[Peace-discuss] Hesitations about Colbert

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Open Letter To Stephen Colbert On His Shows From Iraq
	From: Danny Schechter, your News Dissector (Mediachannel.org)

Dear Stephen Strong:

Welcome home, soldier. Your week in Iraq is all over, but the war, of course, 
isn’t. At least your presence there reminded us that Americans troops are still 
there. I am sure your presence gave them something fun to do, but hey, Nation, 
shouldn’t we think a little deeper about this fused exercise in military 
promotion and self-promotion?

[Recap - Week of 6/8/09: www.colbertnation.com]

Your shtick as the conservative counterpart as an O’Reilly wanna-be to Jon 
Stewart aside, you were not the only one flattered and enabled by the nominally 
apolitical USO to entertain the troops. These exercises to promote troop morate 
are part of “selling” as well as “telling.”

Al Franken went on such a tour when Bush was in command although I noticed that 
W appears along with other former POTUS’s to endorse your cheerleading for our 
“service members.”

What are they really serving?

How will history regard this war born out of so much lying and responsible for 
so much killing?

Needless to say, these issues were not raised in four days of entertaining 
programs that gave presidents, candidates, military commanders, an Iraqi 
politician, movie star Tom Hanks and only two grunts, each chosen — carefully to 
represent a category — Arabs and women — face time in the coolest recruitment 
special targeted at war age teens.

The Pentagon was delighted and this effort was consistent with the “AAU” mantra 
that governs news coverage (AAU stands for all about us. )The Iraqi people and 
their suffering were no where to be seen on the The Colbert Report just as they 
are usually invisible on the news.

You joked, “Iraq is so nice, we invaded it twice.” Good line—but it seemed to be 
said with approval. There were of course no anti-war sentiments allowed, no 
criticism of the president who got into your hair cutting stunt, no INFORMATION, 
really, other than we are there to “help” and it’s too early to proclaim victory.

While your show went out with its subtext of strengthened security, many Iraqi 
lives were being lost in new rounds of insurgent attacks by people who see the 
US as there to stay and only going through the motions of withdrawal. At week’s 
end, you thanked and genuflected to the bravery and beauty etc., etc. of the 
troops who sang us the ARMY SONG.

You may not know, Stephen Strong, that this song was originally written by field 
artillery First Lieutenant [later Brigadier General] Edmund L. Gruber, while 
stationed in the Philippines in 1908 as the “Caisson Song. Six million 
Filipino’s died in that Vietnam before Vietnam, as brutal an intervention as any 
in our history. And today, totally forgotten!

Verse: Valley Forge, Custer’s ranks, (THE WARS AGAINST THE INDIANS! DS) San Juan 
Hill and Patton’s tanks And the Army went rolling along Minute men, from the 
start, Always fighting from the heart, And the Army keeps rolling along. (refrain)

Verse: Men in rags, men who froze, Still that Army met its foes, And the Army 
went rolling along. Faith in God, then we’re right, And we’ll fight with all our 
might, As the Army keeps rolling along. (refrain)

“Faith in God, then we are right”….no doubt what the “enemy” sings too. Allah 
Akbar is how they put it.

This official anthem, led by that gung-ho Sgt. Major reminded me of all the 
anti-war songs that were never sung on USO show but that also buoyed GIs in 
anti-war coffee shops/activism, and even today, in the ongoing GI resistance to 
war movement that never made it on your show or in the news. Where were the Iraq 
Veterans Against the War? Or for that matter, all the in the military critics of 
stop-loss orders, poor equipment, mercenary contractors, military “justice,” 
sick Veterans hospitals, unpunished war crimes etc. etc.

As I laughed at your chutzpah and clever repartee, I was also weeping about the 
seeming co-opting of one of the few beachheads on TV for real satire and social 
criticism.

Stand up comedy can be cool—but standing up for something that does not conform 
with ‘thank you for your service’ clichés is even cooler. Did we really need to 
hear how superior these top 3% “fighting men and woman” are to the rest of us, 
as they continue the occupation of a sovereign country? Have you forgotten that 
Saddam was originally our guy? Our complicity helped build that palace.

Mission accomplished or aborted?

Back in 1985, I was connected to a movement of artists opposing celebrities 
participating in injustice overseas. In that case, the issue was the cultural 
boycott of South Africa adopted by the UN’s anti-apartheid committee. Many big 
names in music played in South Africa and a resort called, “Sun City,” nominally 
based in in an independent “homeland” that was, in fact, created and controlled 
by the apartheid regime. Those struggling for freedom then felt foreign artists 
were giving aid and comfort to their enemies. They wanted to isolate the regime, 
not cheer it on.

In response, 54 artists of conscience, including Little Steven, Peter Gabriel, 
Bono, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen and Miles Davis, — 54 in all— stood up 
against their own industry, and even some of their friends/colleagues, with a 
song that called on artists not to play Sun City; not to put an entertaining 
face on Apartheid, to boycott!

The song became a big hit and is still respected today as an example of artists 
standing up for justice and freedom. Real freedom as in self-determination, not 
propagandistic “Operation Enduring Freedom,” satirized accurately as “Operation 
Iraqi Liberation [O.I.L.].”

Yes, Stephen, you made some funny jokes, and made fun of basic training and 
discrimination against gays in the military. But that was easy to do. It stirred 
no controversy, challenged no policy, made no politician uncomfortable as your 
gutsy speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner did years back.

As the NY Times pointed out, the troops there have every entertainment device we 
do. Your shows, says the Gray Lady, were “designed to hold easily distracted 
audiences at home.”

And, so they did.

Admit that they also promoted an unpopular war by humanizing/depoliticizing the 
warriors who, at least according to many opinion surveys, don’t know the war on 
Iraq is not only about “payback” for 9/11. The last time I read surveys of 
Iraqis, they don’t want more American help from the back of a Hummer or the 
bottom of a B52. They want us to get gone. No one likes foreign occupation.

And yes, your proclaiming, “Victory,” may be a way to make that happen as was 
suggested by Senator Aiken in the Vietnam daze:

“The best policy is to declare victory and go home.” — George Aiken (1892-1984), 
a Republican politician from Vermont, with respect to the Vietnam War.

In that case, we learned the hard way that most politicians and Generals live in 
fear of being accused of “Losing Vietnam” or Iraq or name your country as they 
probably do at the misnamed Camp Victory.) During the Vietnam War, Stephen, 
there were gutsy counter-USO actions including the “FTA” (Fuck the Army) tour in 
which Jane Fonda and other stars and entertainers appeared. See 
http://www.sirnosir.com for more! Your Golf Club aside, I would like to think 
you would have been part of that effort at the time, not on Bob Hope’s patriotic 
crusade. Nation, you can be pro-soldier and anti-war at the same time as the 
Iraq Veterans Against the War prove every day.

Your most trenchant comment: “I thought the whole Iraq thing was over. I haven’t 
seen any news stories on it in months.” (Yeah, and unfortunately if you did, 
what would you learn?) See my books Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception (2003) 
and When News Lies: Media Complicity And The Iraq War (2006), or my film WMD. I 
was not the only one, even the only former network TV producer, pointing out how 
flawed the coverage on TV has been. We have gone from around the clock 
miscoverage to virtually no coverage!

Maybe we need more USO shows here at home for misinformed Americans. How about 
that, “Nation?”

Don’t mean to be so PC or morally superior BUT these questions must be asked.

Your turn.
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/2009/06/13/an-open-letter-to-stephen-colbert-on-his-shows-from-iraq/