[casi] Another war: "The View from Spain"

[H Sutter <citext@DELETETHISchebucto.ns.ca>]

I am attaching an interesting comparison of the
media (TV) coverage in Europe (notably Spain) and
the US. The writer (name at end of article) lives
in Granada. He was watching a very different war, he
says, relying mainly on Spanish and French TV news
and comparing it to the news offered by CNN and
the NYT.

That there is a "gap between American and global
perceptions" should surprise no-one who has lived
in another country for any length of time. Many such
gaps exist, based on cultural differences that do
exist despite the omnipresence of all things
American. (Coke, Levis, and Starbucks don't change
perceptions abroad - nor does Rendon, I hope.)

I found this article on <misc.activism.progressive>,
which I can warmly recommend. The name says it all.
It's not a discussion group as such, but people
occasionally comment on articles posted. The articles
are mostly published ones but also, as here, personal
contributions. Many activist groups post there too.
I like it.

You'll notice that the poster of this article
(evidently American) comments with satisfaction
on the boycotts of American products in Spain.
This is quite something.

Viva los disidentes americanos!

--Elga

------------Fwd Message------------
From: "President, USA Exile Govt."<prez@usa-exile.org>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Which War Are You Watching?
Date: 29 Apr 2003 11:02:37 -0500

Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA
in Exile (GUSAE): Free Americans Proclaiming Total
Emancipation and Working Towards Democracy.

NOTE: Thanks to Eon 3 for this excellent piece;
certainly it's encouraging that boycotts of American
products are growing in Spain. -- kl, pp

Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 07:14:23 -0700
Subject: View from Europe
From: Herman Gyr <gyr@enterprisedevelop.com>


Which War Are You Watching? -- The View from Spain

The American media's portrayal of the routing of Saddam
Hussein as a great military victory and a step toward
world peace is almost incomprehensible outside of the
U.S., for the rest of us have been watching a very
different war. Here in Granada, I regularly watch the
Spanish, French, and British television news and then
occasionally look at the CNN and New York Times
webpages. It is often hard to believe they are covering
the same events and the gap between American and global
perceptions of this war will certainly have significant
repercussions for some time to come.

In the eyes of non-American media it took the world's
most powerful and wealthiest nation months of planning,
the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops, and
the launching of thousands of missiles at a cost of tens
of billions of dollars to topple one dictator in a
country already crippled by two earlier wars and ten
years of international sanctions, defended by a
third-rate army almost entirely bereft of advanced
armaments who put up no coordinated resistance. Not an
impressive feat. But--to the astonishment of the
world--America sees itself as heroic and triumphant.
Everyone is happy that Saddam is gone, but to portray
this as an impressive feat of arms seems to many people
here an amazing act of self-deception. What would happen
if America ever had to face a *real* army?

The campaign itself, as viewed outside the U.S., was
constantly marred by misjudgments and bad leadership:
Brits and Americans killed themselves and each other in
a rash of "friendly fire" incidents; America's "smart
weapons" proved not to be so smart and instead caused
horrifying destruction in marketplaces, buses, maternity
wards, and civilian neighborhoods; the Tomahawk missile
system had to be taken offline not because it was
missing its targets but because it was missing the
entire country of Iraq(!) and instead landing in Saudi,
Jordanian, and Syrian territories; the quick advances
and welcoming crowds predicted by the Rumsfeld cabal did
not materialize and a panicked American military had to
call for reinforcements of 120,000 new troops after only
a few days of fighting.

The American military was portrayed here as unprepared
and badly managed, without contingency plans for even
the most predictable of situations such as sandstorms,
suicide bombers, and lengthening supply lines. The flaws
in this performance were only made more obvious when
European news broadcasts over and over again placed
headline stories of various mishaps and civilian deaths
next to the typically immodest statements of Rumsfeld
that American missiles were "the most precise ever seen
in human history" or that "everything is going exactly
as planned," or Tommy Franks announcing the infamous
"shock and awe" campaign. More than one European
commentator took advantage of America's hubris to state
that the only "shock" in this war was how badly it was
waged and how inured to human suffering the American
people seem to have become.

In one particularly poignant moment on Spanish
television, after a series of unrelenting images of
civilian wounded and dead (far more graphic than would
ever be allowed in the U.S.), we were shown a Pentagon
spokesperson referring to understandable levels of
"collateral damage." The Spanish commentator simply
looked directly into the camera, shook his head sadly
and mused: "One wonders what type of human being can
refer to the death of a child as "collateral damage."

