March 3, 2005
These are tough times for fans of fascism, especially those in the media who make their reputations (such as they are) shilling for Israel and the U.S. The more we learn about U.S. corruption in Iraq or zionist repression in Palestine, the harder and more desperately these scribblers have to work to convince us that black is white, tyranny is democracy and slavery is freedom.
I can only surmise that it was this sort of desperation that led Marcus Gee to write two such monumentally dishonest columns on Feb. 23 and March 2. The key point to note in each is Gee’s use of non-sequiturs, tendentious language, and conspicuous omissions of contrary evidence to concoct apologias for U.S. interventionism.
In the first column, “Let Bush promote freedom,” Gee misrepresents democracy and then uses this skewed definition to criticize Bush’s critics: “In the Cold War era, critics around the world complained that in its zealous campaign against communism, the United States forgot its democratic ideals and made dirty bargains with anti-Communist tyrants from Augusto Pinochet to Ferdinand Marcos. How dare the Americans suppress democracy in the pursuit of their selfish national interests, the critics asked then? Now that Mr. Bush has declared that the spread of democracy is in the U.S. national interest, people attack him not for suppressing democracy, but for promoting it. How dare, they ask, he presume that the United States knows what’s best for other countries.”
Nowhere does Gee mention the price the Iraqis paid for being made “democratic” —the massacre of 100,000 in Falluja; the continuing torture of Iraqis by U.S. soldiers and Israeli contractors; the pillaging of oil reserves; the looting of their national treasures, to name just a few. Saddam Hussein may have been a tyrant, but not even he matched the savagery of the U.S. “liberators.”
Also, Gee conspicuously fails to mention that Hussein was one of those “anti-Communist tyrants” the U.S. made “dirty bargains” with. One such bargain was supplying him with chemical weapons. At what point, I wonder, does a tyrant turn bad?
Third, the destruction of Iraq had nothing to do with democracy—nothing—and Gee has no right to argue otherwise. The destruction was driven by the trumped up charge that Hussein had and was threatening to use “weapons of mass destruction.” Remember? It was in all the papers, including the Globe and Mail. Fourth, Gee feebly tries to stigmatize Bush’s critics by using a Cold War analogy, but it has nothing to do with anything.
In sum, Gee’s shilling for Bush consisted of: redefining a war crime as an act of magnanimity; ignoring history; bastardizing the language; and showing a typical zionist contempt for Arabs. For Gee, “democracy” comes from the barrel of a gun or from a missile. For those of us with a working moral compass, that’s a sign of tyranny.
In fact, Gee appeared so desperate to defend Bush’s criminality—and make us forget all about that WMD business—that he admitted this very point:
“If we can agree that democracy is a superior form of government and that everyone has a right to it...it has to be a good thing that the President of the most powerful country in history has made it a personal mission to spread it.”
Using “democracy” “power” and “personal mission” in one sentence invites allusion to the Crusades, with all of its attendant tyranny, cruelty and destruction. This is the essence of Bush’s imperial “democracy,” and Gee is covering it up.
The title of the second column, “Admit it: Bush aids democracy,” pretty much says it all. Gee spends a fair amount of space crowing about the Palestinians’ first “free and fair election” without mentioning a few crucial facts: Israel is still the overlord of Palestine; the new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is a quisling who already tried to sell out the Palestinian right of return; and that the U.S. and Israel deliberately ostracized former leader Yasser Arafat so that they could deal with Abbas.
Gee tries to make the case that the Iraqi and Palestinian “elections” betokened a wave of democracy sweeping away tyranny in the Middle East, but in neither of these cases is democracy evident or possible. Each is occupied by an expansionist colonial power that would never tolerate true independence.
Again, Gee’s ineptitude shows through as he implicitly concedes the point: “If the Palestinians’ new government is cracking down on corruption and condemning terrorism, it is because Mr. Abbas knows he needs the U.S. to reach a deal with Israel on Palestinian statehood.”
We are to assume that only Palestinians are terrorists. Gee has nothing to say about Israel’s state terrorism, which is the direct cause of the violence he condemns. By the terms of the United Nations Charter and UN Security Council Resolution 242 Israel has no right to any of the land seized after it provoked the 1967 War.
Suppose the Palestinians had elected a leader that demanded Israel live up to its promise to allow Palestinians the right of return. Does Gee think for one minute that the zionist hierarchy in the U.S. would embrace this leader as a symbol of Palestinian democracy?
If the Globe brains trust gave a damn about ethics and standards, they would send Gee back to J-school. Unfortunately, Gee is also the editorial page editor, which means he skews the voice of the entire newspaper. In that spirit, the Canadian Arab News is proud to announce a new feature—“As the Globe spins (How Canada’s national newspaper skews Middle East news).”
Each issue will feature an annotated news story about Occupied Palestine, Iraq or another place in the Israeli/U.S. crosshairs, that shows how negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims are maintained, and how the crimes of zionists are glossed over.
UPDATE: Professor David Noble, who was accused of spreading hate literature by York University—See “York University’s Zionist Star Chamber fails to intimidate student,” Dec. 9—has filed a $10 million defamation suit.
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