The MSM are remarkable in the bias that they hide from themselves. If the New York Times were an honest newspaper, they would be clear about their biases and their news stories would be more believable for just that reason. Instead, through commission and more often, through omission, they tell stories that present their views while labeling them news.
On the front page of the New York Times today is a typically slanted story which contains all the elements of the Times programmatic approach to the news. The story is about the tragedy of the American occupation, the ongoing violence, and the displacement that has befallen the hapless victims in Iraq. Many of the refugees from the violence have fled the country and gone to Syria. There are few jobs available and out of desperation, some young women are turning to prostitution.
Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria
MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.
But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.
As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.
“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.
This story is categorized as part of The Reach of War. A reader would have to have a heart of stone not to empathize with the desperation and tragedy of Hiba's life. Yet, wouldn't the story be more illuminating and perhaps even more tragic, if the purported news story provided some context?
In the entire article there is no mention of why Hiba's family had to flee Iraq, beyond the explanation by an older women working the same club as Hiba:
“From what I’ve seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis,” she said. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.”
When the United States invaded Iraq, the initial fighting ended in three weeks. For almost two years and a half years, despite repeated provocations, the Shia of Iraq confined their responses to relatively minor revenge seeking on their former Baathist (Sunni) overlords and tormentors but full scale sectarian violence was held at bay. Despite the Shia forbearance the Sunni community continued to believe that if they were only ruthless and vicious enough, they would be able to regain their rightful ownership of Iraq. To that end, the Sunni "dead enders" in Dick Cheney's unfortunate phrase made alliances with al Qaeda, the foremost Sunni terrorist organization. The combination of ex-Baathist military, many of whom were trained int he terrorist arts by Saddam Hussein's regime, and al Qaeda, eventually created enough of a provocation to induce the blood letting that has continued in some form or another until today. As a result, when the Shia death squads became serious about causing pain to the Sunnis, the Sunnis began to leave Iraq in droves. This was a self-inflicted wound caused by hubris and grandiosity. Since then, the Sunni have compounded their own problems by continuing to use terror against the Shia long after it had become clear to the dispassionate observer that they were fighting a losing battle; as a result even those Sunni who were not part of the ruling elite have found it in their best interest to leave Iraq.
If young women like Hiba are now forced into prostitution, some of the responsibility must rest with their fathers who valued regaining their lost power over the welfare of their families. (I will not here comment on the meme that suggests the only response possible to a young woman or family in desperate straits is prostitution; that is another and very different discussion.) The missing fathers mentioned in the article were likely predominantly lost in the insurgency trying to kill Americans and Shia Iraqis (and sometimes Sunni Iraqis who wanted to cooperate with the Americans, a group growing larger an larger by the day.)
We know nothing of Hiba's father, what his position was prior to the war, where he is now, what he has been doing since the war. The sad fact is that the Sunni lost the war in three weeks, and have been fighting a losing battle since (though they continue to hope that the New York Times, et al, will yet save them.) It is this context that would have made Hiba's painful predicament more poignant, but to add such context would have risked spoiling the message that "war is harmful to children and other living things."
When people lose a war it is a terrible thing for them, yet the Sunni in Iraq had a rare opportunity to lose with some grace and accept their reduced circumstances in exchange for the chance to live in a country given a real chance to move into the modern world. Their resistance has doomed young women like Hiba to a life of poverty and shame. Tragedy provoked by our own characterological failure is always the most poignant.
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