[This
article originally published in the cyber journal Telepolis, February 6, 2003 is
translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.telepolis.de/deutsch/special/irak/14147/1.html.]
Facts,
facts, facts! Or Uncle Powells fairy tale hour as a full multimedia
blitz for unbelievers? US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke (1) of
facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence when he presented his
evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the UN Security Council. Previously
the issue was played down. The announcements stretching out for months without
overwhelming evidence reveal more than is admitted [Iraq war prepared at a great distance
(2)]. Powerful unequivocal evidence justifying momentous actions was not
given. Beating a population black and blue was the rhetorical field of Colin
Powells apocalyptic revelation.
What
remained after the 75-minute media blitz? Spy satellites record mysterious
movements: mobile weapons laboratories, chemical weapon warheads, bio-weapon barrels, the
scientists of evil in flight, aluminum tubes possibly for enriching uranium.
No
limits are set any more to the fantasy since Iraqi weapons of mass destruction according
to the will of Bush Jr. haunt the uncritical, media-saturated heads of the world
population. His Secretary of State presented Before-After photos presumably
showing that prohibited material was removed before the arrival of the UN
inspectors. Decontamination aircraft were shown. Monitored telephone
conversations of Iraqi dark-skinned men were made public with fresh remarks about the lack
of understanding of the weapons inspectors and hiding places for explosive material
Powell
gave user-friendly instructions for the media show-down before the military show-down in
Bagdad. With ones mind and understanding, one should strive to see what the US
government long wanted to see. Propaganda is nothing but the politically
correct execution of perception psychology. Presenting a public dossier that could
be scrupulously studied like the Iraqi weapons report instead of the multimedia blitzkrieg
would have been persuasive. TV is good but control is better. Accounts of
respectable men doing their hard jobs to save the world were emphasized. In a time
of digital data-manipulation and on the background of the first Gulf war, seeing is
believing is a somewhat short-circuited truth program to replace conclusive
evidence. Neither foreign minister Fischer nor the representatives of France, Russia
and China were publically converted to join in the war howling.
Colin
Powells one man show was a legitimatorial event to soften incorrigible peace
optimists and UN believers. They always squeek and perhaps now more than ever.
Proofs that are not proofs are even worse than refusing proofs. That Powell
decorated his gala with satellite photos with the well-known reproaches
Saddams inhumanity knows no limits did not improve matters. His
rehashed claim that Saddam Hussein was determined to gain possession of nuclear bombs
wasnt any more convincing than the conservative estimate that Iraq has
100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons
In Powells words, findings from his
high-flying photos can still not be publicized for security reasons. Vague photos of
Iraqis zealously digging about in the sand, architecture without obvious function, tracks
that could come from mobile weapons laboratories and information of exiled Iraqis
prevented boredom in the multimedia show. Evidence upon evidence flooding the eyes
until one believes that one sees through a magnifying glass and doesnt know where
the illusion begins and ends. Blix and his men have not seen the hot traces in the
desert sand. Are they withered by the wind?
Instead
of this show, a fundamentally different and serious approach of the American government
would have been welcome. Why werent the inspectors informed on time so the
prohibited material could have been successfully seized? Why wasnt there at
least a tiny snapshot of an actual hiding place thanks to the all-powerful satellites?
Why werent the various transports observed on their way to learn more
about the remains or destination of the removed weapons?
The
needle in the haystack argument is captivating on first view. On one
side, there should be tons and tons of prohibited material. On the other
side, not even the smallest knife was found. Admittedly the infernal biological and
chemical stuff must be somewhere. Finally, the Americans brought part of that
material into Iraq. Saddam Hussein doesnt suffer under a confession pressure.
As one expert rightly remarked, small quantities of terroristically suitable
material is involved that can be produced in any university laboratory. Even when
traced, such risks are not eliminated. The Anthrax letters in the US were produced
in the US, not in Bangdad!
This
war could only be justified if weapons of mass destruction existed in great number to
perpetrate calculated genocide and the intention or mens rea were sufficiently
clear. Colin Powell didnt bring this proof before the UN Security
Council, only the sign that the US wouldnt be deterred from waging this war
According
to CIA information, the tyrant armed by the US in those days has already left the
country. Perhaps he also took along his arsenal of evil. However Bush
will not order back his desert armada. This would be a great loss of face for a
president who at the moment cannot afford the appearance of indecision or vacillation
(translators note: humility and self-criticism are strengths). In this
well-fortified civilization, it is not a loss of face to risk the lives of tens of
thousands of civilians if it only serves the only good cause and collateral secondary
objectives.
The Spirit of America
By Goedart Palm
[This
article published in the cyber journal Telepolis is translated from the German on the
World Wide Web.]
Hollywood
Celebrates the American Soul with a Three-minute Film Run for Immediate Consumption
National virtues are an
historically sensitive chapter of self-glorification. They objectify supposedly
typical qualities of the national soul up to the uninhibited chauvinism of being the
people chosen by God. The ideological rearmament of the American war society was
from the start the top theme of Operation Enduring Freedom. On one hand,
the semantic of war propaganda individualizes victims with countless pictures of emotional
shock and on the other hand conjures the never weary American fighting spirit.
