Salim Lone
29 September 2007
column
Washington, D.C. — What the world refers to as the annual UN General Assembly - which got under way here on Tuesday with speeches by Presidents George Bush and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - is in fact infinitely more.
The greatest crisis facing the world today revolves around US threats to attack Iran if it continues its development of nuclear weapons, a charge Iran strenuously denies. France added to the tensions considerably last week when its Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said the world should prepare for war against Iran.
But this year, it is not the GA discussions which are going to have an impact on whether Americans believe that war against Iran is justified. Indeed, President Bush's speech here on Tuesday did not contain any threat against Iran, like his famed 2002 speech here on Iraq did.
Instead, it is sections of the US media which have been whipping up anti-Iranian sentiment. They began by first demonising President Ahmadinejad over his request to visit the World Trade Centre site destroyed by the 9/11 terror attacks. Then they turned to the fact that Columbia University, one of this country's greatest centres of learning, should not have invited him to speak at the university.
A full page advertisement in the New York Times by a well-known Jewish lobby group called Iran a clear and present danger and asked the world to isolate it. The text appeared over an image of Mr Ahmadinejad.
CNN and other media picked up on the frenzy a day later by pouncing on a seemingly bizarre statement by Mr Ahmadinejad, that there were no homosexuals in Iran. In bold coverage throughout the day, the network denounced this statement as a lie and repeatedly showed a picture of two men being prepared for execution in Teheran for the rape of a young boy, and asserting that human rights groups, which it did not name, believe they were executed for being homosexual. CNN then showed a picture of two other men who were lashed for homosexuality.
Carried cartoon
The International Herald Tribune carried a cartoon which in essence showed that Iran's denial of its gays was equal to its denial of possessing nuclear weapons.
The great tragedy is that a closer look at the Ahmadinejad text shows that what he clearly said was that "there are no homosexuals in Iran like in your country."
Iran does treat its gays badly, and media has a responsibility to point this out. But the emotional demonising one saw this week is reprehensible in the extreme, since it creates irrational fear and loathing of a whole nation and it also helps build the American public's support for war.
Demonising as a prelude to war should be treated as a criminal offence. The current media attacks on Iran are almost identical to the assault on Saddam Hussein in the autumn of 2002, in which the US media helped create an image of the Iraqi leader as the world's most brutal tyrant who was developing nuclear weapons which could annihilate the world. Most Americans therefore applauded when the US invaded Iraq a few months later.
To its credit, the New York Times carried an apology after the war for its misleading articles about Iraq's nuclear preparation, but of course the damage had been done.
The US is inching closer to an attack on Iran. President Bush famously referred to Iran as being part of the "Axis of Evil", when the country was led not by Mr Ahmadinejad but by the reformist liberal Mohammed Khatami, who had tried mightily to develop friendlier relations with the US.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
