Suddenly, it's al-Qaeda everywhere

U.S. operations in Iraq, it seems, are no longer against “insurgents.” No, the “insurgent,” a vague term not nearly as appropriate as “resistance fighter” or “partisan” in the case of occupied Iraq, has mostly disappeared from the scene these days.

Currently all U.S. strikes are against “al-Qaeda.” Scratch a U.S. general and he will say, “We have eliminated 37 al-Qaeda operatives in Ramadi today.” Or, “the Air Force has bombed three buildings in Anwar Province housing suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.”

Bush, too, and all administration spokespeople name only al-Qaeda as the U.S. enemy. And the media—they like to call themselves the “free press”—all repeat after them: “al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.”

This ploy became so obvious that the official New York Times newspaper critic on July 9 wrote an entire column on it, criticizing the Times itself for going along unquestioningly with the new terminology.

Why the change in propaganda? Consider this: Bush’s popularity ratings are below 30 percent. That’s in the United States, where he won the elections—or stole them, according to many—in 2000 and 2004. Outside the U.S., according to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s talk in Argentina last spring, Bush’s popularity index is “negative.” Chávez’s comment was loudly applauded by 40,000 Argentines.

How then to find some enemy even less popular than Bush for the propaganda war? Impossible outside the U.S., perhaps, but inside the U.S., whatever al-Qaeda really is, it has been blamed for the strike on the World Trade Center that killed nearly 3,000 people here. Thus, it may be hated even more than Bush, although Bush is responsible for the deaths of 3,600 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

So the public relations experts of the Bush gang decided that from now on all fighting would be described as against al-Qaeda, and that’s what all the media must also write and say. Then, they thought, people would support Bush.

No matter that in Iraq there is so much hatred of the U.S. occupation that even puppet troops rebel and wage firefights against the Pentagon’s forces. No matter that al-Qaeda—whatever it is—didn’t exist in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. No matter that dozens of Iraqi groups, from tribal to religious to nationalist to socialist organizations, all carry out armed resistance against the occupiers. Al-Qaeda gets the blame for everything.

It would seem like a stupid ploy, but the Bush gang is using it to prepare for new escalations and new wars, so the al-Qaeda lie campaign must be resisted, just like all the other lies from Bush and his gang.