To hear some of our anti-war friends tell it — and I do mean friends (Michael Berg, on the left in the picture below demonstrating in New York last summer, is a nice guy; so are most anti-war folks I know) — you have to turn to foreign media to get the straight dope on what the United States is up to in the world, because the corporate shills in the American media just parrot the administration line. (And of course, that’s one of the places where their argument goes about 
180 degrees from what I have observed.)
Well, this may not be quite the sort of thing they have in mind, but I thought it ironic that the day Michael’s letter appeared, two other things happened — we learned who Deep Throat was, and I received a release from the Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project relating a scoop from Iranian television telling us what Watergate was really all about — something that, indeed, I had not read in the American press.
You can see the report on the group’s Web site. But for those of us deficient in Farsi (or lacking the right plug-in on our browsers), the release including this excerpt from the Iranian reporter’s narration:
Today, it has become clear that Nixon’s dispute with Israel and the Zionist lobby was among the main causes for his downfall. In fact, the reporters who exposed the Watergate affair and blew it out of proportion were Zionists, recruited to the ranks of the Zionist lobby. By using the media as its tool, Zionism tried to get one of its main opponents out of the way.
As evidence of the fact that President Nixon was one righteous dude, this excerpt from his memoir is quoted:
One of the main problems I had to face was narrow
mindedness and pro-Israel views.
And also:
In the 25 years since the end of World War II, these views spread and grew stronger to the point that many people consider refraining from supporting Israel to be antisemitism. I tried to make them understand that this is not true, but did not succeed.
So you can see, of course, why the great international Jewish conspiracy had to get rid of him, right?
This kind of anti-Semitic nonsense, intended to whip up those already inclined toward killing Israelis and Americans at every opportunity, is based in a world view that is our greatest enemy in the War on Terror — a term I am comfortable using, unlike my anti-war friends, without ironic quotation marks.
The kind of attitudes that can turn any news story into an opportunity to further engender hatred against Jews and their friends, is a real threat to the United States, and to the West, and to all the values that those of us who believe in liberal democracy hold dear.
And it’s worth fighting against — with our own ideas mostly (which is why the real-life abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are extremely harmful to the war effort), but also, when those attitudes are advanced by brutal tyrants, with our military.
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I’ll be blunt – Michael Berg represents the new generation of useful idiots, the kind of folks who brought us Pol Pot and fell over themselves to edge the Iron Curtain with some nice lace trim.
I know Berg and his ilk – they have a predisposition to see the US, in particular the Bush administration, as the enemy, while ignoring the brutality that Bush’s alleged “victims” inflict. These are his words in his letter in today’s edition of The State:
It does little good to argue with Berg since he’s more interested in what he asserts are motivations that what the facts really are, which reminds me, was it the US that bomb those Buddhas in Afghanistan or were they destroyed before we attacked? Whatever, no?
He doesn’t acknowledge that it was the US military that uncovered the Abu Ghraib and Bagram crimes, and it is the US military that is investigating allegations of mistreatment at Guantánamo. He ignores the “six morons” theory in favor of one that has a Donald Rumsfeld ordering the military chain of command to engage in the random mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, even failing to acknowledge the circumstance surrounding the Lyndie England photo-shoot – all those pix were taken on one night – Lydie’s birthday – when she was disobeying orders by being in the cellblock, a fact that the MSN has not clearly disclosed. Rather than a random act of idiocy committed by poorly supervised misfits, Berg would have us believe that Abu Ghraib and other crimes are the norm for US forces. One need not have relatives, neighbors, and friends in the service to find that sort of thought despicable.
But enough negativity. What would Berg have us do since he does not subscribe to the belief that “Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”? We know what those who call themselves progressives are against, but what are they for?
George Galloway – MP, progressive, friend of Saddam – during a recent interview said that progressives are for uniting with Muslims globally.
So it seems that, as a minimum, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Coke will have to cease operations, but I start getting confused about what the hog farm policy is, since the two groups are anti-Semitic but Muslims don’t eat pork either, so maybe Maurice’s and all barbecue are probably out too. Somehow it seems that we’ll have less freedom to eat, but otherwise things will be better and less Jewish, unless you’re a woman or a Christian or an Atheist or gay or even moody. Oooops! Manhattan Bagel is on the outs too, no?
Berg’s solution appears to be to surrender on the War on Terror and those who might do us harm unless they get their way with us. What is their way? A smile and then they slit your throat, as this article says. Yup, cower in fear, even at those with saxophones.
Thanks for posting that info about another thing that seems to have slipped the minds of everyone in the media. I realize Iran has their point of view to propogate, but when you already have certian facts and you add to it, that story, it starts to look like you’re at the very least getting straighter talk from third-world foreigners that your own country’s media.