"Rage Explodes After Another Baghdad Blast," bellows the headline in this morning's Washington Post. It is the paper's take on the story mentioned below, about the murder and maiming of dozens of innocent Iraqis and foreigners.
Other than the pretense of objectivity -- making it sound like the snarling mob has some legitimate grievances, and that killing random innocents is just a civil rights protest -- the thing to note is the ingrained racism. Arab anger is treated as a force of nature, something that cannot be contained or mollified. They are essentially sub-human, and it is useless to challenge their paranoic rantings (in the Post's stories, there is never any indication that the reporter ever challenges the wild assertions of the mobsters, probably out of fear.
For instance, the story says "[m]en shouting at the top of their voices swore they had seen an Israeli flag in one of the vehicles shortly after the bomb detonated." Right. An Israeli flag on an SUV in Baghdad. Those filthy Jews are getting careless! The assertion is merely repeated without comment. "Isn't it interesting," the subtext reads, "that these Arab creatures equate the U.S. and Israel?"
The focus of the story is not on facts, events, or analysis, but on an emotional reaction. This is consistent with the Post's Iraq reporting, which is calculated to provoke an American emotional reaction, not to inform the public. More on that in a future post.
The Arabic and general Middle-Eastern cultural tendency to paranoia that disregards facts, is a very well-established and oft-observed phenomenon. David Pryce-Jones's excellent book "The Closed Circle" is a good source on the matter.
The media's treatment of this paranoia as "a force of nature" is an example of delibrately sloppy reporting. One never sees analysis of the role of the Islamic doctrine of God--as tyrant who does not make us in His Image, and who rejects Fatherhood as anthropomorphic blasphemy.
A heinous view of an all-powerful God is going to have distorting qualities on a culture. Middle Eastern paranoia is an example. Dysfunctions have causes. But the "put-upon Muslims" meta-narrative is too useful of a tool with which to beat up upon Western Christianity, so the media don't go there. Even though they'd be the first to lose their heads under shari'a.
Instead, our prestige media outlets treat that paranoia as a fact of life simply to be mollified by--surprise! pulling out of Iraq, and withdrawing US support for Israel (especially with a Likud gov't in power).
Thanks Eric for your intelligent and well-reasoned posts on Iraq.