Ishmael Reed essay

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.counterpunch.org/>

June 9, 2003


Thrills of the SUV Nation

Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder

By ISHMAEL REED



Editors' Note: CounterPunch is delighted to publish
this essay on the Iraq war by Ishmael Reed, one of our
favorite novelists. Reed also edits the excellent
online zine, Konch. We encourage you to bookmark the
site and read Reed's novels, poetry and essays. If you
haven't read Mumbo Jumbo you've deprived yourself of
one the funniest and most biting novels since Twain.
He's a national treasure, but don't tell the Bush
administration--we know how they treat national
treasures. JSC / AC.

The reason that a large part of the African-American
public--up to 60%--opposed the war in Iraq, where
defense contractors displayed their latest electronic
weaponry, against an army that was supplied with 1917
Soviet rifles, is because many of the scenes that
accompanied the slaughter of hundreds of Iraqi
citizens looked familiar to them.

Citizens lying on the ground with M-16s aimed at their
heads. Homes broken into and frightened dwellers being
threatened with weapons. (On May 18, The Times
reported that an elderly black woman died from a heart
attack after the NYPD burst into her home. They
mistakenly thought that it was a crack operation.)

The culture of those regarded as the enemy
disrespected like African-American culture and history
are disrespected at home. Even ridiculed by white
American intellectuals and writers, who wish to keep
white Americans and the rest of us in a cultural and
intellectual backwoods.

For example, an enterprising journalist managed to
arrange a dialogue between American and Iraqi
students. The exchange took place before the war, and
was carried on the World Link network, a network that,
unlike the inbedwith American media, presents a
program called Mosaic, news from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria
and Jordan so that we get a balanced view of events
taking place in the Middle East. The Iraqi students,
who were receiving free education, knew more about
international events than the American students.

What does this say about our educational system that
American students, who come in near the bottom when
compared to students in other industrial countries
when tested on math, history and geography are less
informed than students who were living under a heinous
American-sponsored regime? (And were receiving free
education.) Perhaps these American students get all of
their information about the world from television.

0n April 25th, the President of the B.B.C. was
reported to have said that the American media's
reporting of the war was characterized by so much
patriotic cheerleading- my nomination for giddy hyper
major domo for the war is CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who was
goo goo eyed over the video-game display of "shock-
and- awe" weaponry- that it would be hard to take the
United States electronic media seriously.

My favorite media moments of no shame occurred when
Fox News criticized the former Iraqi minister of
information of spreading disinformation and when an
American educator, appearing on CNN, accused the Iraqi
school curriculum of being driven by ideology. This
woman, whose attitude of civilizing the natives, is a
holdover from the old missionary impulse, would
probably dismiss one as someone afflicted with "p.c."
if one were to suggest that generations of Americans
have been rendered ignorant as a result of a school
curriculum driven by ideology and plain lies. (See
James Lowen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me.") There is
another pattern that African-Americans can identify as
the occupying forces stand by as Iraqi museums are
looted and libraries burned. That of imposing unwanted
leaders upon a population that either resents them or
has never heard of them.

They do that to African-American, Hispanics and
Asian-Americans all the time. The white left, right
and middle have been doing this for years. All of them
have political, cultural and intellectual nominations
for H.N.I.C.s. Without the backing of The right wing
Manhattan Institute, nobody would ever have heard of
John McWhorter. Edward Said becomes annoyed when he
sees and reads uninformed white men commenting on
issues about the Middle East and writing books about
Islam. That happens to African-Americans also. Most of
the books about race in this country are written by
white men. Some of them are informed. But most of them
are trash.

And what happened to the weapons of mass distraction
that Neo-confederate leader, George Bush, The lesser,
accused the Iraqi of possessing? Maybe former CIA
errand boy Saddam Hussein swallowed them.


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