Propaganda a la Mode in Iraq

A few days after the brief and impressive US miltary campaign raced across Iraq and then "took" Baghdad, I got to work (I work at a TV station), and got started with my day. Suddenly the TV volume in our lobby went up and the buzz told me something worth seeing was going on. I turned my TV on and watched as the American soldiers helped Iraqis tear down the huge statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square.

I was strongly against the war, yet the images were so inspiring. Despite the faux pas of a soldier first putting the American flag over Saddam's head, then taking it off, I found the video of the throng of Iraqi people working with American soldiers to tear down the statue really inspiring. It felt as though maybe there was some substance to why we went to war.

A week or two later I came across this site. The images I saw the morning the statue came down were tightly-shot footages of hundreds of people in a crowd. Photographs at the above site reveal that there were in fact no more than a couple of hundred, probably most of which were American soldiers. The square had been been blocked off by American tanks and this spontaneous celebration of newfound freedom was in actuality a propaganda coup.

So later that day a very conservative co-worker, infused with the bravado that the day's news inspired, stopped by and said something like "I'll bet you still think Iraqis don't want us there. Don't you?"

I responded something like "I don't exactly know what they think...but I know that since we got there the electricity is on only sporadically, people have lost their jobs, that marketplaces where they shop don't dare to be open, the university's shut down...I suspect a lot of Iraqis aren't too happy about that."

He was just spitting mad. He paced back-n-forth just hurtling "I can't believe you people" and "what's it gonna take for you people to see that life is better for Iraqis since Saddam got deposed?" and things like that.

I told him "Look: society's built on things like running water and availability of food and a stable government and a sense that things will likely get better. Right now those people don't have that. My stand isn't about politics as much as it's about psychology. This has got to be very tough on them."

He kept on spewing things about how freedom's on the march and how I'm on the wrong side of freedom, and whatever other phraseology that was popular with the right wingnuts at the time.

I had no idea then, and I doubt I would have predicted that two years and four months later that things would not be measureably better. Sure, to cherry pick measurements, I know there are things that are better. I do. But there are also measures which show life's gotten worse.

We keep hearing that the insurgency is in its last throes, yet those throes have never been more deadly to Iraqis. What's life like for Iraqis when they have no assurance that when they go to market for food they will return home alive? How is it to get on your bus to head to your job not knowing if that bus will be the place that you die in an explosion?

I've thought a time or two about having that conversation again with my co-worker. But I know him well enough to know that he's constructed a rationale that makes sense to him. That he probably harkens back to WWII and fills his head with images of resoluteness and heroism in the face of adversity to keep himself from seeing the bottom line: we shouldn't have gone there in the first place. And that there's something elementally wrong with how we're doing what we're doing there.

There are many ways to look at the Iraq war. If you have read to this point in my post, you're likely an engaged and intelligent person. Make your own mind up. But as you do, go to the web site above and see the masterful manipulation of images. And wonder how many times your perception of reality has been futzed with so that you'll end up thinking the way they want you to think.

Thanks for your time and attention...