A rchive Date
[ 29-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/coren.html
My heart weeps ...
By MICHAEL COREN -- Sun Media
March 29, 2003
As I look at the terrified faces of the young, ordinary Americans who have been captured by the Iraqis, my heart weeps.
They are simple people, basic in their speech and undemanding in their ways. Patriotic, but also in the armed forces because many are often from poor rural and decaying urban areas and have little alternative. And here they are, facing goodness knows what to satisfy the desires of various neo-con boys and girls in newspaper offices in Manhattan, Washington and Toronto; and the Tom Clancy readers in the White House and the Pentagon.
I think of the British pilots killed by American missiles for no other reason than panic and incompetence. Men with families, men who loved and who were loved, whose parents and wives know that fire from friends ripped their bodies apart. Just like in the last rape of Iraq, when British soldiers in a clearly marked armoured vehicle were killed by American missiles.
Just like, in fact, four Canadians who were killed by American planes. Tens of millions of dollars spent on training and arming people so they can take the lives of their allies. Where at such times and in such places are the smart guys in the expensive suits who write the columns and the editorials screaming for Arab blood?
And where on the front lines are the Arab leaders who cry for the heads of the Americans and the British?
The leaders of Iraq claim their children are starving, but so many of the men we see on television have fat bellies and fleshy bodies. Over- rather than under- fed. They laugh over the corpses of their enemies, humiliate their captives, treat their own people like animals and blame the whole thing on a tiny slither of land that belongs to people of a different religious faith.
BLAMING ISRAEL
I'm so, so tired of every Arab dictatorship, every Arab crime, every Muslim atrocity being blamed on Israel and the Jews. They massacred the Jews of Hebron more than a decade before Israel existed; Jews who had lived there long before the Arab migrations and invasions.
Then, in the same week, we have the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the Oscars. Smug millionaires posing for cameras with peace gestures, and then dining at restaurants which enlisted men and women may have known as waiters or kitchen staff, but in which they could never have afforded to buy a meal. Even if they had been allowed through the front door.
Michael Moore flaunting his selective politics but never daring to go after the liberal elite or the moral relativists. You're safe, Mike; part of the establishment. Otherwise you wouldn't have won an Oscar. Much of what you do is to make fun of people who aren't used to cameras and interviewers and make them look silly. Such courage.
Susan Sarandon, wearing dresses that cost so much money the expense could maintain an entire family in the developing world. A woman who thinks it chic to blur the lines of morality and immorality and then wonder why the world fights illegal wars. Truth cannot be partial, sister, but can only be a genuine truth if it applies to all issues. Life, marriage, family, community, God, as well as poverty, equality, peace and human rights.
Hollywood churns out movies that glorify war, violence, promiscuity and perversion. Films that pour scorn on all that gave us an ethical basis on which to build a stable and loving world. Then they cry innocence and purity when young people replicate the violence and emulate the sexual anarchy.
The actors are not there, of course, when the bullets fly around the slums and the kids die alone and in agony of AIDS.
Give an Oscar to a rap singer because it makes you seem daring and on the edge, but turn away from a rap culture that kills the young people you never see. Stand up for Iraq, but never dare say a word about the Palestinians in case it damages your career. Be Hollywood.
Be pundits, be warmongers, be one side's peaceniks, be racists who care more for one American death than 100 Arab fatalities. Be. But not me. I shall not take a line and follow a party. It's all too complex and important for that.
Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster. He can be emailed at info@michaelcoren.com and his web site is michaelcoren.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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