Blaming the U.S. (NY Times joins Alger)

[B-Man]

John Podhoretz:

May 14, 2004 -- A MAN has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea - on its front page yesterday - that his death is somehow the fault of the United States.
"The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday," according to lead paragraph in the Times' story, "insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him."

Whatever the circumstances of Nick Berg's detention in Iraq and his family's torment at his unspeakable murder, the Times' decision to offer this angle as its main story in the matter of his beheading is a very telling fact about that newspaper, the mainstream media and the politics of 2004.

No matter what happens in the war with Iraq, no matter what the evildoers do, the Times wants to bring it back to high-level American misconduct - misconduct so severe that it supposedly calls the entire mission in Iraq into question. To blame the United States for Berg's beheading might be acceptable for Berg's own grief-deranged kin. But it is not acceptable for The New York Times or anyone else.

The Times is leading the mainstream media in turning the United States into the bad guys in Iraq. But it is far from alone.

Take a look at Time magazine's cover this week. It features an artist's rendering of one of the photographs from Abu Ghraib with the line: "Iraq: How Did It Come to This?"

"It" didn't come to "this." "It" is a war to liberate 25 million people and rout Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans. "This" was an aberrancy that was stopped almost five months ago, when the revelations at Abu Ghraib led to investigations, arrests and the wholesale reinvention of the Iraq prison system.



Time's cover line is a vile and grotesque slander against every American in uniform in Iraq. It remains the case, more than two weeks after the public exposure of the Abu Ghraib photographs, that not a single digital photo showing mistreatment has emerged from another cellblock at that self-same prison, or from any of the other 24 prisons in Iraq.

Indeed, every photograph shown to U.S. senators yesterday is part of the same set of pictures featuring the same eight dirtbags.

The scandal isn't widening. If anything, it's contracting. The focus continues to zoom in on the actual people in the pictures and their disgusting conduct in them. And yet Teddy Kennedy, a man who once let a woman die, feels free to speak the following unspeakable words: "We now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management."

The United States is, according to the man in whose car Mary Jo Kopechne drowned, no better than the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Teddy Kennedy isn't just some outlier. Teddy Kennedy is the chief surrogate of the Democratic candidate for president of the United States and a lionized figure - so lionized that a worshipful profile of him published in Boston magazine won a major journalism award last year.

So let's be clear what's going on here. As we speak, 138,000 Americans are serving under dangerous conditions in Iraq. And our forces in Karbala are fighting against the goons and thugs of Muqtada al-Sadr with some success. They're risking their lives for freedom and honor and duty and love of country.

And conventional liberal opinion wants them to lose.

Conventional liberal opinion believes that the Abu Ghraib photos are the true meaning of the war, and that Nick Berg is just another victim of callous U.S. policy.

Conventional liberal opinion is actively seeking the humiliation and defeat of the United States in Iraq.

[paland]

[ QUOTE ]
"It" didn't come to "this." "It" is a war to liberate 25 million people and rout Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem with your arguement is that you repeat propaganda lines. We are not there to "liberate" anymore than we are interested in helping the homeless. And "we" started this war, not them. The administration abandoned the war against Terrorists so that they could fight Saddam. The terrorists are now getting stronger and we can thank Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.. for this. They have made our lives miserable. Thanks guys.

[sam h]

John Podhoretz is a bloated windbag who only has a job because of his dad.

The level of denial from conservatives about Iraq is truly amazing. All of this going on the offensive - The New York Times blah, blah, blah, Mary Jo Kopechne blah, blah, blah, Rene Gonzalez blah, blah, blah, John Kerry threw away his medals blah, blah, blah - is just noise to drown out the unavoidable fact that the Iraq mission has been mainly a disaster and that the people in charge have demonstrated astounding levels of incompetence and deceit throughout.

[elwoodblues]

Typical blame the media first response.

You are blaming the NYT for "aggressively marketing" the idea that the US is to blam for Berg's death. All they are doing is reporting Berg's father's belief. Just yesterday, people were whining that there isn't enough coverage of the Berg killing. There has been very little new info about the killing except for the fact that Berg's father is blaming the government for the death. What would you expect them to run with. If they had put the article about Berg later in the paper and, god forbid, ran a front page story about the prisoner scandal we'd be hearing that they were biased.

