Colin Powell and the Marketing of Uncle Sam
Afnan Hussein Fatani, Special to Arab News


And they will say (on the Day of Judgment): “Our Lord! Indeed we obeyed our leaders and our elders and they led us astray. Our Lord! Give them double the punishment and curse them a great curse.”

(The Qur’an: 33:66-68)

Nelson Mandela was right. The bribing, bullying, horse-trading and warmongering we are witnessing in the world today are all because there’s a black man sitting at the helm of the United Nations. From Guinea, the poorest and smallest country in Africa, to Bush’s America, “the greatest nation, and the greatest people, on the face of the earth ” — no one seems to bother what the black secretary-general of the United Nations thinks or what he plans to do. He’s simply become inaudible and invisible. But Mandela forgot to add another pathetic figure to his list of black leaders who have distorted the shape of our world simply by being black. That man is Colin Powell, the US secretary of state.

The problem with Powell started when he hired advertising executives to improve the US image in Arab countries — indeed in the entire world. He has been quoted as saying that a professional who once sold Uncle Ben’s Rice to the nation was the perfect person to sell Uncle Sam to the world. But this is exactly the type of false analogical thinking and superficial reasoning that has marred Powell’s logic ever since he transformed from dove to wolf-in-sheep’s-skin. Just because both phrases share the same word “uncle,” that doesn’t mean that “Ben” and “Sam” are the same. In fact, both products are radically in opposition. Uncle Ben’s Rice literally sold itself because it was good, nutritious and healthy; Uncle Sam isn’t selling because the product is bad, unwholesome and malevolent. Powell can no more sell his stale product than a grocery store can sell rotten apples and tomatoes, except to the starved and dying of the world, except to the famine-struck African peoples of Guinea, Angola and Cameroon. There are three questions that Powell needs to ask himself: Is it ethical to wax down his rotten produce and sell it off as nutritious and healthy food? If health-conscious people aren’t buying, is it moral to shove it down their throats? When all attempts at marketing a tainted Uncle Sam failed, was it ethical to capitalize on his own credibility and his credentials as a war-hero? Charlotte Beers, the advertising executive hired to improve the US image resigned last Monday, citing the frightening “gap between who we are and how we wish to be seen — and how we are in fact seen.” That is the kind of professionalism that the world expects from America. That is American ethics at its best.

Powell’s subtle method of lying has become a stable strategy used by almost all US government officials, including of course the US president himself. The effectiveness of this strategy lies in its sheer simplicity; one merely falsifies truths by creatively manipulating a constant variable — a digit, a letter, a color, a shape, a name, a date of birth or place of origin. Powell first used the method in his PowerPoint presentation to the UN when he tried to convince us that the rabbit shape we see in the moon really is a live gigantic rabbit. It has now become something of a global joke that the only established link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq is the letter “q” found in both words. Notice, for example, the digital link used by Bush when he claimed in his first speech after the tragedy of Sept. 11 that 130 Israelis had died in the twin towers when the correct number was actually 3 (out of the 3,000 Israeli employees that were supposed to have been in the WTC at the time of the explosions). Powell found an ingenious three-in-one link between Al-Qaeda, Iraq and Palestinians. Al-Zarqawi, he told us at the UN, was an Al-Qaeda terrorist operating in Northern Iraq and also a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. To make this link stick, Powell had to falsify a few basic facts.

— First, that Al-Zarqawi is operating in the American-controlled No-fly Zone and hence outside the jurisdiction of the Iraqi government

— Second, that he is of pure Jordanian descent from the Al-Khalaylah tribe, one of the tribes of the Bani Hasan clan.

The question is, even if Al-Zarqawi was of Palestinian origin, does that prove that Palestinians are terrorists? What about John Walker, the American Taleban? Shouldn’t his origins be used to link Americans to terrorism and Al-Qaeda?

