In 2002, Hugo Chavez was temporarily removed from office by a US-backed coup, which would shortly be overturned. This was the first failure of the neocons’ “regime change” foreign policy. A film entitled “The Revolution will not be Televised” showed some of the events.
Today in Iraq, we have an interesting switch: a conventional Sunni television station, shut down for it’s provocative programming, has now re-appeared as an “underground” satellite broadcaster(I know, the metaphor is mixed) . And, freed from any constraints, the programming is much more rabid anti-US, showing video of our soldiers being shot, blown up, etc. From the Los Angeles Times:
The scene on the newly launched Al Zawraa satellite television channel could have been footage from the boardroom of any company, if it weren’t for the ski masks the men wore and the subject of the meeting: future mortar attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.
The renegade, pro-insurgent Al Zawraa channel, with a 24-hour diet of propaganda against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government, has become something of a sensation throughout the country.
From The Fourth Rail:
Al-Zawraa television was set up by Mishan al-Jabouri, a former member of the Iraqi parliament and leader of the Sunni Arab Front for Reconciliation and Liberation. Al-Jabouri fled to Syria after being charged with corruption for embezzling government funds and purportedly for supporting al-Qaeda
There is an ongoing controversy over the network’s sponsorship. Is al-Zawraa supported by the Islamic Army in Iraq, a Baathist dominated insurgent group, or al-Qaeda in Iraq’s Mujahideen Shura Council? The distinction may be meaningless, as the two organizations have worked together in the past to conduct terrorist attacks throughout the country against Iraqi and Coalition security forces..
Who watches this channel? difficult to tell, but it certainly would seem to be a rallying point and information source for those who do. Is it winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis? more so than we are? I wonder if it has shown the video of American soldiers taunting Iraqi children with water bottles, or the one in which our boys teach unknowing children to chant “Fuck Iraq, Fuck Iraq….”, maybe the Abu Ghraib stills and videos; geez, the possibilities are virtually endless. From the Times piece:
Broadcast staples include images of U.S. soldiers manhandling Iraqi women, photos from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and footage of Iraqi children burned and injured in alleged U.S. attacks.
The station also loops shaky, slow-motion footage of U.S. vehicles being blown up and American soldiers, often in crosshairs, crumpling to the ground after being shot by snipers.
Have to say, I have not personally seen their broadcasts, but, I imagine there is some pretty powerful stuff flying into Iraq homes. I’m not a fan of showing videos of people getting blown up. Especially our people. Over the line, Smokey. But as the recent ACLU fiasco shows, we have sort of pioneered the practice.
It’s always particularly galling when one’s own strategy gets turned around, and used against one. That is what’s happening in Iraq. And we have no way of dealing with it, because our one and only strategy is to kill everyone who disagrees with us. Bush said it, and he meant it. It’s too late to “win hearts and minds.” We don’t have the resources, or the skills, or, frankly, the motivation, to do it. It would take a sea change in attitude, and George W. Bush is certainly not the man for that. The current administration fears and hides the truth, and has tried to suppress dissenting opinions about Iraq, both in the US and “in country;” but that is a bankrupt policy, as the Sunni broadcasts show.
Bush and his handlers can’t “win” this war, all they know how to do is dig a deeper hole. We have to get out of there.
Over the line, Smokey! 