You are the editor of the NYT. What are your front page stories today?

[Michael Davis]

They have undoubtedly made the world a worse place, but "they have made our lives miserable" is a gross hyperbole.

-Michael

[andyfox]

In the 1940s, when Truman needed to rally the isolationist Republican conservative to support military aid for Greece and Turkey, he was advised to scare the hell out of the public and the Republicans, in order to make opposition to his policies seem unpatriotic.

We're at a similar crossroads in American foreign policy now. The Bush administration, while having many of the same attitudes and viewpoints as the prior Clinton and Bush administrations, is much more activist. It is therefore natural that the administration, and its allies in the press, will make a concerted effort to question the patriotism of those who oppose its policies.

"Conventional liberals" thus, in their eyes, want us to lose.

But the conservative movement has really gone overboard. Note the titles and subtitles of their books. ["Treason"; "Useful Idiots"; Hannity's new book's subtitle equates liberalism with evil] Kerry is regularly called "stupid" on many of the radio talk shows.

The Berg story was a big one. The unfortunate man's father's statements were news. The New York Times did not "aggressively market" the idea that his death was the United States' fault, it reported what the man's father said.

The President and Secretary of Defense have condemned the actions in the prison in no uncertain terms. They're the ones who have been most outspoken on this issue, and, IMO, rightly so. They have been the most critical public figures of the actions taken by Americans there.

Kennedy did not say that we're no better than the regime of Saddam Hussein.

If there is humiliation in what happened in the prison, it is because of what happened, not because of the media reporting it.

[trippin bily]

paland, we didnt start the war..you know better. when they flew those planes into the towers they stared the war. People like you just refuse to acknowledge that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism. Why it can honestly be said that there has not been a proven connection betwwen saddam and 911... it is clear that saddam had ties with terrorist throughout the world. including the animal that beheaded mr. berg. in iraq by the way. He had been there many times before the war. Once to seek medical treatment from saddams personnal doctor. the other trips i'm sure were for vacation only.
since we have gone to iraq libya has ceased to be a terrorist regime. they dismantled nuclear weapons and plants and put them on u. s . ships. didn't get much press coverage. didn't make america look bad or the current administation. libya will no longer sell weapons to iran, north korea, syria. didn't get much press coverage..didnt make america look bad or the current administration.
as for the terrorist getting stronger ha!
we have had them come from all over the world to fight our highly trained volunteer soldiers. who are killing them daily.
seems brilliant to me..we got the animals to come out of their holes and fight soldiers instead of killing innocent woman and children with planes.thast angle doesn't get much press coverage.. you know why. the terrorist are however blowing up many innocent iraqis. not sure why. i guess they must have had cameras.

[andyfox]

The people who flew the planes into the buildings in New York and Washington D.C. were from Saudi Arabia. The administration determined that they were Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, given aid and comfort by the Taliban. It therefore attacked Afghanistan to go after Al-Qaeda and get rid of the Taliban.

The war in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The detente with Libya had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. It had been in the works for years, with only the details needed to be worked out. The claim that Kaddafi came to his sense because of the war in Iraq is false. As is your claim that it didn't get much press coverage.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
The war in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. The war in Iraq has a lot to do with 9/11 (insofar as 9/11 was the catylyst with which Americans could have been talked into bombing the Vatican because of its ties to terrorists). Unfortunately, Iraq itself had nothing to do with 9/11.

[andyfox]

Bad language skills, I agree. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. Indeed, it was crucial to the justification for war in Iraq.

[paland]

[ QUOTE ]
paland, we didnt start the war..you know better. when they flew those planes into the towers they stared the war.

[/ QUOTE ]
Gotta love the "they" in this statement. The great house of THEY. When the Muir Building in Oklahoma City was bombed in the name of McFeigh's version of Christianity, did you blame it on ALL Christians?

But as someone mentioned above, it was Saudi's. You know, the country that is VERY friendly with the Bush family.

[sam h]

Clearly you haven't even bothered to investigate even the most basic claims you are making, such that Libya stopped being a trafficker of nuclear materials to other countries. You can't stop selling weapons if you never sold them in the first place.

[superleeds]

Ignorance is bliss.

Sad.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Gotta love the "they" in this statement. The great house of THEY. When the Muir Building in Oklahoma City was bombed in the name of McFeigh's version of Christianity, did you blame it on ALL Christians?

[/ QUOTE ]

McVeigh wasn't part of a large cult intent on terrorism, though, whereas the architects and executors of 9/11 were (the cult of radical militant Islam, courtesy of Wahabbi Saudi Arabia). Besides, trippinBilly isn't blaming it on ALL Muslims. The parallel you drew is absurd.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
And "we" started this war, not them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Iraq was in continual and repeated violation of the cease-fire
agreement of 1991--that war never officially ended, and the cease-fire was contingent upon their honoring certain terms of that agreement, so if I'm not mistaken, technically we could at have re-invaded them at any time for being in violation.

[ QUOTE ]
The administration abandoned the war against Terrorists so that they could fight Saddam.

[/ QUOTE ]

The administration abandoned nothing and is still vigorously prosecuting the war against terror. You have been listening to too much propaganda if you believe the fight against terrorists was abandoned. It is still going in Afghanistan, and globally, and more terrorists keep getting caught.

[Chris Alger]

This article and your post says more about the sub-kindergarten level of political thinking, especially among so-called patriots and conservatives, than anything else. We're devolving into a moronocracy.

Of course the U.S. is partly to blame for Berg's death. It started a war it didn't have to, and so is at least partly responsible for every reasonably foreseeable thing that results from the war. One could argue (as you have) that the war was justified and that the consequences are worth the benefits, or that the U.S. was forced into it, or that Berg's murder had nothing to do with the war. But those are fact questions. Their answers can't imply that starting wars negates responsibility for their consequences. That's just common sense, something almost every child understands, at least until they become brainwashed into "patriots."

But of course the NY Times hasn't "blamed" the U.S. for Berg's murder merely by reporting a complaint from his kin that Berg was unprotected. Protecting U.S. citizens is one of the things that occupation forces are generally supposed to attempt. Therefore, if the claim has any substance it amounts to a report of failure of official efforts, something inherently newsworthy.

According to Podhoretz, however, there should never be any suggestion in any paper of the mainstream media that the U.S. can be repsonsible for anything bad. Or at least that's what follows from this: "To blame the United States for Berg's beheading might be acceptable for Berg's own grief-deranged kin. But it is not acceptable for The New York Times or anyone else." But what if Berg had asked for protection ordinarily given to U.S. citizens and was arbitrarilty denied it? I don't know the facts, but Podhoretz is arguing that no paper should ever print a story about someone faulting the U.S. for neglecting to protect one of its own. This is nothing short of a demand that the media censor itself to a degree that is extreme by totalitarian standards. That Podhoretz can suggest that stories like this are departures from "normal" reporting indicate how close the media to meeting his standard.

More to the point, aren't you one of those guys who, along with Podohertz, constantly blames the Palestinians when they get killed by Israel, or the "witnesses" who observed the bombing of Baghdad? Your argument goes like this: when our side pulls the trigger, all "blame" must be put on someone else. When someone else pulls the trigger, any suggestion that the U.S. bears any responsibility for provoking or failing to prevent the event amounts to "blaming" the U.S. absurdly, because everyone knows that the only actor with respsonsibility is the one who pulls the trigger.

You should be embarrassed to think such things, much less write them much less write them in public. By the standards of our politically dumbed-down culture, however, transparent contradictions like these pass, or come close to passing, for rational thought.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
John Podhoretz is a bloated windbag who only has a job because of his dad.

[/ QUOTE ]

His Dad, of course, being one of the great thinkers of his generation? I can't tell the difference between them.

[trippin bily]

Sam,
clearly you haven't bothered to read the post or history. Your anti american bias won't allow you to see.
I never said Libya trafficed in nuclear materials. I said they dismantled their nuclear program and put the stuff on US ships. Go read the post again. As for Libya not selling weapons to other countries...are you a complete moron?
Of course they did! It was the #1 export for gods sakes!
Libya said so not the US.Libya was not involved in terrorism either were they.