Now director Chuck
Workman in his epochal three-minute film run The Spirit of America comes up
with the essence of the American soul and thus of American existence in all its
glory. Workman has cut together clips from 110 American films, including shots from
undying works like Citizen Kane, High Noon, Some Like It
Hot and Singing in the Rain as well as the standard patriotic program
Pearl Harbor, The Patriot and True Grit. The
cast of thousands of the best known film heroes who should inspire millions of American
movie-goers is a gigantic Whos Who of American film history.
What sounds like
subliminal propaganda when Hollywoods praetorian guard is packaged in a time lapse
clip should be the most visible contribution of the cultural war effort. The White
House has not paid for the celluloid soul of America. Still Karl Rove,
President Bushs chief advisor, is satisfied with the work after he earlier in the
presidential commission pressed the film- and television industry to come up with ideas
that both promote homeland morality and upgrade the ambivalent image of the US beyond its
borders.
In 1986, clip maker
Workman received the Oscar for his short film Precious Images on cinema
history. According to the copy- and paste director, many of the shredded
films offer hesitant, reluctant heroes, the true symbol of the present role of the US in
the war against terrorism. According to the vigorous statements of President Bush,
Defense secretary Rumsfeld and their representative Wolfowitz, the American supreme
commanders demonstrate everything but self-image problems in the choice of their
weapons. Bush signed a law that declared September 11 as the day of the
patriots. With his elite troop which also included Easy Rider,
Workman marched on the politically correct line capturing the American freedom panorama on
the wide screen format.
The old complacency or
smugness, the national narcissism putting other nations in their place coupled with the
hegemonial global power of gods own country could appear too short-winded to the
most pious. Therefore Workman wanted to show the American soul in its whole
diversity. He emphasized resistance against the patriotic united front from
yesterday and today. In his micro-opus, power and money are not central.
Rather diverse anti-heroes and outcasts are revived like Malcolm X or the
Vietnam veteran in Born on the Fourth of July who became the war
adversary. Such fractures of the American self-image dont play any more when
America is the supposed melting pot of pluralist freedoms, a trans-ethnic
super-system that absorbs all ideologies at least cinematically. As Howard Beale
says in Network, Im mad as hell and Im not going to take
this any more!
This reflects the
deeply moving saying in The Grapes of Wrath: Wherever there is a
struggle that hungry people can eat, I will be there., thus in Afghanistan or
Somalia. War times are times of brotherly sacrifice. We experience the epoch
of global communitarianism for a shaken world at least to serve the goals of the
anti-terrorist war.
Workman emphasizes the
exciting nature of the American character about which other nations can only dream:
changing, enduring and endlessly interesting. The struggle for
independence should be continuous after the brief prologue in Afghanistan. Thus
America is the great land of opposites but reconciles and ennobles them in the clip of the
clips to a carbonated water advertisement: Everything is in Afri-Cola.
Whoever likes James Stewart must also somehow like George W. Bush.
According to producer
Michael R. Rhodes, tribute should be paid to the tough-minded American spirit so people in
America can feel good again. For the president of the other NATO (National
Association of Theater Owners), John Fithian, what was central was the American way of
life without taking refuge in despicable propaganda: Americans look, think and act
differently but we all meet in a common spirit.
This is nothing but
propaganda from the slightly antiquated department St. Michael versus
Satan. This new mega-feeling of the many feelings under the star-spangled
banner is communicated convincingly according to Fithian. Thus diversity in unity,
faithful to the hard dollar saying e pluribus unum, pluralist monism, prevails
as long as no one questions too closely.
The clips are framed
into the super-clip by scenes of the enduring western The Searchers (John
Ford, 1956), a classic epic of the undying law-and-order- and gunpowder hero John Wayne
who pursues the inhuman redskins who killed his brother and his pregnant wife and
kidnapped his daughter. The Searchers glorify the search which is
successful after endless stress and strain. Undoubtedly Usama bin Ladin is non the
evil savage, a diabolical aborigine, a wild chieftain beyond civilization who must be
decapitated so everything will be good. Thus the films are blinded about real
events. Merged with them, reality is intoxicated in the fictional. What a pity
that Sam Peckinpahs Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) is
missing. What is underscored is the most direct form of justice that would have
spared the arduous ride of the Searchers.
Hollywoods love
service for the White House is a mutual affair. Politics relies on good
war-tainment and Hollywood speculates on the recurring gratitude of the
government to prevail in its global business without restrictions. There is
still much to do since the rest of the world beyond the US should be excited by
Hollywoods film message. Since John Wayne could be too broad for this saddle,
the western Wagon Song of the Death Blow (Soldier Blue, 1969) which summarized
the historical care for the Indians was offered instead for the international All
Time Greats list.
The credits for the non-American version of Enduring Entertainment could have
been spoken by the Suquamish chief Seattle: People make their gods according to
their conceptions. Brothers come from the same spirit. Therefore your
God is not our God and you are not our brothers. We are two different races with
different origins and different fates. There is nothing common between us
(1853).
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