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Times Watch for April 22, 2004

US Troops "Might-Makes-Right Rule" Like Hussein's?

     Edward Wong's filing from Baghdad, "Battle for Falluja Rouses The Anger of Iraqis Weary of the U.S. Occupation," opens: "After suicide car bombs ripped into the relative calm of the southern city of Basra on Wednesday, merchants in a middle-class neighborhood here directed words dripping with venom at the American occupiers." It gets no better from the U.S. point-of-view in Wong's Thursday article.

     He briefly notes the terror tactics of those fighting U.S. troops: "When asked about their thoughts on the recent surge in violence in Iraq, none of the people interviewed mentioned the deadly attacks in Basra on Wednesday that killed at least 68 people, including 23 schoolchildren."

     Yet the rest of his article portrays the situation in the country as normal Iraqis rebelling against a U.S. occupation perceived as unjust: "More than anything else, Falluja has become a galvanizing battle, a symbol around which many Iraqis rally their anticolonial sentiments. Some say the fighting there exposes the lie of American justice by showing that the world's sole superpower is ready to avenge the killings and mutilation of four American security contractors by sending marines to shell and invade a city of 300,000 people."

     Wong cites reporting from the satellite network Al Jazeera, without noting the network's anti-American slant: "News reports, including those on the widely watched Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, two Arab satellite networks, cite hospital officials in Falluja saying that hundreds of people have been killed, including many women and children. American military officials say those reports are inaccurate." (Both networks have been accused by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of being "violently anti-coalition.")

     Next, Wong writes of U.S. troops as purveyors of might-makes-right, comparing them indirectly to Saddam Hussein: "The invasion of Falluja has shattered the remaining hope of many of those Iraqis who thought the Americans might be able to free the country from might-makes-right rule, which has shadowed this region from the days of the Ottoman Empire to British colonial rule to Mr. Hussein."

     He talks to two middle-class Iraqis and summarizes their thoughts about the "hypocritical" Americans who use force as "a means to an end," writing: "Yet [the Iraqis] sense of kinship with Iraqis in Falluja, Najaf and elsewhere runs deeper than any pull toward abstract notions of democracy offered by the Americans--notions that to them appear increasingly hypocritical given the reliance of the occupiers on overwhelming force as a means to an end. 'Four American people were killed in Falluja," said Omar Farouk, 35, the owner of a convenience store next to the electronics shop where Mr. Hussein works. 'Because of that, 500 people were killed in Falluja. The message of the Americans is that 'we have the power.' Iraqis will never accept that.'"

     Wong concludes the story by relaying this advice from an Iraqi salesman (and from liberals around the world)--get the UN involved: "Mr. Massoud suggested a solution. 'The Americans must withdraw and allow the United Nations to come and observe elections,' he said. 'But even if an international forces comes to Iraq, they must leave, too, as soon as their job is done.'"

For the rest of Wong's story, click here.

• Iraq War | Edward Wong

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org