Maple Leafs
04-12-2003, 01:59 PM
Yes, YAIA (yet another Iraq article).
We've seen and read a lot about the Iraqi reaction to "liberation", but this is an interesting take on how scenes of cheering Iraqis welcoming the US is playing in the Arab world. David Warren typically leans to the right of most issues, so add however many grains of salt you feel are needed:
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.asp?id=B15481AD-72CC-4CD6-9E41-F0139A4AC1C5
Excerpt:
The sight of Iraqis in Baghdad pulling down the statue of Saddam, beating its face with their shoes, and kissing photographs of Mr. Bush thus arrived like a missile into what Fouad Ajami has so discerningly called, "the dream palace of the Arabs" -- the collective fantasy into which powerful media such as Al Jazeera had been playing. It was no mere surprise; it was a profound shock to the entire nervous system of the Arab world. It was the first shock on anything like this scale since June 1967, when another generation of Arabs woke to the discovery that tiny Israel had destroyed the massed armies of all the most powerful Arab states, in just six days. But that did not happen with the immediacy of live television.
...
And it is precisely the same story everywhere, the same audience reactions when the joy of the liberated Baghdadis was presented on screen, and almost without commentary. Wherever this spectacle appeared, there was weeping, anger, then flicking off the TV. But the anger previously concentrated by the Arab world's media and leaders upon the United States, Britain, and Israel, was suddenly deflected upon the same media and leaders; or else meaninglessly against the euphoric crowds in Baghdad. Those who swore were suddenly swearing not at CNN but at Al Jazeera, not at George W. Bush, but at Saddam, and Saudi sheikhs, and Hosni Mubarak. Suddenly, all at once, this terrible recognition that they had been lied to -- lied to by everyone; lied to on an extraordinary, systematic scale; told the biggest Lie that had ever been told.
...
The reality is that in the Arab world, a vast audience that has been told and has been living in a lie, a fantasy about reality itself, has nowhere to turn. Vast numbers of people, who live in much closer-knit communities than we do, are suddenly left to think and rethink everything they know, and all by themselves. This is an extraordinary, collective, psychic disaster.
We've seen and read a lot about the Iraqi reaction to "liberation", but this is an interesting take on how scenes of cheering Iraqis welcoming the US is playing in the Arab world. David Warren typically leans to the right of most issues, so add however many grains of salt you feel are needed:
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.asp?id=B15481AD-72CC-4CD6-9E41-F0139A4AC1C5
Excerpt:
The sight of Iraqis in Baghdad pulling down the statue of Saddam, beating its face with their shoes, and kissing photographs of Mr. Bush thus arrived like a missile into what Fouad Ajami has so discerningly called, "the dream palace of the Arabs" -- the collective fantasy into which powerful media such as Al Jazeera had been playing. It was no mere surprise; it was a profound shock to the entire nervous system of the Arab world. It was the first shock on anything like this scale since June 1967, when another generation of Arabs woke to the discovery that tiny Israel had destroyed the massed armies of all the most powerful Arab states, in just six days. But that did not happen with the immediacy of live television.
...
And it is precisely the same story everywhere, the same audience reactions when the joy of the liberated Baghdadis was presented on screen, and almost without commentary. Wherever this spectacle appeared, there was weeping, anger, then flicking off the TV. But the anger previously concentrated by the Arab world's media and leaders upon the United States, Britain, and Israel, was suddenly deflected upon the same media and leaders; or else meaninglessly against the euphoric crowds in Baghdad. Those who swore were suddenly swearing not at CNN but at Al Jazeera, not at George W. Bush, but at Saddam, and Saudi sheikhs, and Hosni Mubarak. Suddenly, all at once, this terrible recognition that they had been lied to -- lied to by everyone; lied to on an extraordinary, systematic scale; told the biggest Lie that had ever been told.
...
The reality is that in the Arab world, a vast audience that has been told and has been living in a lie, a fantasy about reality itself, has nowhere to turn. Vast numbers of people, who live in much closer-knit communities than we do, are suddenly left to think and rethink everything they know, and all by themselves. This is an extraordinary, collective, psychic disaster.