The disinformation campaign waged by the U.S. government
also went badly awry and European commentators openly
began to compare Iraqi and American sources as being
equally tendentious and unreliable: Tariq Aziz has
defected (oops, no he hasn't); Saddam Hussein is dead
(oops, no he isn't), an Iraqi division has surrendered
(oops, only seven soldiers have surrendered), we've
captured an Iraqi general (oops, he's not a general or
even a ranking officer)...

When Saddam's media showed footage of Arab volunteers
flocking to Iraq to become suicide bombers, European TV
channels showed that footage back to back with the U.S.
military's latest recruitment ads on American television
along with commentary about the increased militarization
of both societies. News programs began to note how many
times the Coalition had to reannounce its gains: "for
the sixth day in a row, Coalition sources have announced
that Nasiriya has fallen," "once again the Coalition has
announced that resistance in Basra is under control,"
etc. The credibility of the American government all but
disappeared and that of the American media crumbled.

When Iraq showed footage of its American hostages,
European channels showed the footage (not shown in the
United States) back to back with Bush's angry
denunciations and his statement that this violated the
Geneva Convention--followed immediately by American
footage from earlier that same week of its Iraqi POWs
and then images of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The
audience scarcely needed the commentator's remarks
afterwards about double-standards and hypocrisy in order
to draw the intended conclusions.

When Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Peter Arnett was
fired after his statements critical of the war, the
English newspaper the Daily Mirror sported a headline
something like: American Reporter Fired for Telling the
Truth. News programs in several European countries
carried features that night, and for several days
following, about the state of the American media: How
could a reporter be fired for expressing criticism of a
government in an interview?

Commentary by multiple political and academic figures
made it clear that America no longer has a "free press"
in the true meaning of the term, for in America one is
not free to express criticism of the war or of the Bush
regime.

Toward the end of the military engagement, American
troops fired directly upon the hotel which housed many
of the international journalists still remaining in
Baghdad. That night the rest of the world watched in
horror the film footage of an American tank rolling into
position in front of the hotel, the turret turning to
aim directly at the camera, the flash as the shell was
fired, and the destruction and dust as the shell hit
just to one side of the camera. We then watched as
people, screaming for help, began to dig bodies out from
the rubble. One of those wounded was a Spanish
cameraman--we followed him as he was carried out of the
building in a blanket, placed in a vehicle and
transported to the hospital, and then we watched as he
died. The Spanish media was in an uproar.

In a series of badly calculated press releases, the
Pentagon first claimed that a sniper had fired from the
hotel and that the Americans were defending themselves.
Journalists who had been in the hotel for the previous
48 hours said that this was untrue: "Another of a
seemingly endless series of American lies meant to
justify their stupid and senseless war." The Pentagon
then announced that there had been an unidentified
explosion, perhaps a missile. Finally, a day and a half
later, the Pentagon admitted that American troops had
indeed fired directly upon the hotel and killed the
journalists. For every European who had watched the
unmistakable and shocking footage of the American attack
two nights earlier on the news, the prevarications of
U.S. authorities were infuriating and they were
certainly not alleviated by the eventual, partial
admission of responsibility.

The day the statue of Saddam was torn down, the great
divide between America and the rest of the world was
briefly suspended, and millions watched to see if
America would be wiser, more competent, and more humane
in peace than it had been in war. But within hours the
chaos began to spread and for the next few days one
American spokesperson after another got up in front of
the cameras to say that America had no responsibility
for maintaining law and order or for protecting the
civilian population (despite the Geneva Conventions). In
a truly shocking development, Coalition troops did not
even move to secure hospitals (see the Geneva
Conventions). Finally, after intense international
pressure, first the Brits and then the Americans
admitted that, having launched thousands of missiles at
Iraq, having crippled much of the infrastructure of the
country, and having toppled the previous regime, the
occupation forces did indeed bear some responsibility
for maintaining order.

But even after that admission, it became clear that
there was no plan of action and the sacking and burning
of many of Iraq's -- and humanity's -- most precious
treasures took place, while American soldiers stood by
aimlessly passing the time. Newspapers and news programs
throughout Europe are openly comparing America's role in
Iraq to the burning of the great Library of Alexandria,
the Goths' sacking of Rome, and the Mongols' sacking of
Baghdad in the 13th century. In the end, it was only a
matter of hours from the images of the crowds cheering
the arriving American troops to those of the first
public demonstrations against the American occupation.
CNN had an interesting spin on this, their headline ran:
Iraqis exercise newly-won freedom of expression to
protest against Coalition Forces.

