Of Muslims and Miller time
____________________________
Pay no attention to the Iraq you see behind the GOP's curtain
By David Sarasohn
associate editor
The Oregonian
Thursday, September 02, 2004
oregonlive.com
NEW YORK CITY -- At this convention, you don't hear much about Iraq.
That is, Iraq the country.
You hear constantly about Iraq the symbol, the demonstration of American resolve, the place that will be a beacon of democracy throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world. Speakers repeatedly invoke Iraq as a stage set for President Bush's determination, a symbol of a rebuilding world.
"By destroying his regime, we gave hope to a people long oppressed that if they have the courage to fight for it," declared Arizona Sen. John McCain, "they may live in peace and freedom."
Except that by all accounts, including surveys taken by official U.S. agencies, what Iraqis overwhelmingly want, no matter how pleased they are about the welcome departure of Saddam Hussein, is for U.S. troops to leave.
And growing numbers of them seem willing to fight for that.
"Most importantly," continued McCain, "our efforts may encourage the people of a region that has never known peace or stability or lasting freedom that they may someday possess those rights."
But that region is currently furious at the United States, with America drawing negative ratings across the Muslim world, up to 94 percent in Jordan -- a traditional U.S. ally. Someday the Middle East may achieve democracy, but the attractions of its arriving on a U.S. tank may have been overstated.
"Nothing," Georgia Sen. Zell Miller told the convention Wednesday night, "makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators."
How he feels about a billion Muslim someones calling them that, he didn't say.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani assured the delegates, "When it catches hold, there is nothing more powerful than freedom. Give it some hope, and it will overwhelm dictators, and even defeat terrorists. That is what we have done and must continue to do in Iraq."
But last week, U.S. troops ended a battle in Najaf that had reduced the city to rubble but did not disarm the Islamic militants who controlled the city. Much of western Iraq, including the city of Fallujah, has become an extremist, hostile ministate -- and we seem to be short on strategies for the next move.
Laura Bush told the delegates about the growing freedom of women in Afghanistan and Iraq. But many Iraqi women now feel in danger on the streets, and are kept at home for ther safety. Women on the former Iraq Governing Council were ambushed in their cars, by armed extremists enforcing their own rigidly confining views.
In the most rapturously received movie review in convention history, John McCain denounced "a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls."
Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" did indeed make prewar Iraq look like Club Med with better sand. But now, instead of the angry, bleeding and violent Iraq inescapable on television -- and to the U.S. troops forced to confront it -- convention speakers praise a liberated, increasingly peaceful country rising toward freedom and free enterprise. That Iraq exists at this convention, and in D.C. policy briefings. But on the map of the Middle East, it's an imaginary country.
Speaking to the Oregon and Arizona delegations Wednesday, Secretary of Commerce Don Evans told of the booming new economy of Baghdad, summed up in a boy he saw on the street selling lemonade and Coca Cola. "The spirit there is unbelievable," said Evans. "You wouldn't believe that watching TV or reading newspapers."
Those reports keep telling you about children being kidnapped off the street and needing family members to guard them on the way to school. That may not be the only Iraq, but it's nothing like the one that shimmers from the speaker's stand in this convention.
Wednesday night, Vice President Cheney exulted that current U.S. policies would "help move the Middle East away from old hatreds and resentments and toward the lasting peace that freedom can bring."
It would, he admitted, take a while.
Throughout this convention, delegates and TV viewers have gotten a clear message on Iraq:
Pay no attention to the country behind the curtain.
David Sarasohn, associate editor of The Oregonian, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or davidsarasohn@news.oregonian.com. |
