By Iqbal Suleman
War, War, War, War is all you need. Remember the song by the five piece band WAR CRIMINALS. The songwriter was Bibi Netanyahu, on vocals and lead guitar George Bush, on rhythm guitar and vocals Tony Blair, on drums and vocals Donald Rumsfeld, on backing vocals and harmony Collin Powell. They sounded awful. They were always out of tune (truth). But the mainstream media promoted their lies as though it was the gospel truth and in the process manufactured consent for the unjustified and unlawful war on Iraq.
In two short sentences, Malcolm X describes the power of the media.
“The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent look guilty and to make the guilty look innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
How apt and accurate are the words of Malcolm X.
It behoves us to rewind our minds to the U.S invasion of Iraq and shameful conduct of the mainstream western media. After the 911 attacks in the U.S, the mainstream media went into overdrive in pushing the narrative of the Muslim terrorist and “War on terror”. This “War on terror” was used as means to advance the Islamophobia project. The language and the imagery used by the media was powerful and repetitive until the construct of Muslim terrorist was firmly entrenched in the public mind.
The medieval mideasterner, primitive, dirty and bloodthirsty seeking to impose “Sharia law” in the West and wanting to slaughter all westerners. There was no mistaking who the terrorist was. He wore a beard. She wore a headscarf. He was Muhammad and she was Fatima. The public mind was conned into believing this Islamophobic trope and bought into the justification of the unlawful war. Mainstream establishments like the New York Times, BBC and CNN showed that they lacked the basic journalistic methods that a student learns in Journalism 101.
It was 2003 when the American led invasion and occupation of Iraq took place. An atrocious war that according to the medical journal Lancet killed approximately six hundred thousand Arab Muslim people in Iraq. The war created 3.9 million Iraqi refugees. The stated reason for the war was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was about to produce nuclear weapons. The other stated reason was that the Iraqi government of Sadaam Hussein had an operational relationship with Al Qaeda and was somehow linked with the September 11th attacks on the U.S.
No weapons of mass destruction were found and Iraq was nowhere close to making a nuclear weapon. A U.S bipartisan commission found that there was no evidence of an operational relationship between the Iraqi government and Saddam Hussein. The illegal war was based on lies. By repeating these lies and flooding the public mind with the mainstream media succeeded in manufacturing consent for war.
The prime mover orchestrating the war against Iraq was Benjamin Milaikowsky Netanyahu who in 2002 stated that “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is wanting, and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons”.
Today the very same Netanyahu is the prime mover, beating the drums of war and regime change against the people of Iran. His lies are repeated like a mantra in mainstream media. Now the U.S government has openly and unlawfully threatened war against Iran on the pretext that Iran is in the process of acquiring a nuclear weapon that will be used against Israel. Netanyahu has been telling the world for the last three decades that Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon.
What are the facts though? The leader of Iran, Imam Ali Khamenei has pronounced that it is immoral, unlawful and un-Islamic to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran insists that its nuclear programme is for civilian use only. Iran abided by the terms of the JCPOA (Joint comprehensive plan of Action) which was signed in 2015 by the five permanent members of the U.N Security Council including the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, and Frances as well as the European Union. Hence the reference of the P5 plus one. It was however the United States that unilaterally tore up the agreement that it was a signatory to. Under the JCPOA, the inspectors from the IAEA had unfettered access to all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and there was transparency on Iran’s nuclear programme. In 2002, Iraq complied with the terms of the U.N resolution 1441 but America without any consideration to international law went to war with Iraq at the behest of Israel.
Even according to U.S intelligence agencies, Iran is not on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon as Netanyahu would have us believe. Israel however has a nuclear weapon. Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. It has invaded its neighbours in Lebanon and Syria. It unlawfully occupies and steals land from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. The current Israeli government has publicly stated that it wants to expel Palestinians from Gaza. Yet the world powers and the media seem fine with a nuclear Israel behaving the way it is.
You would expect the mainstream media to question the narrative presented by the U.S and Israeli governments? To ask questions, to challenge the inconsistencies and lies and do the job that journalist’s do.
Is the public being conditioned by the media for another war against the people of Iran? Will the public be fooled into accepting another atrocious Islamophobic war? Surely after the Imperialist wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and the current Israeli genocide in Palestine, the public should never believe anything that comes out of the mouth of Western Leaders, their media apparatus and their intelligence agencies. The media in the West is not independent, nor cultivated by democratic values. Millions of us as ordinary citizens from all over the world took to the streets to oppose the American war on Iraq but the media was not listening to the democratic voices of the people. It served the interests of its corporate and elite paymasters.
Why there is no popular debate about the role that intelligence agencies and the media are playing in attempting to manufacture consent for a war against Iran. This should shake us to the core when we look back at the role that intelligence agencies and the media played in creating the Islamophobic war against the people of Iraq.
Why is the public mind so relaxed on this issue? Why aren’t questions being asked?
In 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu whilst zealously beating the drums of war against the Muslim people of Iraq, stated that “If you take out Saddam, Saddams regime, I guarantee you, it will have enormous positive reverberations throughout the region”.
Positive reverberations Bibi? Six hundred thousand Arab Civilian deaths. 3.9 million Refugees. The creation of Isis and the complete destruction of Iraq.
In the global south, we don’t list to the music of WAR CRIMINALS. We remember the lyrics of Bob Marley “You can fool some people some time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time, get up, stand up, stand up for your rights, get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight”.