"America At A Crossroads" review

Review of “America At A Crossroads” – Gangs of Iraq

First, one event that they made claims about that are not proven: Sunni extremists bombed Hakim in August 2003 in Najaf. This bombing was similar to the UN bombing, but no one has claimed doing this bombing and no one has been proven to have done this bombing, or the UN bombing either. This film made no mention that Hakim (the one now running the Iraqi government via Maliki – and who visited the White House) has more blood on his hands than Sadr. (A rumor I heard recently is this Hakim was behind the bombing of the other Hakim in August 2003. They were brothers. The reason given is that the Hakim in power now wanted his brother out of power back in 2003. His brother was more popular than he was at that point.) No mention is made that Sadr worked with Sunnis in Fallujah in April 2004. No mention of how the death squads started when Negroponte showed up. No mention that Americans ran the Interior Ministry even while they claimed that those not loyal to particular Shia group were fired.

I can attest that the US Congress showed no concerns about these death squads in 2005 and 2006 while I tried to lobby them to look into these atrocities. In the summer of 2005, the Interior Ministry was under US direction, per eyewitness reports. No mention of the fact that the Sunnis who were discovered at a compound in Baghdad in November 2005 (with many signs of torture) were turned back over to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

Samarra bombing in February 2006: There is no proof as to who did this bombing, and al Qaeda has not taken credit for this horrible event. It is known that it was a professional demolition job, and that the city was under curfew until just before it blew up. Also, there are eye witness reports of American military being on the scene until just before it blew up.

The US military in Iraq had to take away cell phones so the Iraqi cannot tell their buddies where US military will be – shows how well all this will work. The abductions from the Minister of Education earlier this year – well planned, well organized – and the Sunnis kidnapped are still missing.

This documentary does show how hopeless this whole situation is. One US service man said that he thought that we were just equipping Iraqis for an upcoming civil war. That, of course, is the bush/cheney plan all along. Civil war is an old counter-insurgency technique. So is genocide.

Petraus was presented as being a success up there in Mosul back in 2003 and 2004 – but it was a mirage. And, as anyone who regularly listened to Democracy Now, we knew it was a mirage. And when they attacked Fallujah in November 2004, it all fell apart in Mosul. The entire police force melted away – since they were all part of the insurgency.

America At A Crossroads – The Case For War

This episode was almost total bullshit. It featured Perle, the Prince of Darkness. It was one lie after another, one line of bullshit after another. Perle claimed that we will only be in Iraq long enough to get the Iraqis to the point where they can defend themselves – from other Iraqis, I guess. Perle claims death squads are run by Iran, which is a lie. Perle said that Saddam was involved with al Qaeda – another lie. Perle said that if the US leaves Iraq, the government there will fall. This is probably true, since the government is seen as puppets of the US without legitimacy. The longer the US military stays there, the more likely this is to happen. Perle is delusional to think otherwise.

Perle used Democrats to further his lies. He claims he is a Democrat (if so, we should evict him!). He said that Clinton believed Saddam was a threat also. Clinton did make such stupid claims, which shows he is either stupid or a liar also. Perle went on about Kennedy and how he stood for freedom. Well, Kennedy did the Bay of Pigs fiasco and nearly brought us to a nuclear war with Russia. When Kennedy started seriously talking about peace, he got murdered – as did his brother after him and Martin Luther King.

Perle failed to mention the countries that harbor terrorism – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. He failed to mention that the Taliban in 2001 said they would hand over bin Laden and his group, and he failed to mention the US history with bin Laden and his group. Perle talked about Afghanistan – but his idea of what is going on there is a fantasy or a lie. He also conflicts what is happening in Iraq with what is happening in Afghanistan.

Perle mentions that what the Taliban do is violent. He fails to mention the violence of dropping bombs and busting into homes in the middle of the night and other acts by the US military. It is like Perle is walking around with the idea in his head that whatever the US does is all sweetness and wonderful – and any violence we enact is “restorative violence” – meaning that it makes people somehow “better” to go thorough hell on earth from the US violence. And the majority of the US population is blind to the violence, and some of them are so delusional themselves they think only guilty people are killed by the violence.

Perle claims we are facing a terrorist threat of huge proportions. Yes, the terrorists killed less than 5,000 Americans and we have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqs and Afghans. So, who’s the real threat here? Perle stated that Saddam started two wars and killed over a million. Bush started two wars and will kill way more than a million. Perle also said that it seemed Saddam was hiding something because he would not let UN weapons inspectors in to the country – ANOTHER BIG LIE. Perle noted that Iraqis voted enthusiastically – he fails to note that they voted for us to LEAVE IRAQ.

Delusional or evil or both? My vote goes to just evil. An opinion piece in Salon had something to say about Perle and his world view and the series in general, and here are a few clips:

“America At A Crossroads” Veers To The Right

“If anyone still believes that PBS has a left-wing bias, "America at a Crossroads," the $20 million, 12-hour series about Islam, terrorism and the post-9/11 world that kicked off Sunday night, should shut them up once and for all. "Crossroads" proves yet again that five years after the 9/11 attacks, the mainstream American media still can't bring itself to talk about the real causes of Arab and Muslim rage at the West.”

“The real problem is "Crossroads'" almost complete failure to explore the history of the Middle East, the effect of Western policies on its people, and the political and historical grievances that are largely responsible for Muslim and Arab rage at the West.

Intellectually, historically and journalistically, this is inexcusable. It's outrageous to devote this much time and money to a subject and never deal directly with one of the central issues. It's as if someone made a 12-hour series about the Civil War and decided to omit slavery.”

One episode, a virtual infomercial for Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative theorist and architect of the Iraq war, is so laughably biased -- and so unbalanced by any film giving equal time to a corresponding perspective on the left -- that it taints the entire series. Suffice it to say the Perle episode, which airs Tuesday night, is almost worth viewing just to see the opening, in which Perle pays specious karmic penance as he is confronted by angry antiwar protesters. In fact, the setup, like the entire film, is completely canned -- the filmmakers obviously made Perle do it to make him a more sympathetic figure. (If you think that Perle chose to leave his house in France to confront an antiwar demonstration while the cameras just happened to be rolling, I have one of his old Chalabi-for-President-of-Iraq stickers I'd like to sell you.)

……………Americans may not like to admit it, but ignoring the truth about what people in the Middle East actually think is a big part of the reason we're bogged down in Iraq. Collapsing distinctions between groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, on the one hand, and ones like al-Qaida, on the other, is a key part of the neocon agenda. It underlies Bush's whole approach to the Middle East in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. It allowed Bush to paint Israel's war against Lebanon, which further eroded America's already dismal standing in the region, as part of his "war on terror." And it has gone unchallenged in Congress and the American media, in large part because to challenge it is to venture into the political minefield surrounding anything having to do with Israel. But it simply does not jibe with the realities or beliefs of the Middle East. Documentary films that uncritically repeat these conventional pieties reveal themselves to be either ignorant or biased. They shed no light on their subjects and tacitly support the neoconservative approach to the "war on terror" -- the very issue that they are supposedly examining.

As long as the US goes on inflicting violence on other countries and peoples, we will have terrorism. As long as the general public is ignorant (and for some of them, long after they are informed) of the US sponsored violence, these US policies will continue. This few parts of this series I did see on PBS was a very mixed bag on informing the US public on what is going on and what is happening. This Wednesday night, April 25, Bill Moyers will do a report on the lies that lead us to war – and this will likely be much more informing that the America At A Crossroads series.

So, here’s a link from a US soldier of a drive through Ramadi in April 2007. That will help inform you! And for daily updates on Iraq, go to Iraq Today blog.