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Written by Ivo Moelans
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Saturday, 25 November 2006 |
For the first time all pretense that the situation in Iraq is salvageable was dropped Yesterday, on the twelve o'clock news of the Flemish commercial television station VTM (Flemish TV Company) there was an item about Iraq. Nothing special there. All radio and TV stations report daily about Iraq. But what struck me was that for the first time all pretense that the situation there is salvageable was dropped. In earlier reports the 'incidents' - as they are mostly called - appeared to be the handiwork of fanatics, religious zealots, insurgents, internecine strife and so on. Of course they are all that, but now the news of yet another wave of car bombings and suicide attacks was brought with a kind of resignation and hopelessness, the equivalent of an admission that Iraq is definitely beyond repair, irretrievably lost.
The American occupying forces (or the British for that matter - let's not forget the allies) were not mentioned at all. Neither was their inability to control the situation. As far as this report was concerned they were not there at all. Neither were they shown: only the mangled bodies of the victims and the grieving bystanders. "It now definitely looks as if Iraq has descended into civil war", the news anchor simply stated with the same intonation she would use to announce a tsunami or some other kind of natural disaster. A horrible situation, sure, but nobody is to blame.
This is probably the most condemning statement I have ever heard: the American involvement, the bungling, the ineptitude, the guilt, all those have become irrelevant, futile. American politics in the region have become so inconsequential that they aren't even worth mentioning. It doesn't matter anymore if America decides to go long, go deep or to get out. It has become a case of simply waiting until the storm has petered out to assess the damage done. In this news report the Americans and the British were treated as those disreputable relatives some families have. Everybody knows they exist but, as they are an embarrassment, they are not spoken of in polite conversation. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 25 November 2006 )
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