10 January 2007

January 5's Newsnight is in keeping with BBC's long tradition of relaying state propaganda while maintaining a veneer of respectability. The BBC is "shooting the gun from someone else's shoulder", as the Pakhtun saying goes, when it employs the white man's other favorite Iraqi (Ahmad Chalabi being the first), Salam Pax, to present a potted history of Saddam's rule that considerately elides the US-UK role in sustaining his reign of terror.

Salam Pax (real name Salam al Janabi), son of Adnan al Janabi, a "moderate" Sunni member of Iyad Allawi's party, is the ideal embedded native --  fluent in English, well placed, resourceful and blithely reconciled to the idea of foreigners occupying his country. The dominant theme in his reporting is the normalcy of life in Iraq: a life of consumption -- familiar Western brands of course -- and reminiscences of past horrors. There is a clear disjuncture between the Baghdad Salam lives in and the one inhabited by millions of less privileged Iraqis frequently reported on by respected journalists, such as Patrick Cockburn: there is a virtual absence of the occupation, bombings, blackouts and water shortages.

Had the BBC presented this seriously flawed history of Saddam itself -- without using the "Baghdad-Blogger's-opinion" device -- it would have seriously undermined its credibility, besides opening itself up to ridicule. The opinions of articulate and knowledgeable Iraqis such as Haifa Zangana or Sami Ramadani would not have helped since, while they remain critical of Saddam, they are equally uncompromising in their excoriation of the US-UK role in their nation's tragedy. A modern day house slave, therefore, comes in handy when the BBC has to validate state policies without making itself appear an establishment mouthpiece.

The oddly cartoonish Baghdad Blogger starts by absolving US-UK of their role in the present destruction of Iraq by shifting agency neatly into Saddam's corner; it is one of the "wars he chose to wage". A selective biography of Saddam's life follows, the omissions are noteworthy: While Saddam's assassination attempt on Abdul Karim Qasim in '59 is covered, CIA's role in it goes unmentioned; the '63 Ba'ath coup, which succeeded in deposing Qasim and killing thousands of Iraqi Communists (read Nationalists) named in lists furnished by the CIA is overlooked entirely, as is the '68 coup, aided, once again, by the ubiquitous CIA; the brutal and extended war with Iran is mentioned, what is overlooked is the US, UK, German role in furnishing the Chemical-Biological weapons and satellite imagery that enabled the mass slaughter (declassified documentation of the cooperation available at the National Security Archives); the '91 Gulf war is mentioned, what is overlooked is the destruction wrought on Iraq's civilians and infrastructure in the US-UK led campaign that dropped more bombs on Iraq in 5 weeks than the total in 6 years of WWII in the Western theatre.

For maximum effect, however, we are told Saddam's favorite book was Mein Kampf (in fact, it was Stalin's Life and Works), and while there is mention of "UN imposed sanctions", the fact that support for these sanctions did not extend beyond US and UK is conveniently overlooked.

The following observation from Juan Cole is equally valid for the British coverage of Saddam's legacy:

The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans [and the British, of course] their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran.

Perhaps the situation is best summed up by Slavoj Zizek:

Saddam Hussein’s regime was an abominable authoritarian state, guilty of many crimes, mostly toward its own people. However, one should note the strange but key fact that, when the United States representatives and the Iraqi prosecutors were enumerating his evil deeds, they systematically omitted what was undoubtedly his greatest crime in terms of human suffering and of violating international justice: his invasion of Iran. Why? Because the United States and the majority of foreign states were actively helping Iraq in this aggression.