Memorial Day Propaganda - a response

[12 12 2000]

I wrote a letter to Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe after reading his column today, a typical American Memorial Day paeon to American heroism and righteousness in service to the American empire. Here's the link to Jacoby's column followed by my letter - for what it's worth.

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped... />

Mr. Jacoby - Having just finished reading your Memorial Day narrative on the heroism of Rafael Peralta, I find myself disgusted, yet again, at American media's ritual glorification of the blood sport we call war. Truly sincere, honorable people like Sgt. Peralta, who make almost super-human sacrifices for what they believe, idealistically and naively, is to protect freedom and democracy in "America" are used as props to personalize and humanize the Big Lie that the Iraq debacle is some kind of just and noble endeavor - this in the face of overwhelming evidence that this most malevolent of wars was pre-conceived and based upon an endless line of lies, deception and propaganda by the Bush administration, enabled by the romantic mythology disseminated by the likes of you and the Globe. (I found it quite amusing to see the pictures and story of members of Iraq's priveliged class having a jolly old time at a Baghdad amusement park in the same issue of the Boston Sunday Globe, reinforceing your theme and that of the newspaper - "Iraq in Transition." To what, I wonder? A wonderland of American-style self-centered consumption?) And propaganda it is - shameful and shameless. In many ways the subtlety of it is worse than the best of Joseph Goebells ( Low Blow? Ask the uncounted tens of thousands of innocents, to date, killed by the American war machine that gets its moralistic nourishment from an American public brainwashed with the simplistic, romantic war narratives they receive, not only on holidays like Memorial Day, but daily from thousands of establishment propagandists like yourself).

Want specifics? Your numerous use of the word "terrorists" is my major complaint. You term Falluja "the city of terrorists, " and during your combat description you write, "He threw open the door, preparing to rush in - and three terrorists with AK-47s opened fire. He was shot multiple times...". You toss out a loaded, demonizing label like "terrorist" to your readers like it was nothing but a handful of stale bread crumbs to a frenetic flock of hungry park pigeons! How do you know who was in that house? The identiy of those with the AK-47s? Because the U.S. military tells you so? Tell it to the post-Vietnam generations, Mr. Jacoby, not to those of us old enough to have wised up to this con game.

Just who in the hell is the terrorist in Iraq? Those who are resisting a brutal, murderous, and entirely illegal invasion of their country (a war of aggression, much like, say, the Nazis into Poland? Another low blow? Then why not go to Falluja yourself, Mr. Jacoby, and ask the former denizens of Falluja, those that are still alive, that is, if they believe there is any qualitative difference?), or those that have bombed and massacred innocent civilians, probably in numbers greater than Saddam's regime, over the last 15 years? By using that "T" word instead of 'insurgents,' 'rebels' or, more accurately, 'resistance fighters,' you are acting as a Bush Adminstration propagandist, intentionally morphing the atrocity of 9/11 and Iraq into the public's mind .

As for me, Mr. Jacoby, I'll be spending this Memorial Day meditating on the despicable rulers named Bush Cheney Rumsfeld Rice Bolton Abrams Rove etc., truly a rogues' gallery, who are stealing the precious lives of the un-named (if Sinclair stations black out this year's Ted Koppel reading of their names) working and poorer classes to pursue the unconscionable agenda of America's monied elite. I'll meditate on, literally, the mindless disposal of heroic Sgt.Peralta's life, and that of the almost 1,700 other American troops killed in this criminal, morally bankrupt war; on the international troops who have lost their lives due to the cowardice of their own political leaders to stand up to the almighty American dollar; I will meditate on the un-counted American and international 'private contractors' (another nice little euphemism, huh, Mr. Jacoby? out of your linguistic toolbox from which to hide the truth of the matter - MERCENARIES); also on the wives and husbands, daughters and sons, mothers and fathers of all who have lost their loved ones to this initial thrust of the deranged neocon wet-dream of an American Reich; on the Iraqi resistance, who are fighting, killing and being killed to oust the occupiers; and on the reactionary suicide bombers, desperate beyond American and western comprehension; and most of all, on this Memorial Day I will meditate upon all those un-counted innocent Iraqi victims, each and every drop of blood of whom is on the hands of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Jeff Jacoby, op ed columnist for the Boston Globe.

There is nothing romantic about this war, sir (sir, a euphemism for propagandist).

[MadisonProgressive]

1. Great letter! Thank you!