In the end, I think, the difference between the two
views of the war (that of America & Israel versus that
of the rest of the world) boils done to a single
question: Were there alternatives? Americans were told
by their media that there were no alternatives and that
the only option was for Americans to get in there and
get the job done (= war) and let the rest of the world
be damned. The rest of the world was told by their media
that there were numerous other options (diplomatic,
economic, etc.) that would have involved less death and
destruction. So for most people in the world, every
civilian death in Iraq has been an unwarranted murder.
For Americans (or at least some), those deaths have been
an acceptable means towards a rather poorly-defined
goal.

What exactly ARE American forces doing there? Disarming
weapons of mass destruction? Eradicating terrorism?
Stabilizing Iraq's oil resources? Toppling Saddam
Hussein? Establishing a democracy?

As several editorials here have recently pointed out, if
America is aiming to establish a democracy, it will be
doing something that it has not done for nearly 60
years. For six decades the United States has supported
and maintained dozens of dictatorships, a host of
military regimes, a collection of monarchies, and the
Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank
and Gaza Strip--but it's record of supporting
democracies, let alone establishing them, is dismal
indeed. Afghanistan, the nation mostly recently the
target of American interventionism, languishes
forgotten, scarcely funded by the Republican regime in
Washington, and certainly a long way from possessing a
stable, democratically-elected government.

In short, there were two very different wars to watch:
one almost entirely military in nature (the American
version) and another portrayed in unrelentingly human
terms (the global version). Spain is nominally a member
of the coalition, but 91% of the population here opposes
the war and the largest and most impressive
demonstrations against the war have been held here,
massive marches of millions upon millions of people in
nearly every city and town throughout the country. The
coverage we watched in Spain was unflinching in its
portrayal of the violence and pain of war. Here the
demonstrations against the war continue and have now
been transformed into protests against the military
occupation of Iraq. And, in a development that may have
far-reaching ramifications, more and more of the
placards in the marches say: BOYCOTT AMERICAN PRODUCTS.

This week everything is on hold since it is Semana Santa
(Holy Week), Spain's biggest holiday. The day before the
holidays began, however, was a general strike by
university students and labor unions across  the country
protesting the war. Other activities that continue to
take place are: protest marches, concerts for peace,
marches on the American military bases in southern
Spain, resignations by politicians in the ruling Partido
Popular in protest of Aznar's position, almost daily
attempts to hold "No Confidence" votes or votes
condemning the war in the parliament (but the ruling
party holds an absolute majority so these never actually
make it to the floor for a vote, though they are
reported over and over again in the news), the
opposition members of parliament have "No a la Guerra"
signs in front of them at their desks and have called
for the closure of American millitary bases in Spain,
one group has tried to file a suit against Aznar in the
European High Court, high-school kids have been holding
"die-ins" at their schools and other public places,
there are thousands upon thousands of NO A LA GUERRA
signs fluttering from windows and spray-painted on
buildings, and many people wear pins or t-shirts with
that message every day.

As a result, Spain never actually fought in the war, it
only offered verbal support and air space for American
fly-overs. A Spanish hospital ship is functioning in the
Gulf and treating Iraqi wounded and now that the
fighting has all but stopped, Spanish soldiers have
actually landed for the first time to take part in the
policing actions.

So such is the view from here in Spain. I will write
more about other aspects of life in a separate message,
this one is already too long. Despite it all, though, on
a person-to-person level, Americans are treated well and
no one need fear traveling here. Spaniards are divided
and more than a bit confused when it comes to
interpreting the public-opinion polls that show that the
majority of Americans support the war: some simply say
that Americans are a violent people (as demonstrated by
their love of guns and their astonishing rates of
murder, violent crime, and imprisonment); others say
that Americans are famous for their lack of knowledge
about the world and their low level of education and
that their support comes mainly from not having suffered
themselves the tragedy of war on their own soil. A third
school of thought was expressed to me rather succinctly
the other day by the owner of the music shop where I
take my guitar lessons: "I don't believe the polls. I
don't think Americans really do support the war, no
people can be in favor of war-- but they don't really
see the war, do they? They just believe what the
American media tell them."

Let us hope there are better days ahead for all of us.


Dwight F. Reynolds, Director
Centro de Estudios de la Universidad de California
Colegio Mayor Isabel la Cat[lica
Universidad de Granada
c/ Rector L[pez Arg8eta, 8
18001 Granada, Spain


Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute
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