http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dd_guttenplan/2007/05/dont_get_fooled_again.htmlDon't get fooled again
When George Bush's desperate 'surge' in Iraq fails, we Guardian readers will know it's all Tehran's fault.
DD Guttenplan
Articles
Latest
Show all
Profile
All DD Guttenplan articles
About Webfeeds May 22, 2007 1:00 PM | Printable version
History really does repeat itself. Either that or the Bush administration has decided to show its commitment to the environment by recycling lies. Those are the only firm conclusions to be drawn from the Guardian's front page story this morning.
Iran, we are told, has a secret plan to force the US and Britain to withdraw from Iraq. Not only that, but "Iran has reversed its previous policy in Afghanistan" and is now supporting the Taliban. So when George Bush's famous "surge" - a desperate gambit to prop up a bankrupt policy - fails to usher in the cooperative commonwealth in Iraq, we Guardian readers will know it's really all Tehran's fault.
Attentive readers may have noticed that the story itself - though obviously based on a single anonymous "senior US official in Baghdad" and "a senior administration official in Washington" - was carefully drafted to include Iranian denials and the acknowledgement that even most of the US congress believe Iraq is in the grip of a civil war. No, what struck me about the story wasn't its credulous tone so much as the sense, as the great philosopher and NY Yankee backstop Yogi Berra once said, of déjà vu all over again.
I've spent most of the past month reading through accounts of the Vietnam War, particularly those of IF Stone, the legendary radical journalist, and David Halberstam, whose The Best and the Brightest could have been a shooting script for the invasion of Iraq with Donald Rumsfeld in the role of Robert McNamara.
Then, too, an internal social and political conflict was blamed on foreign meddling. Lyndon Johnson bombed North Vietnam into rubble on the theory that if he cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail the Viet Cong would have to surrender. But as Stone demonstrated - using the Pentagon's own statistics - 95% of Viet Cong weapons were captured from their foes. When the State Department issued a White Paper purporting to prove the insurgents were little more than pawns for Hanoi and Beijing, Stone demolished it. Richard Nixon used a similar argument to justify the invasion of Cambodia--with even more spectacularly disastrous results.
South Africa's apartheid regime was often described - in the right-wing press - as resisting Soviet infiltration. Supporters of the Greek colonels in the 1960s used the same sales pitch to keep military aid flowing to the junta. Indeed, this particular lie is so old that as Stone told the crowd at a 1965 Berkeley teach-in, the British claimed the revolution in 1776 was a French plot.
There was, of course, some evidence to support that last charge. And there is probably some truth in allegations of Iranian mischief-making in Iraq. But before the Guardian - of all papers! - lends its front page to the propaganda campaign, surely we readers have a right to see the evidence.
Where are these "huge stockpiles" of Iranian weapons? Or the captured infiltrators? I'm not defending the theocrats in Tehran - still less those who foment sectarian violence in Baghdad. And I resist - and resent - the implication that those of us who favour immediate withdrawal of British and American forces are doing the mullahs' dirty work. Instead I'm suggesting we pause before letting tragedy degenerate into farce. Because if that happens I doubt any of us will be laughing.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
