US Journalist Nir Rosen: Number of Deaths in Iraq Declined Because There Are Fewer People to Kill. Hollywood Celebs Support Tibetans, Not Palestinians, Although Palestinians Have a Greater Right to Conduct Resistance

Following are excerpts from an interview with American journalist Nir Rosen, which aired on Future TV on March 23, 2008:

Nir Rosen: The problem with American media – in Iraq and elsewhere – from the beginning of this war is that they have always conformed to whatever message the American government and the American military have been trying to provide to the world. And many American journalists also suffer from language issues – a lack of Arabic, a lack of interest in the Iraqi side of the story... So for the American media, like for the American government, Iraq isn't just about the Iraqis – it's about the Americans. So, if less Americans are dying – then it's a success story.

Now, it's true that violence in Iraq is slightly down. Every civil war, as everybody in Lebanon knows, has ups and downs. There are periods when violence is increased and decreased, and a slight decrease in violence – where Iraq is going from absolute hell to a slightly better level of hell – isn't a sign for celebration yet. And the reason that the violence is down is actually... There are three main reasons, and all these reasons, actually, are going to cause problems in the future. The main reason violence is down is actually a sign of the American failure. They have failed to protect the Iraqi people, and the violence is down because there are less Iraqis to kill. The goal of the violence on both sides was to remove Sunnis from Shiite areas, Shiites from Sunni areas, Christians from all areas – and that's been very successful. Most of Baghdad is now empty of Sunnis. The two million refugees you have in Syria and Jordan – most of them are Sunnis. Most of Baghdad is really now a Shiite city. So that's the first reason for the [decline in] violence – less people to kill.

Militias, whether Sunni or Shiite, now control the neighborhoods very effectively, and there's been a reduction in violence for that reason. Another reason for the reduction in violence is the Sunni and Shiite cease-fire, as you could call it. Muqtada Al-Sadr, whose militia army, the Jeish Al-Mahdi, was very effective in removing its enemies, whether Sunni, Shiite, or otherwise from its neighborhoods, realized that for the Americans, the [Al-Mahdi Army] is the No. 1 target. So in late August or early September, they declared the cease-fire, "the freeze," and immediately afterwards, there was a huge drop in the violence. So one of the things this showed us is just how responsible they were for the violence. But they're taking advantage of this [cease-fire] to establish more order among their people, to get rid of some of the bad guys, who now they say were working for Iran, but really, of course, they weren't – they were working for themselves, for the Al-Mahdi Army. They are going to wait for the Americans to leave, and they will resume fighting.

Likewise, on the Sunni side, there is a much more interesting development. Sunni militias realized that they were fighting the Americans, the Shiite militias, and Al-Qaeda, and that they were losing on all three fronts. The resistance to the occupation had failed. The American occupiers were still there. The Shiite-dominated government, the Shiite militias, had succeeded in staying in power and removing Sunnis from power, and removing them from Baghdad physically. And Al-Qaeda was establishing a reign of terror in Sunni areas. Al-Qaeda had come in to defend Sunnis, and had done so, but now they were also attacking Sunnis, and establishing their own Taliban-like state in some areas.

So Sunnis were fighting everybody, and they were losing on all sides. In the beginning of 2006, you saw Sunnis... Resistance leaders in Jordan, Syria, and in Iraq, talking among themselves, beginning to realize: "Oh my God, we lost. What do we do? What's the next step?" And they realized that for the Americans, the No. 1 enemy is Iran, and from a Sunni point of view, the No. 1 enemy is Iran too, because Sunnis in Iraq, like Sunnis in Lebanon and elsewhere, believe that all Arab Shiites are basically Iranian. So when they see Muqtada Al-Sadr, when they see Prime Minister Al-Maliki – to them they are Iranian agents, just like when they see Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, He's also an Iranian agent in their point of view. So we have the same enemy as the Americans – let's cooperate with them for now, and when they leave, we can eventually resume our fighting, but now we have to control territories.

So you had the creation of these movements, the Awakening movements, which the Americans call "concerned local citizens" and other funny names, to conceal the fact that this is really the resistance, which decided not to fight the Americans for a little while. They call it a hudna ["truce"] with the Americans, because "we're going to fight the Iranian occupation and all the Shiites."

[...]

As an American journalist, the coverage of Tibet has been frustrating for me, because we saw a Hollywood star like Richard Gere go on television and explain that for five or six decades, these people have been oppressed, and now they are rising up. You hear American celebrities and American journalists talking about the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and the rights of the Tibetans to resist it, in a way you would never hear them speaking about the Palestinians, which is a much more extreme example, I think, of people who have the right to resist, and that right is denied regularly in the American media. There is no explanation offered. You see no prominent Hollywood actors or celebrities defending the Palestinians. So the hypocrisy really bothers me.