Apr. 7, 2003 The Baghdad Airport scam, By Barry Rubin
If you want to understand the Middle East you must pay close attention to the tremendously important event that took place on April 5, 2003. The story is this: US forces captured the Saddam Hussein International Airport at Baghdad.
Iraq's Information Minister Muhammad Sa'id al-Sahhaf announced that on the night of April 11-12, there would be a big surprise attack using suicide squads. Several hours later he stated that the Republican Guard had recaptured the airport, that US "mercenary" forces were on the run, and that Iraq was generally winning the war. He even promised that in one hour the government would take foreign journalists on a tour of the airport to show it was in Iraqi hands.
No tour took place. Indeed, not only was the airport still held by the Americans, but there had been no Iraqi offensive that night at all! This amazingly brazen lie seemed like the last gasp of denial from a regime on the verge of being overthrown.
But that interpretation was dead wrong. This story was not bizarrely unusual; it was stupefyingly typical of what has been going on in the Arab world, and not just Iraq, for decades.
The big lie, the ridiculous exaggeration, whatever you want to call it, is typical. Time after time, regarding Israel or on other matters, Western media, governments, academics, and large elements of public opinion have been accepting such things as accurate, or have at least put them on a par with other versions of events.
Now the lesson of the Baghdad Airport scam should be learned once and for all: This is the way things work so very often in the Arab world.
This does not mean that most Arabs are happy with this situation. But there should be no doubt that the distortion of truth is ongoing and widespread. To watch just about any Arab television network or read just about any Arab newspaper is to be told that Iraq is winning the war, that the Iraqi people support Saddam, that allied forces are committing massive atrocities, and that the attack on Iraq is motivated by the worst possible motives.
How can people cope with the world when provided with such false information? Is it any surprise that anti-Americanism grows and that moderation or peace is impossible on the basis of such beliefs? They lay the basis for still more disasters for the Arabs themselves.
ON APRIL 4, Jihad al-Khazen, former editor of Al-Hayat, wrote a column in that newspaper entitled (in the English version) "American fools."
To understand the significance of this article one must know that Khazen is a moderate in the Arab media context. He has lived a long time in the West and might be expected to be one of those doing the most to help his readers deal with reality.
Here is how his column begins: "Members of the Likudist gang inside the American administration, which Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted its existence by denying it, have pervaded universities, research centers and the administration." He explains that this group is responsible for current US policy and supports the "Nazi" practices of Israel.
As for the war in Iraq, the people see the allied forces as "invaders" facing widespread resistance even among Shi'ite Iraqis who hate America more than they hate Saddam.
Khazen explains that Israeli agents tell Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld what to say, and describes the American general picked to run the transitional civil government in Iraq as "radical Sharonist Likudist."
If this is what one of the smartest, most rational, most familiar with the West and relatively moderate Arab writers can say, how can the Arab world possibly from the standpoint of its own interests deal effectively with the United States in diplomatic terms?
In addition, there is a great myth that must be exploded: It is not US policy as such that engenders so much hatred toward America in the Middle East but rather the total misrepresentation of what that policy is and what the US actually does.
One of the type of people Khazen hates was eliminated this month. Michael Kelly, the Washington Post columnist, died April 4 in an accident while covering the fighting in Iraq. Dozens of journalists paid tribute to his personal attributes and wonderful family, both of which are true. Yet virtually no one pointed out what Michael Kelly actually thought about the Middle East. He was possibly the most articulate journalist expressing what I call the alternative view of the region.
What Khazen and his colleagues do not understand is that their failure to comprehend or acknowledge what is happening in their own region and their total disinterest in giving a fair assessment of US policy will do them far more harm than all the alleged Zionist imperialist gangs in the world.
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