There is something nauseating about watching a once dignified and trustworthy black war-hero having to lie, deceive and cajole just to find favor with his rich Texan boss. Last week, we watched in utter shock as Colin Powell promised the Arab world in an interview with the newly launched Arab TV station, Al-Arabia, that the invasion of Iraq would be “short.” Yes, we all know how “short” and sweet the bombing campaign will be in Iraq. In a CBS-TV interview, Pentagon planner Harlan Ullman revealed Bush’s “Shock and Awe” military plan, designed to kill millions in 48 hours using 800 cruise missiles. This is how the invasion is described: “You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons of Hiroshima, not taking weeks but minutes.” (See Geov Parrish – “Shock and yawn – ZNet - Feb. 24, 2003)

Did Powell’s advertising specialists and dubious intelligence sources tell him that Arabs don’t read or write or watch TV? If he wanted to sweet-talk Arabs into accepting the quick bombing of Iraq, all he succeeded in doing was making us feel disgusted with him and the war party he represents. If this criminal plan was ever to be executed, no US soldier will ever be safe walking the streets of any Arab or Muslim country, let alone Iraq. Powell needs to be told that this pending invasion is a war crime and that he and the Bush administration must and will be held accountable for the mass murder of Iraqi civilians.

We were further shocked when Powell had the gall to suggest that a US military commander would be placed in charge of Iraq after the initial victory by US-led forces. The man chosen to lead Iraq out of the darkness into the light is no other than the Texan military general, Tommy Franks, currently in charge of commanding the US forces in the Gulf.

What Powell conveniently forgot to tell us is that Tommy Franks has been under investigation by the Pentagon since last summer regarding abuse of his office. Investigators have concluded that Franks allowed his wife to sit in on secret briefings, in violation of military rules — and even allowed her financial access to his office. (As reported by Barbara Ferguson in Arab News, Feb. 5) Are we seriously supposed to believe that this sleazy general and his wife are going to democratize the Arab world, to bring peace and stability, freedom and liberty, to Iraqi men, women and children?

When the story of Franks’ blatant abuse first broke out, Donald Rumsfeld quickly emphasized that the general had his “full trust, respect and confidence.” Of course he has, but does anybody in the Arab world respect or trust Rumsfeld? As we watched Powell spin his web of lies, the main question in our mind was: What is the point of replacing our rotten Saddam with your rotten Tommy? If Tommy is so obnoxious as to plunder the coffers of the US Army, how much money will he and his wife be allowed to embezzle once they have full control of Iraqi oil fields? Iraqi oil revenue, Powell tells us, will be placed in trusteeship for the Iraqi people. Is this some kind of sick joke? What happened the last time an Arab country was placed in trusteeship? During the British mandate, wasn’t Palestine given to the Zionist settlers as a going away present? Where is the ancient land of Palestine today? Hasn’t it been completely obliterated from the world map, thanks to US funding, and replaced by the so-called democracy of Israel? Isn’t it tragically ironical that the only Palestine there is today is the one in Texas, USA?

As we watched Powell scare us with his gruesome catalogue of Iraqi WMD, three nagging questions terrorized us the most: What is the point of destroying Saddam’s liters of VX and anthrax only to replace it with Bush’s new generation of nuclear weapons — micro-nukes (10 tons), mini-nukes (100 tons) and tiny nukes (1 kilotons)? What is the point of liquidating Iraqi scientists in Baghdad only to replace them with American nuclear scientists from the Los Alamos National Labs? What is the value of sweet liberty when it is at the expense of leveling a whole country and killing millions of its citizens in 48 hours? “We think the price is worth it,” retorted Madeliene Albright, the then US secretary of state when questioned by television reporter Lesley Stahl about the morality of killing 500,000 Iraqi children. Powell is feeding us the same heinous answers to our questions, and that is why he has become a supreme icon of evil and hypocrisy in our eyes, far surpassing the evil of his master Bush himself.

Being the polished speaker that he is, Powell should have known better than to underestimate our intelligence or our morality. He knows only too well that he has no say in Bush’s Middle East policy. Isn’t that the job of the convicted liar Elliot Abrams, Bush’s pro-Israel, pro-war director of Middle Eastern affairs at the White House, convicted in 1987 of two counts of lying to the Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal and pardoned by the first President Bush in 1992?

