Maravi

(HERALD ZW) Images and realities in politics

Images and realities in politics
Thursday, 18 October 2012 04:56

Reality has a tendency of shaping public opin­ion in a completely independent and honest manner that many times does not favour power and to circumvent this annoying inconvenience those in power will always try to replace reality with images that they believe can hood­wink people into deceptive compli­ance.

If one takes, for example, the concept of democracy, it is apparent that what the United States calls democrati­sation is nothing more than a deceptive pretext meant to create a semblance of legality and humanitarianism around an otherwise sabre-rattling foreign policy whose naked brutality on civilians of weaker nations has become the trademark of the crumbling empire.

The naked lie that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on the need to stop Saddam Hussein from destroying the world through weapons of mass destruction was con­vincingly revealed for what it was — a blatant and ill-thought-out deliberate lie manufac­tured by George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

To keep its marauding military forces rampaging the Iraqis, the Western coalition immediately resorted to the creation of an image that they could not pull out of Iraq until the country got “fully democratised,” what­ever that means. An estimated one million Iraqis were forcefully displaced from their country as a direct result of this ille­gal invasion by the US-led Western forces.

According to a British NGO Iraq Body Count (IBC), about 162000 people lost their lives directly as a result of the invasion, and 80 percent of these were civilians.
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was pretexted on American wrath after the downing of the Twin Towers on September 11 that year, a terrorist act that resulted in the deaths of 3000 people. As has become the norm, the American government internationalised their grief, and President W. Bush made a declaration: “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.”

Hillary Clinton added on the 13 of September: “Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbour terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”

This attitude of internationalising American grief was seen recently after the death of undercover agent ambas­sador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens died at the hands of the Al-Qaeda group he helped so much to prop up as his country sought to avenge the diplomatic defeat Gaddafi inflicted on the Ronald Rea­gan regime more than two decades ago.

After the crude stoning of Stevens by the unruly West­ern-backed Al-Qaeda Libyan rebel operatives, president Barack Obama said: “Today, we must affirm that our future will be determined by people like Chris Stevens and not by his killers . . . Today, we must declare that this violence and intoler­ance has no place among our United Nations.”

The image of a brutally stoned Stevens mirrored almost identically that of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi after he was shot dead in cold blood in 2011. Immediately after Gaddafi’s death, a jubilant Hillary Clinton told a news reporter: “We came, we saw, and he died,” giggling like a hooker after the contents of a cash baron’s wallet. The reporter sadly giggled back.

A sitting head of state is hunted down like a rat by Western-backed lawless thugs and is killed in the most brutal of all manners and the image created by the US is that this is a plausible victory for the entire world and the US Secretary of State triumphantly dishes out scornful giggles to the whole world, celebrating bla­tantly the death of a man who undoubtedly created the best economy ever known in North Africa, if not across the entire Arab world, regardless of his alleged political shortcomings.

Chris Stevens was a known undercover agent who worked so tirelessly to mobilise rebels against Gaddafi — thievery rebels who fatally stoned him to death in a fall­out over a provocative religious video with US ori­gins. We are told by President Obama that the killing of Stevens “has no place among our United Nations,” and that must of course make perfect sense to any life-respect­ing person.

It is the belief of Hillary Clinton that the death of Gaddafi has a place in our United Nations that stinks to high heaven. It is her ludicrous laughing at this death that makes Hillary Clinton look like Lucifer’s wife and her attitude tempts many people to counter-celebrate the unfortunate death of Ambassador Stevens, if only it were not for the fact that the outer world is far more civilised than the heart of the empire that pretends to lead this world.

The United States wants to create an image of an inno­cent victim of lawless brutality on its slain ambas­sador even to the point of trying to internationalise the grief. Ordinarily when intelligence operatives suffer death, they are no cause for international solidarity, much as loss of life should never be a source of any form of celebration.

Heads of state like Gaddafi must ordinarily attract international solidarity when they are forcefully removed from office and they are brutally killed in the process. This is the kind of logic that has a place in our United Nations, if president Obama bothers a bit to read the UN Charter. The Charter is quite silent on state agents who die on foreign tours of duty — it being a matter of no con­cern to international affairs. It must, however, be noted that in Stevens’ death, perpetrators blatantly violated the Vienna Conven­tions, given his official position as the US ambas­sador to Libya.

