(Robert Fisk) Defeat is victory. Death is life

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

Everyone in the Middle East rewrites history, but never before have we had a US administration so wilfully, dishonestly and ruthlessly reinterpreting tragedy as success, defeat as victory, death as life - helped, I have to add, by the compliant American press. I'm reminded not so much of Vietnam as of the British and French commanders of the First World War who repeatedly lied about military victory over the Kaiser as they pushed hundreds of thousands of their men through the butchers' shops of the Somme, Verdun and Gallipoli. The only difference now is that we are pushing hundreds of thousands of Arabs though the butchers' shops - and don't even care.

Last week's visit to Beirut by one of the blindest of George Bush's bats - his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice - was indicative of the cruelty that now pervades Washington. She brazenly talked about the burgeoning "democracies" of the Middle East while utterly ignoring the bloodbaths in Iraq and the growing sectarian tensions of Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the key to her indifference can be found in her evidence to the Senate Committee on International Affairs where she denounced Iran as "the greatest strategic challenge" facing the US in the region, because Iran uses policies that "contradict the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States".

As Bouthaina Shaaban, one of the brightest of Syria's not always very bright team of government ministers, noted: "What is the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States? Should Middle East states adapt themselves to that nature, designed oceans away?" As Maureen Dowd, the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times, observed this month, Bush "believes in self-determination only if he's doing the determining ... The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react." And conniving with rogue regimes, too, Dowd might have added.

(...)

http://www.globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=6686

[rodeodance]

1. Condi= "one of the blindest of George Bush's bats"

one of the blindest of George Bush's bats

[pennylane100]

2. Robert Fisk is one of my favorite reporters.

I am currently reading his latest book "The Great War For Civilization", it as about the Middle East and I strongly recomment it,

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Me too.

The book is huge and almost overwhelming in its broad sweep, but it is a great read. He is the best of the best in middle east reporting.

[AlamoDemoc]

3. wow! that's brilliant article..thanks

[Nomen Tuum]

4. IF there is a "liberal" press, why do they FAIL to carry Fisk's columns?

Fisk nails those liars to the wall; "COMPLIANT AMERICAN PRESS"!

Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Idi Amin never had a press that kissed their ass 24/7 like Bush has.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. In a sense you are right.

"Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Idi Amin never had a press that kissed their ass 24/7 like Bush has."

My first thought was that of course these tyrants had their compliant media. However everybody knew it was just government bullshit being spewed. The brilliance of the new fascism is that it comes with its nominal freedoms. We are free to consume. We get to choose from a myriad of media outlets, all of them seemingly independent and free to utter whatever nonsense they choose. In this cacophony of apparent freedom is a carefully crafted greek chorus, a uniform message that is enforced not directly by brute government force, but indirectly through mechanisms both deliberate and simply evolved. It is a hideous but marvelous system.

[acmavm]

5. Great article. Now go out on the street and ask the first 100 people you

meet who Robert Fisk is. Or Seymour Hersch. Be prepared to get really depressed when they tell you they don't know.

But Ann Coulter or Judy Miller, that's another story.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. The first 100 are unlikely to know Doody Miller or Man Coulter either.

Lush Rimbaugh yes, Shrill O'Liely yes, but Miller is probably not well known and I doubt Coulter is well known outside of the poloraized political left and right.

[EuroObserver]

6. Do please also read yesterday's Independent article by Fisk

(also now at globalecho): Is the problem weather, or is it war? - on climate change, DU (Depleted Uranium dust) in European air samples: "something more serious is happening to our planet which we are not being told about"...

[Jim Lane]

7. Disagreeing with one of Fisk's jabs

He calls Maureen Dowd "the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times". For my money, the best is Paul Krugman. I'd add that Bob Herbert and Nicholas Kristof are also worthwhile.

[dooner]

8. Rumsfeld - "the reprehensible man"

"Take Donald Rumsfeld, the reprehensible man who helped to kick off the "shock and awe" mess that has now trapped more than 100,000 Americans in the wastes of Iraq. He's been taking a leisurely trip around North Africa to consult some of America's nastiest dictators..."