Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Don't miss part II of Frontline's (PBS) special on the Iraq War tonight.
Part I, aired last night, is or will be available in streaming video, as will the whole thing.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/25/2008 08:00:00 AM
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Winner, October 5, 2007, Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (Awarded by the Graduate Students of the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania).
Winner, 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College.
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17 Comments:
I watched the frontline report, I most likely would skip the 2nd part. It seems to me the report is case of trying to fit the evidence to their narrative. They had already assumed the war happened only because agency or person X mislead agency or person Y.
When you look at Powell's UN speech there is absolutely no way a person with his intellect could have possibly believed the story he was presenting. The idea that he was mislead can't be true.
Take the mobile chemical lab, how could Powell have believed there is such a lab when there is not even a picture of the mobile labs. This is after years of off-and-on UN inspections. He still needed an artist rendition of the hypothetical mobile lab. The excuse is that we don't have spies in Iraq, but don't we have satellites that can even read the license plates from the orbit?
Take the excuse that there are no human intelligence in Iraq. We know high Iraqi officials were on CIA payrolls. Interestingly the show even talks about the first bombs that were dropped on Baghdad were targeting Saddam. So we think we know were Saddam is staying the night, but we can't show you a picture of the mobile lab!
The frontline show doesn't come across as a truthful documentary.
I agree that Powell knew he was presenting baloney.
But darn if the corporate media didn't act like they believed every word!
I guess they were acting too.... but a whole lot of Americans sure bought it, which leaves me to wonder why we are so lacking in critical thinking skills here in our country.
And I am glad to see Prof. Cole turn against the war, but it would have been nice to see him speaking out at the Michigan anti-war rallies in 2003. There is a very lively anti-war and peace movement up in his neck of the woods, and if he had been against the war before it started, they would have put him on the stage, I am sure.
Really, being against a war that is already underway is a bit too late. These evils of war have to be stopped before they get even a chance at coming to be - and the Frontline show did show to me that bush & cheney were determined to go into Iraq first chance they got.
Huh? I don't get "daryoush's" point. Powell is too smart to be "mislead"? Then he's a dummy? Isn't the point that, either way, he misled the country? Which way does the "Frontline" broadcast put it? Smart Powell or Dumb Powell?
I have to agree. The documentary was a vast oversimplification and left many important details out without any explication. Now, I stepped out for a minute so I may have missed something but did they actually skip Prime Minister's Al-Jaafari time in office and completely jump to Al-Maliki?? The parts of the film dedicated to the rise of the insurgency were extraordinarily simplistic. They deal somewhat with the disbanding of the army but had nothing to say about how the incompetent of the TAL lead to independent groups taking over administrative and security tasks in particular cities. And wasn't there this one guy who said something like Al-Sadr learned everything he knew from Saddam!?!? WTF? Abu Ghraib is almost whitewashed. Their "examination" of the "surge" was absurd. There was no talk of oil. The build up to the war and talk of WMDs was simplified. Over all the film was pretty sorry business.
Is this is the best public broadcasting can do then God save us!
-- Xenu
Interesting observations which makes me want to watch all the more. Thanks!
I haven't watched the 2nd part yet but the first part at least did a decent job of portraying the kind of pressure the administration (cheney) put on the CIA to find "evidence" to use as justification for an invasion. Of course it was not great in all parts especially in explaining how Tony Blair was so easily "tricked" so to speak in pledging support for an invasion
You guys are nuts!
I watched nearly the entirety of both parts, and I found them to be breathtaking. While they necessarily suffer from the sins of any effort to summarize 7 years of history into 4 hours, on balance I think the producers made sound judgments about how to present their story.
For what it's worth, up-thread is a classic example of 20/20 hindsight, arguing that Powell couldn't have been duped and must have been complicit. I find that supposition hard to believe since there's no evidence for it and a fair amount against it (see, for example's Wilkerson's testimony). It's hard to believe that people who seem larger than life are in fact mere mortals, but to me that's one of the Frontline piece's strongest attributes: bringing out the extent to which this tragedy was caused by the petty feelings of the principals.
Part II seemed to be a repeat of a program already broadcast on Frontline, but the program as a whole was fantastic.
Biggest takeaway for me: Donald Rumsfeld is one of the most destructive people ever to have held high office. His pride and incompetence were responsible, among other things, for the unforgiveable failure to nail bin Laden after Kabaul fell.
PBS and Frontline in on the revisionist history. I like the end where they say something like "Sadr's men came and took Saddam from the Americans" and went and hung him. So Sadrists, fighting the US military, show up and they give Saddam over to them?
Of course, Frontline big wigs know about Psy-ops and military disinformation, but they're still in on the joke.
