Letters to the Editor
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The fourth factor
The fourth factor: Oil.
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15 occurences of the word Israel I think
Yup we're a worldwide menace. Stop the presses, Gary's discovered the worldwide Jewspiracy.
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14 occurences of the word Iraq, in an article about Iraq
Gee I hope if you write cookbooks they're kosher cookbooks.
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A Credible Threat & Root Causes
While I agree wholeheartedly with Kamiya's essential restating of the arguments in Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" I must point out one weakness in the logic of the article.
It could be argued that prior to the actual start of war on Iraq, that the US was engaged in a diplomatic effort to persuade Iraq to disarm. OK, we all know this was a sham, but hear me out:
If the alternatives being presented to a "rogue state" are "tow the UN line or face war" then it can be argued that creating doubt that the "face war" option is actually real harms the diplomatic "stance", and creates the third option, "pretend to comply because war ain't really coming". Which does bear an uncanny resemblance to Iraq's actual policy during those nine months.
This argument fails in this specific case because (on the left) we believe that the US was never in fact _not_ going to war. But if you don't believe that, the argument holds water, and weakening the "credible threat" by domestic "questioning" is indeed weakening the nation's foreign policy stance.
So rather than rehashing the well-reported and well-known failure of the US media to ask the hard questions during that nine months (I would argue that the US media hasn't asked even mildly hard questions since 1980) where is the reportage on the broken way the US "negotiates" with rogue states? (North Korea, Iran, hello!!)
Or the morally bankrupt way that the US misuses and abuses the UN? (And it's not an excuse here, just like it wasn't in primary school, to say "Everyone else does it!")
Because if you can continue to make the argument that unilateral "do what we say or we bomb you" is a legitimate position in 21st century diplomacy, then those who question the "bomb you" option can continue to be painted as traitors.
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gotta sell those weapons!
Part of the problem is that the major news organizations are just trying to make their stockholders happy...bring in the bucks. An other problem is that the news conglomerates have the same people running them as are running the military industrial complex. When NBC Universal is owned by GE which makes many engines for warplanes it must have some impact on their point of view. War makes money for a lot of people. Our economy depends on war. And if sponsors want viewers to buy their products the people must keep making those weapons. Those interested in the truth will become used to checking non MSM sources and the web makes it easy to do that now.
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The press didn't fail
They did exactly what they are paid to do, serve the interests of the shareholders and their sponsors. To imply that they failed is to imply that they are somehow less than fully complicit and it was all just a mistake, oversight, or incompetence.
They certainly weren't toothless when it came to savaging the anti-war voices, repeating obvious lies, stifling dissent and questioning the patriotism of war critics. They didn't collapse, they were a bulwark of prowar propaganda.
This article sounds like a tv defense attorney trying to minimize their client's guilt.
James Spader I presume?
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Pants on fire
This is an excellent, detailed and well-argued article summarizing the failure of the US media from a number of angles.
Just before the Iraq war started I was participating in discussions about the upcoming war in a newsgroup loosely concerned with George Orwell, his works, and how his ideas play out in contemporary society.
In a thread that discussed a Salon article, on March 8th 2003, I asked the question:
OK, so the main argument here is that the regime in Iraq has already used poison gas against its own people, and that a dictator who massacres his own people should not be allowed.
Fair enough, but the argument for war being put forward by George Bush is that this is a war of self defence and that the US has no alternative but to attack Iraq preemptively before Iraq arms Al Quaida and the US comes under attack with these self same weapons.
So what is the real reason for the upcoming war?
Another poster responded:
The multiplicity of justifications for this war is one of its most suspicious traits. In previous interventions of the last twenty years or so, where the Western powers have been acting reactively - the Falklands, Gulf I, Kosovo, even Afghanistan in 2001 - the motive has generally been pretty straight forward: are we going to let these bastards get away with this, ornot? ("This" usually being some kind of unprovoked military attack). With Iraq, there's a new casus bellum every week. We're doing this because Saddam supports bin Laden. No, wait, it's because of WMDs. Scratch that: it's the Kurds. No - it's to create democracy in the Middle East. When Einstein was presented with a book called _100 Scientists Against Einstein_, he said: "If they were right, one would be enough." The same applies here.
So these things were being discussed at the time, but just not in the commercial media.
The question the media are now ducking regards Bin Laden. It seems that the media is determined to keep him alive. In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four Emmanuel Goldstein is the perpetual public enemy number one, and every disaster that occurs is attributed to him and his agents, even though it is not even clear that he really exists at all.
Right now we have Bin Laden fulfilling this scapegoat role, supposedly hiding out in the mountains of the north west frontier along with his kidney dialysis team, but give it a few more years and we will probably have him marching up one of those mountains, ascending into the clouds and directing terrorist operations from a perch on the shoulder of Allah.
Would we believe that George W. Bush was still alive if he only communicated with cassette tapes?
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Rogue States?
In the abstact, Shannonr's comments that:
"If the alternatives being presented to a "rogue state" are "tow the UN line or face war" then it can be argued that creating doubt that the "face war" option is actually real harms the diplomatic "stance", and creates the third option, "pretend to comply because war ain't really coming". Which does bear an uncanny resemblance to Iraq's actual policy during those nine months." might have some validity.
But Kamiya's point, which has been referred to often by others of a veiled "consensus of definition" is troubling reflected even by this intelligent reader.
At the beginning of the war, I faced off with a well known reporter/journalist whoo had attacked Jonathan Schell as "not getting it" in Schell's essay "The Case Against the War". The a priori assumption that we are the "good guys" who get to declare who is a "rogue sate" and who isn't is both tragical and facical.
As I argued then, and was told "we don't do that anymore (Right!), I pointed to the long history of abuse of our country and the poisonous tree that was this administration. Therefore, although we often have been the worst "rogue state" of all, we try to dictate because of our power. China used to be defined as a "rogue state". Not anymore as they've grown in influence.
I can see the point about credible force for example in Bosnia, but the line is incredibly delicate. I would hesitate to use this argument in any way concerning Iraq do to the criminal misuse of motive involved.
No one would deny that an actual, urgent threat needs to be dealt with. But defining who is "rogue" and who isn't is a highly dangerous speculation.