The reality of the Charter did not augur well with the US opinion over the death of Gaddafi, and so a replace­ment image had to be created to relegate the death to a matter of victory and honour. The reality about the med­dlesome conduct of Chris Stevens would attract in the least an appreciation of why he was killed, and at worst celebrations from those who disagree with the US sabre-rattling foreign policy.

To erase this pos­sibility a replacement image had to be created by elevat­ing the death of Stevens to a matter of international concern, even taking it to the UN General Assembly platform. President Obama was even auda­cious enough to declare that people like Chris Stevens must determine the future of all of us. We must adopt the US meddlesome political culture, and we must brag about our abilities to mobilise dissent and chaos in other countries the way Stevens did in Benghazi.

Now that Osama bin Laden is no more, the presence of US-led Western military forces in Afghanistan is pre­texted on the propaganda line that the forces are there “at the invitation of the Afghan government,” of course meaning the Karzai government installed by the same Western forces.
The image created around the continued presence of Western forces in Afghanistan is centred on the two rhetorical licences of democratisation and security. We are told the forces are there to ensure the country does not return to the “undemocratic” days of the Taliban, and that the Western forces are, in fact, training Afghans to sustain themselves on matters of security. Of course the reality is that the US is pursuing its long-term interests in the Far East, especially the need to watch economic rival China.

In Zimbabwe, the need to keep an image of a demo­cratic MDC-T has been the pre-occupation of Western powers. That image obtains against the background of an egregiously corrupt party led by a scandalous Mor­gan Tsvangirai who seems to see no irregularity with his shambolic sex life, and has an apparent legendary shal­lowness in policy.

Tsvangirai believes that the sins of others absolve him of responsibility over his own actions, and he has the temerity to make public proclamations of that ludi­crous position. The pliant pro-MDC-T media does cel­ebrate this logic too. And now Tsvangirai believes it is logical to fire his own officials over the mess in his own personal life.

Women, golf, policy, politics and sex are all mixed in one bag inasfar as the world of Tsvangirai runs. How else does one fire Government-appointed officials over per­sonal sex scandals?

In the West any politician that is as scandalous as Mor­gan Tsvangirai can forget altogether about making it to political office. But these values can be thrown away, as matters of elevating the interests of Western powers take precedence.

The Western media have largely ignored the negative publicity that has been around the personality of Tsvangi­rai and those media units that have bothered to comment have tried vain spins of blaming Tsvangirai’s political opponents for the misfortunes of their favourite candi­date for the type of democracy the West wants imposed on Zimbabwe.

We are told the State agents made Tsvangirai sleep around with a series of women across the Southern African region, making him to impregnate some and promise others all sorts of things, including marriage.

There is the literal approach to the studying of democracy and this approach says democracy is the rule of the people, by the people and for the people. This type of democracy supports the pro-people poli­cies like Zimbabwe’s land reform programme, the eco­nomic indigenisation policies of transferring the coun­try’s wealth into the hands of the majority of the people.

This kind of democracy is against the interests of West­ern powers, it is against the expansionism of Western capitalist interests and, as such, it is a reality that does not serve well the needs of those who own the means of democracy in this world.

An image has got to be created that will on one hand give us the pleasure of democracy, while ensuring on the other hand that we do not end up democratising our economies in the process. This is why it is impor­tant that a propagandistic approach is adopted where the image of democracy is created by propping up vac­uous characters like Zimbabwe’s Morgan Tsvangirai.

No country needs an unthinking leader for its democ­racy, but thinking leaders cannot be puppets from a point of view of pure logic. So it becomes important that the mediocrity of people like Tsvangirai is elevated to levels of heroic brilliance, that way shap­ing favourable public opinion for a man who otherwise does not have any hon­our beyond his own zip.

When an unthinking puppet needs to be elevated to international heroism, it is possible for people like Julia Gillard to equate characters like Morgan Tsvangirai to Nelson Mandela. To the Westerners the name Nelson Mandela can be used to sugar coat any propaganda meant to further Western interests, much as that name symbolises to all others the undying fighting spirit of African revolutionarism.

It is incumbent upon Zimbabweans to ensure that when we go for elections in March 2013, we are not guided by the arbiter of an image of democracy. Rather we must be guided by the concept of real democracy as defined by the democratisation of our economy as well as our politics.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will over­come. It is homeland or death!

* Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.

Labels: HILLARY CLINTON, LIBYA, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 11:19 PM