This war started back in '79 with Pres Carters' Presidential Directive 59 (I think) creating Central Command - a Command that would provide the US of A with the capacity to control the oil fields. Over the next ten years they put all the pieces in place - the forward bases, supplies, the regional agreements and all the other hardware and political support necessary to make it happen. All they needed was a pretext. They'll do Iran too if they get a chance. Get real folks wars are mostly about strategic supplies and in this world Oil is still the big one. They'll do whatever it takes, how ever they can in whatever time frame is necessary. Everything else is wrapping.
I just watched both parts of "Bush's War" last night, and I have to agree with the posters who say it is vastly oversimplified. There was not a single thing new presented in either part, and the manner in which the past two-plus years were glossed over was very disappointing. Frontline has produced far superior programs on these topics in the past several years. This seemed like a cheap way to combine everything into one ball of wax. Only, it parrots the same "facts" used to lead us into war and only very occasionally engages in thoughtful analysis. I don't know, I've rarely seen a Frontline documentary that was this disappointing.
Disappointing to say the least. As with the MSM only people who supported the war are allowed to be heard...absolutely nothing from the anti war folks. Nothing about Bush's ignorance of the people and their culture he was to invade- his comment to Amb. Galbraith "I just thought they're a bunch of Muslims". Nothing about the oil connection - no mention of only protecting the oil ministry building during the looting and nothing else.
The coup de grace for me was at the end when the narrator brought up the surge when he stated that more troops were "surged" into Iraq instead of mentioning the escalation of troops for the surge in Baghdad. It gave me the impression that his narrative had the imprematur of the government.
All in all very disappointing.
"Bush's war" seemed to give all the credit for recent reduction in violence to the increase in US troops. I think violence was reduced due to Sadr's ceasefire and the Sunni militia being paid off.
And, those two items will be coming to an end.
Then cheney will say 'last throes' again.
I agree that "Bush's War" was an over-simplification particularly of the run-up. There was nothing about the support of the MSM prior to and just after the invasion. Nothing about the continuing false patriotism of many of the right-wing media and blogs.
However, the still-shots of the major players were amazingly revealing of their personalities, and that made it very worthwhile to watch.
Great documentary..
There was a lot of good stuff in this program, and there is more detail online.
Program’s great weakness was coverage of Sistani, of Sadr, and of Iraqi leaders.
Sadr was portrayed as “thug” and “murderer”, rather than a sincere nationalist opposed to occupation of his home, a man who risked his life by staying in Iraq under Saddam, even after his family was murdered, while most shia leaders fled to Iran for many years. Sadr is also rare among shia leaders for his outreach and support of sunni brothers, in words and in deeds (as at Fallujah). Frontline completely ignored the fact that USA first banished Sadr’s newspaper for telling the truth, then attempted to kidnap and murder him. Only then did Sadr defend himself in battle, which Bush and Frontline regard as Sadr’s attack on USA.
Frontline completely failed to mention the importance of Sistani, how he worked with UN representative Sérgio Vieira de Mello and forced Bush/USA to hold elections; how he intervened in the USA’s attack on Sadr forcing USA to back off; how he engineered the shia alliance which won the elections; how he still holds the ultimate trump card (massive resistance by all shia); how he still refuses to meet with any representative of the USA occupation.
Frontline was also seriously lacking in any description of the various shia factions/organizations, and their relationship to Iran. Bush (and more recently McCain) have conflated these shia groups for their political gain. In fact Sadr is the LEAST influenced/supported by Iran; whereas Dawa and Sciri (the leaders recognized, praised and supported by Bush and McCain) are the MOST influenced/supported by Iran.
The extensive interviews online are a treasurehouse of information, e.g., did you know that John Burns of NYT is an old buddy of Bush’s? Perhaps this accounts for Burns continual search for rationality in Bush’s madness:
“I’ve known him for a very long time, since he and I both were young men … when the first President Bush was the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in China, and the present President Bush came and spent a summer there. I was introduced to him by his parents, and we spent some time together. …”
Burn’s recitation that Sadr murdered another cleric is really misinformed/disinformed. In the first place, Sadr was not even present when this cleric was killed at a mosque - Sadr had left the building earlier. In the second place, this cleric was a USA stooge, chosen by Chalabi and Bush team and supported by Chalabi-Bush militia of 700 men (flown into Iraq by USA planes), and brought to the mosque by them in an attempt to take it over against the wishes of its existing leadership. No surprise that he was knifed when he refused to leave.
When you look at Powell's UN speech there is absolutely no way a person with his intellect could have possibly believed the story he was presenting. The idea that he was mislead can't be true.
My impression is that Powell knew there were huge holes in the story, but put the best public face on the story he could because he was asked to do so. He's a career soldier and I think he fell into the trap of following his commander in chiefs orders, where someone with a background in politics or business would have quit in disgust.
That doesn't excuse him, but it does mean that he allowed himself to be used as a tool. He didn't architect this whole mess.
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