"Real heroes and villains
Curtis Doebbler
Too often in this age of modern media our heroes and villains are created by propaganda. Nowhere in the world is the power of propaganda perceived to be so strong as in the United States. Americans spend billions of dollars a year improving their image. It is part of the American way of life.
The pinnacle of this infatuation with "image" can be seen every four years in the American presidential elections. In the 2008 election year, American presidential candidates will spend well over a billion dollars on image making. The substance behind this propaganda will be negligible to most international observers. All the candidates with money support the laissez faire globalism that America spreads in its bid to dominate the world with little concern for the billions it impoverishes. All of them support to a greater or lesser degree the Christian-based religious zealousness that has led America on crusades sacrificing millions of indigenous persons in other countries.
All of the candidates support some type of continued presence in Iraq with none of them willing to admit that the killing of over a million Iraqis is a crime against humanity built on the crime of aggression for which perpetrators and their conspirators must be punished. Some believe that America's image has suffered from the pyramid of human rights abuses and war crimes associated with the made-in-America disasters caused around the world, but none are willing to do much about it.
The US government itself spends uncountable sums of money trying to prop up its image around the world. American President George W Bush even named as his chief propagandist a long time ally, Karen Hughes. Her job was to convince the rest of the world that America's aggression against Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, among a long list of other aggressions, does not mean America does not love the rest of the world. Hughes' recent resignation is symptomatic of the failure of this "say one thing, do the other" policy. Indeed, you cannot fool most of the people most of the time.
Hughes' main task was to convince the rest of the world that the United States had no malicious intent towards Muslims. She travelled around the world saying this in varied tones to anyone who would listen. She also bought the support of others -- Muslims, Arabs, Africans, anyone who would take her money -- to make the same statement. Still she failed miserably in her task as America's image continued to plummet. People saw through the propaganda to how America really acts.
Her failure was not due to a lack of effort to prevent "bad publicity" from exposing the facts. In Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, the United States bought and continues to buy journalists, establishes its own press, and hog-ties much of the "independent press" by linking their safety to American military protection. At the same time the United States harasses, sometimes threatens, prosecutes, and even kills journalists or others who speak out against its violations of international law. Instead of achieving its goal of squelching dissent, America has merely brought more ridicule upon itself.
Even in the United States these actions have raised concerns in appearing to fly in the face of the notion of a free press, which is one of the alleged bedrocks of American democracy. As a result, US actions have deteriorated America's image around the world and at home. Such actions also create some unlikely heroes and villains.
In many towns and cities around the world, America's arch criminal, Osama Bin Laden, is revered as a hero merely because he had courage to stand up to the most expensive killing machine in the world, if not world history. While most of the world, including most leaders of the south, were scrambling for the crumbs that America's Wall Street brokers and their spreading cadre of protégés sprinkle to the masses, Bin Laden attacked the US's exploitation machinery right at the heart of its military and economic domination. The acts might have been criminal under United States law, even under some international laws, but they certainly were not cowardly and courage is the hallmark of heroes.
Moreover, to a growing number of people living in poverty -- often in order that Americans, the elites of rich countries and their corrupt leaders can live in relative luxury -- are starting to realise how they are being exploited. And because of the heroes that the United States has accidentally created, they are also starting to believe that they can do something about it.
Perhaps the best examples of self-help are the Iraqis and Afghans who are fighting against tremendously stacked odds to defend their homeland from foreign occupiers whose acts of aggression against the Afghan and Iraqi people, respectively, have destroyed these countries to a greater extent than any previous government or civil war had done.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban and their supporters -- before the war against the Afghan people began in 2001 an estimated majority of Afghans -- have risen from their abject poverty to fight the combined forces of some of the most powerful and deadly armies in the world. Led by a blind cleric and myriad of invisible leaders, these resistant Afghans continue to push and tug at the international coalition of occupying powers and to prevent authorities that have been imposed from outside from successfully controlling the Afghan people. While the Taliban were once villains -- largely because of Western propaganda -- now they are the backbone of the National Liberation Movement in Afghanistan. And they are heroes to many Afghans and others who are fighting against exploitation and oppression.
