"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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Iraq & media management
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April 16, 2005
If you have a moment this weekend do have a read of Mark Danner's article Iraq: The Real Election It separates out what we see on our television screens from what is happening on the ground with the Iraqi's.
What we see on the television is the management of the news to fit the US narrative about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Danner says:
"During the more than two years since the Iraq war began Americans have seen on their television screens its four major turning points: the fall of Baghdad, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the "transfer of authority" to the interim Allawi government, and now the Iraq elections. Each has been highly successful as an example of the management of images—the toppling of Saddam's statue, the intrusive examination of the unkempt former dictator's mouth and beard, the handing of documents of sovereignty from coalition leader L. Paul Bremer to Iraqi leader Iyad Allawi, the voters happily waving their purple fingers— and each image has powerfully affirmed the broader story of what American leaders promised citizens the Iraq war would be. They promised a war of liberation to unseat a brutal dictator, rid him of his weapons of mass destruction, and free his imprisoned people, who would respond with gratitude and friendship, allowing American troops to return very quickly home."
Now we know that this didn't actually happen. But Danner probes this further. He adds:
"With the exception of the failure to find WMDs, the images have fit so cleanly into the original narrative of the war that they could almost have been designed at the time the war was being planned. And because these images fit so closely with the story of what Americans were told the war would be, they have welcomed each of them with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, after the images faded, the events on the ground that followed refused to fit that original narrative."
Election Day held the narrative together. It gave it new life. It was the perfect symbol of liberation as it embodied the war's purpose in a single image of Iraqis waiting to express their voices in an exercise of democratic will.We in Australia were flooded with this for days on end.
How did it work on the ground?
Danner was able to talk to people as they voted. They say things differently:
'"Why are you here, I asked a young man wearing a Ray's Pool Hall shirt. "Why?" He looked surprised. "To vote." But why, why did you come? "We are a normal people, an independent people. We want to be like other people, to vote. We need security, stability—that's all." He volunteered nothing about Saddam, about the war, the Americans, the occupation; when asked he seemed reluctant, like many of his neighbors in line, to discuss them.
A young woman, wearing a beautiful sea-green abeya, asked by a colleague about Saddam, grew annoyed. "No, this is not about Saddam. Forget Saddam. I am an engineer and I have no job. Neither does my husband." Then, a bit exasperated, "We want a normal country."'
Danner says that the mostly middle-class people he spoke to expressed this view again and again: the desperate need for security, for stability---for normalcy. Danner adds that:
"We needed someone to say: Thank heaven Saddam has gone, thank heaven the Americans came, thank you for giving us democracy. And no one—at least here in this voting place in Baghdad—seemed to want to say it."
There lies the gap between western media representations and everyday life in Baghdad.
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