COMMENT What's his name with the
turban? By Ian Williams
Where
is Osama bin Laden? In fact, the question should be,
"Who is bin Laden?" Go on, scratch your head and see if
anything comes out other than dandruff. Remember, He was
the guy with the beard and the turban, who was on every
TV screen and newspaper front page for months, usually
with a "Wanted Dead or Alive" sticker on it.
The
more perceptive among you may remember that he was the
excuse for the less precisely xenophobic to have a bash
at innocent Sikhs, and also a more creditable excuse for
the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
More recently, he also became a large part of
the excuse for the attack on Iraq. Night after night TV
news screens emblazoned with the words "War on Terror"
paired photographs of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,
often with pictures of a blazing World Trade Center
until over 70% of the American electorate thought that
Saddam and Iraq were directly involved with our former
Saudi chum in the September 11 attack.
Those of
you with really long memories may call to mind a heroic
freedom fighter against godless communist aggression in
Afghanistan, but that was a long time ago, in another
country, and besides, the USSR is dead.
So any
vestigial memories you have of that bin Laden should be
filed inaccessibly in the deepest memory hole, along
with those of Saddam, our champion in the fight against
Iran's ayatollahs and Islamic fundamentalism.
Certainly, nothing on the television is likely
to tease any such reminiscences from the depths,
although occasionally there are exceptions.
If I
may quote myself, (a highly reliable and named source,
after all,) during one CNN talk show this April on which
I was a guest, conservative pundit John Gizzi compared
US President George W Bush to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I could not resist, and replied, "This is
precisely an analogy which has occurred to me. We're at
a stage where, if, after Pearl Harbor and Hitler's
declaration of war on America, we had left Hitler up in
the mountains in Bavaria untouched while the bulk of our
armed forces were down in Argentina, kicking butt on
Peron because the president didn't like him. That's
where we are. Where is bin Laden? Why is Afghanistan
unraveling? That's where the 'war on terror' was. That's
the guy that caused 9-11. Why do we have 150,000
American men and women risking their lives in Iraq where
they're clearly not totally welcome, when it has nothing
to do with the war on terror?"
Luckily, this was
on CNN, where someone to the left of Augusto Pinochet
can still speak without being barracked or cut short.
On most of what passes for discussion programs
that I have been on, it has been about as fair and
balanced as a bout between the Christians and the lions
in the Coliseum. The host introduces the subject with a
tendentious diatribe that would not survive a minute
with a fact-checker.
For example, only two weeks
ago while I was on Joe Scarborough's show he attacked
the idea that the US had ever supported Saddam as
profoundly unpatriotic.
It is of course
indisputably true that Bush senior supported Baghdad in
the war on Iran in the 1980s, but as Pontius Pilate said
as he launched a whole new brand of big cat food on a
waiting Roman Empire, "What is truth?"
The host,
or ringmaster, then introduces the "Christian", and
joins the one or two conservative lions for a joint
attack. Almost invariably, the final shot comes from the
conservative pundit, which is then applauded and
amplified by the host.
There are a whole host of
right-wing foundations who provide a salary for
innumerable pundits ready at the drop of a Rolodex to
display their ignorance on our screens - and it's fun to
be there to interpolate the occasional historical fact
into their venting, since of course, now and again the
Christians can turn on the lions and send them running -
but the shows, despite the appearance of being fearless
and live are usually taped - and the host controls the
mikes.
So it is hardly surprising that there is
indeed a proven correlation between how knowledgeable an
American is about foreign affairs, and how much
television they watch. Sadly, it is an inverse
correlation. Such is the power of the small screen: it
actually seems to absorb information from viewers, so
they become less informed the more they watch.
It is bad enough to those exposed to the words
on Fox TV. However, we tend to underestimate the
subliminal effect of those images.
Often people
come to me and tell me that they have seen me on
television.
I ask "Oh, what program? What was I
talking about?" And more often than not, they will
develop a puzzled frown, and say, "I was only watching,
I wasn't listening."
Images are very important,
of course. So the twin images of bin Laden and Saddam
were very effective, and all those shots of Bush
addressing troops and being addressed as the
commander-in-chief make the unwary think of him as a war
leader, with extensive military service in the "war
against terror".
The most iconic image of course
is the commander-in-chief as intrepid naval aviator,
bathed in the evening glow of the sun, strutting across
the deck of the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in his full
naval jump suit with its swelling codpiece accentuated
by the cross straps of his escape harness.
Oddly, even some very strong Democrats confessed
surprise to discover that this took place off California
and not in the Gulf of the war theater.
That
image lingers while only sour political commentators
remember the banner "Mission Accomplished" or the White
House message, some 800 dead GIs ago, that major
hostilities were over.
On a more mundane note,
we have dissected the George Bush naval aviator
collector's doll that went on sale immediately - and it
is padded, whether to enhance the size or a replica of
incontinence pants, we do not know.
Of course,
the president's military record itself is highly
questionable, or at least it is whenever we can find the
records. As for his strategic prowess, please refer to
the above. If he is fighting the "war on terror", where
is Osama bin Laden?
Will there be a new October
surprise, the reverse of the kind that released the
American hostages in Iran on the day of Ronald Reagan's
reelection? Will bin Laden suddenly be captured, days
before November 2? Will millions of tele-screens
suddenly remind millions of voters about the guy with
the beard and the turban who has effectively been a
non-person for 18 months?
Hey, this is the 20th
anniversary of 1984, and Little Brother Bush has told
some serious whoppers so far. Why should the run-up to
an election be any different?
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