Similarly, in Iraq, a brave resistance, which now even the United States admits mainly consists of indigenous Iraqis, is fighting to maintain the integrity of their homeland against the most expensive and destructive military in the world. Using improvised devices and residual weaponry these heroes often brave not only the deadly tactics of the occupiers and their mercenaries, but also attacks from Iraqis who have sold their patriotism for the occupier's money. Their struggle, like that of other martyrs and freedom fighters who have gone before them, is gaining recognition. Although few could have imagined that a grassroots resistance could stand up to such a Goliathian aggressor a few years ago, today some governments are quietly contemplating supporting the national liberation struggle being waged by these Iraqi heroes.
This support has not come from revelations about how America's acts violate international law, for example, as international crimes against peace. Its source is more likely the work of ordinary Iraqis and those who support them around the world who explain the heroic exploits of Iraqi resistance fighters. And such heroism is not hard to explain as resistance fighters, who five years ago were hard working tradespersons, professionals or housewives, daily risk their lives to free their country from foreign occupation. Moreover, their acts of sacrifice in mounting attacks against extreme odds often make the well equipped and protected occupiers, and the authorities they put in place, look downright cowardly.
No one knows how many Iraqis are fighting for their country inside or outside Iraq. Indeed 20 per cent of all Iraqis have been forced to flee their country. But while those inside fight with whatever weapons they can muster, those abroad use their diplomatic skills to bring to the world's attention the plight of Iraqis and the labour of the true heroes in Iraq. The billions of dollars spent on propaganda by the United States does little to obscure the reality of these Iraqi heroes.
Tribute was also paid to them by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who, before being summarily executed just over a year ago after a show trial that was proclaimed to be unfair by every independent observer who studied it, continued to express his belief that the Iraqi people would never submit to an outside occupier. Even as he faced the gallows he reassured his American-bought tormentors that they could not triumph against the real Iraqi heroes. As a consequence, instead of being associated with never-proven criminal allegations, Saddam is today revered as a hero to an increasing number of people who sympathise with, and admire, his courageous and unyielding stand against US aggression.
In part, this is due to America's actions. When the US president declared war against the Iraqi people, he stated that his aim was to remove president Saddam. He first claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a claim that has now been proven untrue. He then claimed that Iraq was harbouring terrorists. Later the US's own intelligence services showed that this was untrue. Finally, the American president claimed that his Iraqi counterpart was responsible for gross human rights abuses. This was never proven because the United States could not ensure a fair trial on a single charge. To many people around the world it instead should have been US President George W Bush facing the gallows for his crimes. The fact that he cowardly avoided such responsibility has made him a villain in many people's eyes.
As if the slaughter of millions of Afghans and Iraqis, allowing -- and possibly authorising -- torture, and the constant use of other countries to carry out gross human rights abuses are not enough, the US president and many of those closest to him have also most probably conspired to violate United States laws prohibiting kidnapping, the obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses, torture, and war crimes. The harrowingly convincing evidence consists of the testimony of hundreds, if not thousands, of persons, official documents, and even public confessions -- such as President Bush's "proud" declaration of aggression against the Iraqi people.
While George W Bush and many of his colleagues undoubtedly deserve a fair trial, there is certainly enough evidence to charge them, and for many people, already enough evidence to ensure that many of them are hung from the gallows until dead. Ironically it is the very same propaganda that claims that "right and wrong" are "black and white" and that "if you are not with us, you are against us" that is today evidence of a consistent pattern of criminal activity. Consequently, more and more people are able to recognise the real villains.
Just days before the war on the Iraqi people began in March 2003, polls by major Western media found that more people thought that America and its president were a greater threat to world peace and security than was Iraq. Today this public intuition has been proven accurate. Despite the billions spent to recast the reality of events, those who have witnessed these events are increasingly convincing the rest of the world of this brutal and deadly reality.
It is unlikely that all the publicity at the disposal of America's leadership and their allies can change this reality. Undoubtedly they will try, but time is proving that justice has a way of emerging from even the heaviest blanket of propaganda.
* The writer is a professor of law at An-Najah National University and visiting professor at Geneva University, Webster University and the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations.
