Saturday, May 21, 2011

A History of Demonizing the ‘Enemy’

A rule of thumb in journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story, but that rule is often ignored by the U.S. news media in the heat of some conflict when the United States is involved. Then, the real motivations of the U.S. adversary are widely ignored in favor of demonization, as the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland notes in this guest essay.

By Ivan Eland, Consortium News, May 17, 2011

The killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us that there are only two disciplines in which uncaused events occur — quantum physics and the history of U.S. foreign policy.
According to the version of history expounded by the American media and politicians, the passenger aircraft hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 were a diabolical surprise attack out of the blue by the evil bin Laden against unsuspecting and naïve Americans.

Of course, Americans were naïve, but principally about their government’s political and military interventions in Muslim countries since World War II, and especially since 1980.
Bin Laden was blunt about this in his pronouncements on why he attacked the United States, but America never wanted to hear.

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