You guessed it – SPIEGEL ONLINE’s post marking the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq contains a fifteen-slide photo gallery with nothing but pictures of evil American invaders, death and destruction and Iraqi suffering.
It contains no photos of Iraqi voters with ink-dipped fingers. No photos reminding us of Saddam’s mass murder and destruction of his enemies. No reminders of the successful surge that Bush backed despite Reid saying the war was lost. No pictures of American troops and diplomats helping millions of Iraqis building roads, schools, power plants, providing medical care, jobs and stability. No pictures of the Sunni Awakening and the defeat of Al-Qaeda in Anbar province. In short – no pictures telling the whole story or providing any real balance.
Just pictures fitting the SPIEGEL ONLINE anti-American far-left narrative: The American military is evil. The war was all bad. The Iraqis only suffered at the hands of the terrible invaders.
With the Iraq war’s apparent conclusion, one can only say of SPIEGEL ONLINE that – for a publication and readership that styles itself as so utterly nuanced and intelligent – the coverage has – in fact – been utterly one-sided and hyper-simplified propaganda – with very few exceptions. The magazine’s coverage was designed to sell magazines to and please an anti-American audience from beginning to end, and the German readership will never have more than a very narrow and self-satisfying view of the conflict that in no way reflects reality.
Oh – and here’s a shocker – the article and gallery are not featured on SPIEGEL ONLINE’s English site homepage. Wonder why? Perhaps the English-speaking audience demands at least a fig-leaf of intellectual honesty – apparently the German audience does not…
Now back to Afghanistan…is it Vietnam yet?
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