And what about the heinous role of John D. Negroponte, the US ambassador to the United Nations, also tied up with the Nicaragua guerrillas scandal and convicted of five felony counts in 1990. “Whatever controversy there was in the past is in the past,” said one senior US official when questioned about Negroponte’s criminal credentials. (See Steven Weisman, NY Times, Dec. 7, 2002). If only Powell and the Bush administration would use the same magnanimous logic for all convicted criminals and liars. Wouldn’t the world be a safer place?

And what about the Arab-hating radical Zionists at the Pentagon, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, known to Washington insiders as “the Kosher Nostra” (See Jason Vest, The Nation Magazine). According to a March 10 report by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, Perle has even set up his own Homeland Security company and stands to gains millions of dollars in the event of an Iraq invasion. When questioned in a CNN program last Sunday, Perle lashed out at Hersh, calling him a “terrorist” who had written nothing substantial since Mai Lai.

It is impossible for anyone watching the program not to have been rattled by the callousness, the cold hostile looks, and the crude radicalism of this influential Pentagon advisor who as chairman of the Defense Policy Board and a strong and vocal advocate of pre-emptive strikes can easily bully and coerce the Pentagon into unleashing a nuclear war that nobody wants.

Most of all, what about Dick Cheney, the vice president, ex-oil man, and active member of right-wing JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), charged with fraud and deceit by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch on behalf of Halliburton shareholders, and about to be taken to court by the General Accounting Office for his notorious Energy Bill.

The list is long — too long for us to catalogue. These are the corrupt people who now rule Bush’s White House and who are now conspiring to invade Iraq for their own financial profits and for the good of greater Israel. These are the people who, as Jason Vest states, see “no difference between US and Israeli national security interest, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East.” When questioned why no one in US government was trying to stop Bush’s mad rush to war, a BBC correspondent in Washington had this to say: Congress is “pro-Israel and Israel is pro-war.” Knowing this Zionist-led administration, it was shameful of Powell to try to sell us his treacherous plan of invasion and make it sound like he was doing us all a big favor.

But there’s another more sinister side to this Israeli-American plan that Powell is desperately trying to overlook. To the Zionists of Israel and America, the bombing of Iraq and the slaughter of Iraqi men, women and children is simply a matter of religious duty; and that is why it is called a “just” and “moral” war. Just read the reference to the Babylonians, the ancestors of modern-day Iraqis, in Psalm 137: “A blessing on him who takes and dashes your babies against the rock!” Every man, woman and child in the Arab and Muslim world knows this grim and gruesome reality; we see it everyday in Palestine — in the killing of pregnant women and 85-year old men, the shooting of infants, the maiming of teenagers and children, the mass detention, the demolition of homes, the curfews, the road-checks, the confiscation of land, the settlements, the humiliation, the torture, the rape. You name the atrocity, they have it in Israel.

Unlike other nations, we cannot turn a blind eye to Israeli occupation, or to wish away Israeli greed and covetousness of Muslim holy lands. We had hoped to God that the US administration was not part of this grand Zionist scheme to crush Arab nations and dispossess them of their wealth and lands. But we have long since reached, to use Powell’s advertising jargon, that “Voila” moment — the moment when it suddenly dawned on us that the US and Israel are more than just two sides of the same coin. We now know that there is only one side to the coin, and alas the image engraved therein is a Janus-faced eagle simultaneously stalking for both Israel and America.

During the days of slavery in America, white men discovered the powerful singing voices of their black slaves. Today, judging from the sleek performance of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, American leaders have apparently discovered and successfully utilized the articulate skills of their black citizens. Too bad the message these black politicians are promoting is Zionist war and destruction, and not Christian peace and goodwill. Too bad that Powell and the Bush administration have between them tainted the white wholesome goodness of Uncle Ben’s Rice.

(Afnan Fatani is professor of stylistics at King Abdul Aziz University and currently a visiting professor at Dar Al-Hekma College, Jeddah.)

Arab News Opinion 15 March 2003