Consuming American media coverage makes me queasy. The coverage of the beginning of the war is what we've come to expect. Tom Brokaw, smug and gleeful, seemed exhuberant about the beginning of the bombing. Grandly claiming (paraphrased here), you are about to witness the first fully televised war in history and unrivaled war footage. Yes, indeed with the all-American spin.
To get an idea of what journalists are saying in other parts of the world, check out this
article on Salon.com (not a member, watch a quick ad to gain access). Exerpts include:
From Arab news:
"The new totalitarian regime prevailing in America and taking hold in its satellites around the world has learned important lessons from the failed experiments of the past. The first of these lessons is that the greatest liability to the survival of a regime is a strong and erratic leader ... "
"In the new totalitarian system, people can say whatever they like, and it makes absolutely no difference.
The impending war on Iraq is only one example among many of a supposedly sovereign public completely powerless in the face of a government bent on a course of action ...
The most important lesson to the new totalitarianism, then, comes from ancient Rome, and is simply that people sufficiently supplied with bread and games will put up with anything. "
From the Jordan news:
"No Jordanian, no Arab has ever bought, even for one single second, Bush's blabbering about bringing democracy to this region. A democratic government in Baghdad would reflect people's anger and revulsion against U.S. policies, and translate it into policies."
From the Moscow Times:
"The issue is no longer Saddam Hussein or even Iraqi oil. If the United States doesn't go to war now, it will in effect be admitting that its foreign policy over the past year was utterly pointless. President George Bush could apply some spin, of course, by declaring that only the pressure brought to bear by the U.S. military buildup forced Hussein to disarm. "
