By arthur Weinreb
February 1, 2005
If aliens landed on earth last weekend, they could have turned to the media to find out what was happening on this strange new world. They would have discovered that in addition to crime, same sex marriage, and the lack of something called hockey, the big news concerned a country named Iraq.
The aliens would have discovered that Iraqis were voting for people to represent them and that Iraqis all over the world were able to vote for a new government. They would have seen that this was a good thing because everywhere in the media were pictures of Iraqis smiling while holding up their purple-tipped fingers. The visitors to earth would also have learned that this was the first time in about 50 years that Iraqis were able to vote. They would not be able to tell exactly why those Iraqis had not been able to vote for all those years, but would have learned that a man named Saddam Hussein might have had something to do with it. The aliens would have also learned that this Saddam was not a very nice earthling.
If the extraterrestrial guests would have read, listened to and watched much of the mainstream media, they would be left with a lot of gaps in their knowledge. They wouldn’t have been able to learn exactly what happened to this Saddam guy. They wouldn’t have been able to figure out why Iraqis were able to vote at this particular time when they hadn’t been able to vote for so long. No, exactly what happened would remain a mystery to our alien visitors.
Most of the mainstream media completely ignored how the Iraqis got to the point where they could exercise their rights to vote for a governing council on January 30, or what caused them to be so happy. It was hard to believe that so much could be written or broadcast about Iraq without any reference to George W. Bush or weapons of mass destruction. Most media accounts left out the 2003 war, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime and any reference to the role that the U.S. and coalition forces had to play in last Sunday’s elections. The days leading up to the vote was the first time that much of the mainstream media allowed that even some Iraqis were happy after the fall of Saddam’s regime.
The mainstream media bent over backwards to ensure that no credit was given to the United States and its allies for the democratic exercise that was carried out. Seemingly, it just happened.
Hopefully the aliens will stick around for at least a few days. When the insurgents continue their attacks, they’ll learn all about George Bush and what led to the Iraqis being allowed to vote.