One of the common themes emanating from the media in recent years is that the world and the Middle East were much safer places before America invaded Iraq in March 2003. In their view, all of the geopolitical problems began that very month, and prior to that point, the earth was a happy place whose citizens all got along like two-year-olds in a sandbox.

Unfortunately, this position hypocritically and absurdly ignores what happened eighteen months earlier in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., as well as the hatred for America and its allies as depicted in the cartoon to the right published in a Bahrainian newspaper on June 10, 2002, fully nine months before America invaded Iraq.

For those interested, the Jewish caricature in the cartoon is demanding that the Bush caricature say “I Hate the Arabs!” In response, Bush is replying, “I hate the Arabs, I hate the Arabs!”

Of course, this is just one of many such images published in newspapers across this region well before America was even discussing going into Iraq. But our media have ignored such things since they became so stridently anti-war and anti-George W. Bush. In fact, it has been America and its president that have been portrayed as the shameless aggressors disturbing a fictional peace that supposedly existed prior to March 20, 2003.

To help support this view, megalomaniacal tyrants like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are typically cast in an extraordinarily favorable light, while President Bush is routinely caricatured as an evil warmonger.

To achieve this, America’s media shelter such tyrants from any serious criticism, while ignoring the hatred they are evoking amongst their own populations. For instance, the following cartoons recently aired on Iranian television (h/t MemriTV). They give one a more realistic view of the kind of regime that currently exists in Iran, and present a picture of this hostile nation that is quite different than what our media lead people here to believe.

This first video depicts anti-Semitism that is regularly stoked by Ahmadinejad. Yet, the presence of such hatred in Iran is typically downplayed by America’s media.

And, this second video depicting America as a terrorist blowing up a car-bomb on a crowded street is, frankly, similar to cartoons that could have been drawn by Ted Rall or Mike Luckovich:

One is left asking a very uncomfortable question: Which is worse for the safety of our nation -- the images presented by our enemies to their citizens, or the images presented by our media here at home?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.