow
irrelevant. Interestingly, now that it no longer matters, we notice that
journalists have, as if by magic, started openly questioning whether Iraq
actually possesses any WMD. Now that it's too late, journalists will perhaps at
last be able to ask themselves why Saddam Hussein would prefer to hang on to
weapons of minimal strategic value rather than avert a massive invasion by
250,000 troops almost certain to end in his own death.
Blair
went on:
"Looking back over 12 years, we have
been victims of our own desire to placate the implacable, to persuade towards
the utterly reasonable."
We
have been the victims! Not the million Iraqi civilians who have died under
US/UK sanctions, which we can now presume were a decade-long murderous mistake,
given that the current action could have been taken in 1991 and is allegedly
mandated by UN resolutions stretching back to 1990. We are the victims - we,
the enforcers of policy of which Denis Halliday (who ran the UN oil for food
programme in Iraq), has said:
"I've been using the word
'genocide', because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq.
I'm afraid I have no other view at this late stage." (Interview with David
Edwards, May 2000)
We
are the victims, not the Iraqi people, of whom Hans von Sponeck, Halliday's
successor at the UN, said:
"How long should the civilian
population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never
done?" (Letter of resignation, February 13, 2000)
We
are the victims of our own reasonableness, with Iraq refusing ever to do
anything to cooperate to disarm. Former chief UNSCOM inspector, Scott Ritter,
takes a different view, one that has been effectively banned from the media:
"If this were argued in a court of
law, the weight of evidence would go the other way. Iraq has in fact
demonstrated over and over a willingness to cooperate with weapons
inspectors." (Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, War On Iraq, Profile, 2002,
p.25)
Blair
went on:
"That
is why this indulgence has to stop. Because it is dangerous."
Is
it an indulgence to seek to stop US power on the rampage? Is it indulgence to
challenge the likes of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle? Chief UN
weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has his own answer:
"I do not think it is reasonable to
close the door on inspections after three and a half months. I would have
welcomed more time." (Gary Younge, 'Sad Blix says he wanted more time for
inspections', the Guardian, March 20, 2003)
Blix
added that Iraq had been providing more cooperation in recent months than it
had in 10 years.
Would
it really have been dangerous to persevere with inspections for three or four
more months, as France, Germany, Russia, China and many others proposed? Tell
that to the civilian population of Iraq dying now with shock and awe etched on
their faces. Tell it to the high-level task force of the Council on Foreign
Relations which recently warned of likely terrorist attacks far worse than
September 11, including possible use of weapons of mass destruction within the
US, dangers that become "more urgent by the prospect of the US going to
war with Iraq". (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, 'Confronting
The Empire', February 1, 2003)
According
to Douglas Hurd, former Conservative foreign secretary, war on Iraq runs
"the risk of turning the Middle East into an inexhaustible recruiting
ground for anti-western terrorism". (Financial Times, January 3, 2003)
There
are many similar voices because there can be no doubt that the attack on Iraq
is exactly the kind of abuse of power that resulted in September 11. Blair's
insane talk of 'danger' recalls Howard Zinn's comment on political propaganda:
"The truth is so often the reverse
of what has been told us by our culture that we cannot turn our heads far
enough around to see it."
With
no limits on his willingness to distort the truth, Blair insisted in his speech
that an assault on Iraq will not generate more terrorism - al-Qaeda attacked
the US, not the other way around. But as Osama bin Laden himself tells us,
al-Qaeda's violence was a direct response to the horrors the US has visited on
the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples. Blair, though, dismisses the idea that the
West has caused the mass death of Iraqis, claiming Saddam is solely to blame
for suffering under sanctions. Again, the people who actually ran the sanctions
programme, and who resigned in protest, say this is just not true.
What
is so shocking is that Blair is able to lie in this way and is greeted, not
even with whispers of dissent, but with thunderous applause and praise.
Blair
then talked of the need to free Iraqi people "groaning under years of
dictatorship". But they have also, above all, been groaning under years of
US/UK sanctions while Clinton, Blair and Bush did nothing to act to stop the
mass death. And what of the people around the world groaning under other
dictatorships - tyrants who, like Saddam Hussein, are armed and supported by
Britain and the US? What about the 50,000 Kurdish dead and 3 million refugees,
some reduced to living in caves, groaning under Turkey's onslaught, with 80% of
the arms supplied by the US? What about the people of Colombia? What about the
Chechen people groaning under the merciless Russian onslaught? Of that misery
Blair said in 2000:
"Well, they have been taking their
action for the reasons they've set out because of the terrorism that has
happened in Chechnya. We've been calling for restraint in the Russian action,
but this is a fight that has been going on - a civil war within Russia."
(The Guardian, March 15, 2000)
Blair
tells us everything will be done to minimise civilian casualties in Iraq - the
vice-admiral of the US fifth fleet tells us, "It's hammer time."
Donald Rumsfeld tells us that the ferocity of the onslaught will be beyond
anything seen before in military combat.
Blair's
March 18 speech was packed with breathtaking lies, and yet Blair has
"helped to restore the integrity of parliament at this crucial stage in
the nation's history", according to the Mirror. It is of this cynic that
the Independent can say: "his patent sincerity has impressed, banishing
his reputation as a fickle politician without convictions".
These
editors, we believe, have been deceived by Blair's manic intensity and by his
affectation of impassioned sincerity. But it takes the conscious selection and
omission of facts to manipulate the truth in this way - it can't be done
honestly. Future generations will surely look back and laugh grimly at this
catastrophic moral and intellectual failure.
David Edwards is the editor of Media Lens, and the author of Burning All
Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (South End
Press, 1996). Email: editor@medialens.org. Visit the Media
Lens website: http://www.MediaLens.org
SUGGESTED ACTION:
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respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers
to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Write to the heads of BBC news and ITN expressing your views:
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Jonathan Munro, head of ITN newsgathering. Email: jonathan.munro@itn.co.uk
Write to the editors of The Guardian and The Observer: Alan
Rusbridger, Guardian editor Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Roger Alton, Observer editor Email: roger.alton@observer.co.uk
Simon Kelner, Independent editor Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk