Bad News From Iraq
Dean
Those of us who strongly support the progressive, pro-freedom, pro-human rights U.S. mission in Iraq have long noted that the American press is quite obviously opposed to that effort--and that the way they report on it shows this clearly. Art Chrenkoff nots just how blatant this press bias is in his latest news roundup, The Bad News From Iraq.
It's really quite stunning when you look at it.
So whose side is most of the press on? It's not the side of "the truth," that's for sure. It's certainly not "just the facts," for they ignore all sorts of facts that don't play into their sensationalist, doom-and-gloom agenda. It's not the side of "the first amendment," since what we do here on Dean's World is just as much an expression of the first amendment as anything they do.
So whose side are they on?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Bad News From Iraq
- Good News From Iraq
- Carnival of the Liberated
- The media in Iraq
I'll tell you, if there's one thing I'm sick to death of, it's people complaining about media bias. It does exist, to a certain extent, of course, but both sides of the political spectrum blame everything on media bias.
In almost every case, media incompetence is the better target than outright bias. In this case, it doesn't even rise to that level. The other problem with media is that it is profit driven, and while there's nothing wrong with that per se, it does alter the focus of the news in some significant ways.
As far as the article linked is concerned, it's unintentionally hilarious. Yes, the one thing we need most with respect to Iraq is more news articles about positive developments. What we absolutely don't need in Iraq is more positive developments. Oh no. We just need more stories about positive developments.
I'm open-minded to the charge that the MSM is under-reporting positive developments. But you can't make that claim without comparing the news coverage to reality. The Chrenkoff article Dean linked to doesn't do that. It's simply a bunch of numbers, with no clear methodology, and thus no context.
It wouldn't be that difficult. I can pick up any Newsweek magazine and find at least 5 examples of anti-war bias within the first 20 pages. For example, yesterday I found a conventional wisdom entry that called the war "heading south". What exactly does that mean? Why - especially since the administration said things would get worse before the election?
As for getting sick of the charges, personally, I'm sick of the bias myself to the point that I've stopped reading the NYT, Wapo, Time and Newsweek.
They're on the side of the lazy. They report the easy stuff. The good news is harder to find, and harder to make interesting. And, therefore, harder to get past the editors who need the story to "sell".
Blood, fire, explosions, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods ... all of those are interesting by default because they're threatening. Animals (humans included) are predisposed to pay attention to things that pose a threat.
It's much harder to make a positive story interesting to a broad audience. There's no low-level "lizard-brain" response to things going well that compares to the response on that level to things that are dangerous or threatening.
Fear of death is a stronger motivation than appreciation of helpfulness.
The bad things get more attention for deep biological reasons. Seeking out the good requires effort. And it's easy to see how an active search for good news could be interpreted as dishonest, even though it's exactly the opposite.
Seeing the whole picture requires mental effort and reliance on facts, not emotion or fear. It's hard. I appreciate Chrenkoff's (and Dean's) effort, and I think it's important.
The thing about media bias - and bias in general - is like regional accents in speech. A native Texan isn't likely to say say another native Texan has an accent when he speaks, but someone from the north would certainly notice it. And vice versa.
Everyone has a bias. If you don't notice it in someone, it's because your bias is similar.
I've heard too many Iraqis, and WAY WAY WAY too many service members over in Iraq, complaining about this to not take it seriously. So it's tough if you don't like it, Drew. I've been complaining about it regularly for two years now, and will not stop until I see a press that's as dedicated to showing victory and triumph and positive stories--stories we wouldn't even know about if it weren't for the blogosphere--as it is to showing us despair and death.
Oh sure, plenty of people in the world are really committing atrocities; but there's also a dab of self-loathing that makes it all the better to pretend Americans are the bad guys.
Regarding bubbles, no one is immune from being in a bubble, some self-imposed, others from the nature of their lives, but bubbles nonetheless. Those in bubbles include those who claim to lead us (not limited to the President, but members of Congress from BOTH parties, along with Cabinet members and others).
It is in the administration's best interest to show the positive results of their policies, and the administration does have the infamous "bully pulpit" on their side. Government as a whole has an incredible ability to get both their viewpoint out and in more cases than we realize to enforce their viewpoint. Even not counting activities that are not sanctioned, such as the recent Armstrong Williams imbroglio, the government has many resources to get its message out.
What is the role of the press? Certainly noot to cheerlead for the government. My question is this: Even if the media were truly unbiased, an impossibility, but for the sake of the argument, assume so, and if the administration and government have an inherent interest in promoting their own policies, where is the balance? There has to be SOME grouping opposed to those in power, otherwise there is NO balance.
Our govenment is built on a system of checks and balances, where one power is balanced against another, one branch can restrain another. In addition to the balances between the three branches of government, there was an intention of having a balance between federal and state governments. However, the world has evolved beyond the time of the late 18th century, and so has government in the US, although lest we forget, even in that time the press of the day was far, far more partisan than anything we have seen in the last half-century. In some respects, the modern press/media is serving a similar role to the press at the time of the writing of the Constitution. At that time, those involved in writing the Constitution had a strong mistrust of centralized government power, which is one of the reasons why the original Articles of Confederation resulted in such a weak federal government that they had to be re-written, and the resulting Constitution did not envision the incredible amount of centralization in national government we have now. I believe in some respects we should be thankful for a press/media that is inherently biased against the government, because it provides an unofficial counterweight to a centralized power that was not envisioned at the time our governmental system was formed.
In the end, if you excoriate the press for showing only the bad news, I think you have an equal duty (if you want to be self-consistent) of excoriating the administration for never admitting any mistakes. Otherwise, the net effect of a "balanced" media and a biased message from the administration is a biased message, but in this case biased towards the view of the administration. I think in the end this is bad for democracy. If the media truly had the power attributed to it that those who continually decry bias, then why did Bush get re-elected? People have brains, and they consider the source when they get information. An unbiased press is a chimera, and not recognizing the important role they play in opposing those in power is a disservice to the preservation of our democracy. Brian said it best above, "Everyone has a bias. If you don't notice it in someone, it's because your bias is similar."
I think both apply in some specific instances. But I have a hard time believing that it's universal among journalists and their sponsoring organizations. I think the instinct for survival *is* universal, and the other factors play a role to varying degrees based on the politics of those doing the reporting and publishing.
I believe in the idea that one should "never attribute to malice what could attributed to ignorance." Bad news is news, and it should be reported. But those reporting the bad news aren't necessarily doing so for some nefarious purpose. That's all I'm saying.
Think about your local newspapers and TV news. How many murders, explosions, and misdeeds of public officials that happen in your area are ignored by the local press? How many good things happen that are not covered?
Compare that to similar topics in Iraq. It's the same basic deal in most cases - your local reporters (I believe) are not generally out to sabotage your municipality by reporting only bad news. For most of them, focusing on the negative is just what they do.
1) How does the media's reporting style in Iraq, which is admittedly focused heavily on sensationalism and negative events, differ from any other reporting? In other words, the media are always sensationalist and negative - how does the fact that they also display these characteristics in Iraq indicate bias?
2) Continuing along those lines, is it not possible that the media's sensationalism and negative orientation comes from the simple fact that negative events are more captivating on an individual basis, and therefore newsworthy, than, say, rebuilding schools? In other words, if you've seen one school rebuilt, you've seen 'em all, whereas each suicide bombing, assassination, and so forth has its own macro effect, and is therefore of greater import.
3) Keeping in mind that the goal of a news organization is to make money as much as it is to report the news, be honest: would you watch the news if it were all just candy canes and gumdrops?
4) Most right-of-center bloggers have aligned themselves fairly closely with the official Administration line on the insurgency from the beginning. If you'll recall, it wasn't all that long ago that Rumsfeld was saying that we were fighting nothing more than a few disgruntled Saddam loyalists. Even as the Administration has slowly begun to admit that things are not going swimmingly - in other words, that many of the war's critics were correct - I have seen few pro-war bloggers modify their criticisms of the media. So the question is, if it really is going as badly as the media has been reporting, then where's the bias?
5) Finally, how exactly should the media be reporting? In other words, what specific elements of the reporting style would you change in order to remove the bias you believe is present? Would changing those elements simply result in bias in the opposite direction? If so, would this concern you to anything approaching the degree that perceived liberal bias does, or is the real problem simply that you believe the media should be biased in your favor rather than neutral?
Yes, I do. Depending on how you define "actively", I suppose. I don't think very many Western reporters are in active consipiracy with al Qaeda, for example. But are they active members of the army of the Post-Modernists, the transnationalists, the moral-relativists? You bet. And all those groups are enemies of the West, and by that I mean the great liberal tradiions of the Enlightenment. In the Islamists they have found enemies of their enemy, if not friends.
The tone of these comments indicates what I think is one of the roots of the problem: the widespread disbelief that we are in a fight to the death for the survival of the West.
In normal times, the role of the press is (should be) to report the truth. It is not to be a gadfly or viewpoint-pusher. This is my opinion of course, not theirs.
In non-normal times, in times when we are in a fight for survival, the role of the press is the same role that every citizen has: to join in that fight. Those who sit on their hands have definitely chosen a side, whether they think they have or not. For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.
That is not to say that the press should not report bad news. The press should continue (start) to report the truth, good and bad. But they should do it from the viewpoint of the friends of the West, and they should stay their pen temporarily when needed by what's in the best interest of the fight.
Because that's just it. We're in a fight. The whole world is, whether it wants to be or not. There are no neutral parties, least of all the press.
You want to see a REALLY un-free press? Just lose that fight.
"The Press" has turned itself into this semi-mythical Society Of People Who Speak Truth To Power. As Kevin Drum put it the other day, anyone who has to claim they're Speaking Truth To Power is probably, um, not.
I don't demand that The Press "cheerlead" for "The Goverment"... I ask that they not go out of their way to avoid writing a good thing AS a good thing when it might reflect well on the goverment.
I ask that they at least make some effort at reporting a la Ernie Pyle: Report our successes AS SUCCESSES, instead of trying to turn them into failures. When we kill 400 insurgents and lose 7 Marines or whatever, report not just '7 Marines killed by Insurgents', but the entire kill ratio, at least in ballpark figures, wherever possible. If they don't know how many, say, "In Fierce Battle, Hundreds of Insurgents Killed; 7 Marines Lost" or something.
If that means, oh, I dunno, waiting 48 hours so they can get the full details from CENTCOM, well, isn't that what reporting is SUPPOSED to be about? Telling the People the Truth (Even If It Makes Bush And Rumsfeld Look Good), instead of Telling the People the Truth, Only If We Can Make The Government Look Bad? Instead of telling rumors and half-the-facts in such a way that they might as well be the propaganda arm of the insurgency?
Any of the Pro-Media folks got a real answer to that?
I agree with this. I think it's anything but benign, but I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think there's a general media bias towards bad events, driven presumably by market pressure, both at home and abroad.
I think this is a big factor in the pernicious atmosphere of fear and paranoia in America right now. Sometimes the current administration benefits from it (fear of Social Security collapsing is helping them, fear of terrorists is helping them) sometimes it doesn't (fear of failure/casualties in Iraq). Mostly it hurts all of us. We're afraid to let our children walk outside because of lurking abductors, afraid of honest debate because someone's feelings might get hurt, afraid to drive fuel-efficient cars because we think SUVs are safer, afraid of our day care centers, our schools, our neighbors, our spouses. Etc. ad infinitum.
Basically, the media have our number. As long as we collectively respond more strongly to scary bad stimuli than anything else, they're going to keep working to make the world scarier and scarier. Murders, explosions, deaths, abductions, poisonings and so on are *always* going to be the lead news story unless people start changing the channel to 'The Happy Rebuilding Story'.
Happy
*State Adds Nearly 78,000 Jobs In 2004, Unemployment Falls
*Durham Nightclub Set To Reopen After Recent Troubles
*Duke Medical Center Lands Nobel Winner To Lead Research
*Hot Flash Pajamas May Produce Better Night's Sleep
*Paris' Louvre Agrees To Let 'Da Vinci Code' Film There
*Talking Blood Pressure Monitor Tailors Readings
Total = 6 (of which 3 only sorta qualify as 'news')
Unhappy
*Police Find Body Of Abducted Texas Wal-Mart Clerk
*Couple Accused Of Kidnapping Children Returned To N.C.
*Cary Motorcyclist Dies Of Injuries From Accident
*Driver Charged In Wreck That Knocked Out Power In Garner
*Teacher Reaches Plea Deal In Student Abuse Case
*FSU Investigation Focuses On Student Activities Center
*Wake Man Arrested After Allegedly Vandalizing Bus, Threatening Driver
*5 Puppies Die After Being Stabbed
*Debt Carries High Financial, Emotional Costs
*Car Sought In Missing Boy Case Found In Georgia
*Public Health Experts: Tsunami Crisis Far From Over
*Doctor Treats Juror In Malpractice Trial; Mistrial Declared
*$450K Awarded To Man Who Had Operation On Wrong Knee
*Judge Orders Arrest Of Suspended UNC Linebacker Sparkman
*Nightly Lane Closures May Lead To Delays, Headaches In Cary
Total=15
None of these headlines is about Iraq, nor are most particularly political. I think it's pretty obvious the media bias is more towards badness in general. I thought '5 Puppies Die After Being Stabbed' was particularly illustrative of the problem. Why no balancing stories with photos of the millions of puppies currently being cuddled by winsome girls with golden ringlets?
In my opinion, in addition to the 'bad news sells' thing, there's an additional source of bias at work here which isn't necessarily political. I think that without any particular conspiracy going on, news agencies have a tendency to want to all be telling the same story but with their own fresh angle. If everyone else is reporting that the news in Iraq is bad, you look sort of weird and out of touch if you're reporting that things are happy and optimistic (unless your story is about the fact that the others are wrong). I don't know the process by which a particular point of view becomes the story everyone's telling, but I honestly think it's as much a sort of trophism than anything. Speaking as a liberal, I've seen it happen when the story was something I didn't at all agree with, so I don't think it's because of a sekret liberul phone tree. I think it's mostly path-of-least-resistance behavior.
they make money if you watch/listen and let them spin their tales in your head with mind games included free of charge.
used to be you could listen to the news and it was NEWS, not gossip.... gossip is pretty much most of it these days.... maybe if they had to pay for tv time instead of getting paid to use it up, they'd clean their acts up...
how many people buy a copy?
how i wish it were reported? i wish they stuck to the facts. i'm sick of the editorials. you listen to a politican speak and then two or three people come on when he/she is done to tell you what the politician said, as though the politician were speaking hindi or slovak, instead of american english.
a friend of mine went to work for a tv station in baltimore... she complained privately to me that she was required to use 5th grade level english, not the adult version she used in her common, every day speech, because the management did not believe that 'most americans' were capable of understanding what she said otherwise....
It is really not much of a contest; there are good reporters, of course; but the average run is pretty worthless.
You will never, ever the 100% truth in a news article - each article would have to be a several hundred page book with extensive footnotes in order to actually tell the whole story; and TV and radio news is even worse due to much harsher time constraints - TV being especially bad because it can show pictures...each picture is, indeed, worth 1,000 words, and every last one of them is a lie.
What we've got here in 2005, however, is an unpatriotic American press; they can tell the story two different ways, and they have chosen to report the story in an anti-American way. As has been pointed out endlessly, if we had todays reporters in 1942, we'd have lost the war. You can report the bad news in a way that does not cast aspersion upon the United States military, its amazingly brave and dedicated servicemembers and our allies in the field - the news is reported in a way to present things in the worst possible light - for istance, a few car bombs set off at two or three locations in Iraq is invariably reported as a "wave of violence"...if they were patriotic, the bombs would be a page A-3 item and the front page would be "US Forces Destroy Enemy Terror Cell" or "Iraqi's Registering to Vote in Spite of Terrorist Threats."
Why are they unpatriotic in their reporting? Because their bosses, dried-up Vietnam-era has-beens, are unpatriotic; it was "cool" to be unpatriotic in 1968, and thus they remain. You can write it pro-American and get the story spiked by the boss, or you can put the anti-American spin on it and get a raise. Why do the bosses remain unpatriotic? Because they've built up their entire careers and worldview upon an unpatriotic premise that the United States is fundamentally at fault for the world's troubles.
What will change it? You and I, writing and commenting on this and other blogs.
I doubt that most journalists are conciously plotting against the US, but there's certainly a bias. In fact, I'll even say that there is a prelidiction to protray the situation in Iraq in the worst possible light, given the chance.
Part of the problem is that American journalism has turned into a "for profit" organization, and as the saying goes, if it bleeds, lt leads.
Another problem is that very, very few journalists have ever had any military experience. It's hard to report effectively on a highly technical profession when you don't know much about it. One of the more egregious mistakes commonly made is confusing "casualties" with "dead." The usual complete lack of anything resembling historical knowledge common to most modern US citizens doesn't help either.
Finally there is the elemental fact that most journalists are self-confessed liberals, who almost by definition consider the war a bad idea. It's not surprising this attitude leaks into their work.
Segueing back to where I started, this (probably unconcious) attitude combines with the modern journalistic prelidiction for bad news tends to create the "worst possible scenario" I referred to above.
It's not just a case of reporting good news to balance the bad. Journalists need to get a better idea of how the military works, and ask themselves "am I reporting the facts, or my leaning on my prejudices?" After that they can ask themselves if they've managed to report events properly in context.
Examples of the latter would include the fact that 15 (or is it 16?) of the 18 provinces are essentially peaceful. Then they could start dealing with the background of the terrorists who are causing all the ruckus, including the fact that the two main groups involved -al Qaeda and ex-Baathists- are in no way a native "resistance."
But it's not going to happen; Drew's answer shows why. Their instinctive response is a sneer and a dismissive remark.
That said? I disagree that the role of the press is to be automatically adversarial. But I disagree even more strongly with this:
It is in the administration's best interest to show the positive results of their policies, and the administration does have the infamous "bully pulpit" on their side.
Right there. Right there nails the difference between us. It is in America's best interests to show the positive results of the Administration's war policies.
We are in this fight whether we all thought it was a good idea or not. Handing the enemy propaganda victories on a silver platter is not in America's best interests. It is not in the interests of the soldiers and marines doing the fighting and dying. It is not in anyone's best interests except the enemy.
All I want, all I expect, is a press corps made up of people who don't play phony-baloney games about being "objective" and therefore "neutral." These reporters are Americans first and foremost, and if they don't see that they have a duty to not act as a propaganda arm for the enemy, then they have in fact made themselves enemy propagandists so far as I am concerned.
And I don't think that's healthy for democracy at all.
If you go back and look at how the press covered World War II it was wildly different. Yes, they reported the bad stuff. Every day the lists of the dead and wounded were in the papers. Every major defeat on the battlefield was noted. But the victories, the triumphs, and even the friendships made in the aftermath, were all equally front page news.
And they did not rely on the administration to tell them what was good news. They found it for themselves.
The "bully pulpit" of the Presidency is powerful, but it's beside the point, especially when any whiff of a misstep or mis-statement or just anything that could possibly be misinterpreted is trumpeted and expanded upon by a press corps that thinks that sort of nitpicking is its obligation. Just look at all the people who immediately declare the President (any President, it doesn't matter) a "liar" when he contradicts himself or even seems to say something incorrect. It's obscene.
This is not Bush's war. It's our war. Our elected government, in Congress assembled, authorized this venture. The administration of course can and will make mistakes in its execution. All that is a given. There's nothing wrong with noting that, just as there's nothing wrong with noting what the administration says and what its critics say. But this is our war, America and her allies' war.
I expect a press corps that sees itself as having a duty and a role to their country when our people are in the field of battle. The fact that they're only interested in what makes money just, again, makes them enemy propagandists by default in my eyes, and in the eyes of millions of others--including a lot of the people actually fighting in Iraq right now.
I mean, seriously, how many times do you have to hear right from soldiers in Iraq's own mouths that the press is acting like enemy propagandists before you'll think that maybe the press is acting like enemy propagandists?
As to my own obligation to provide "balance" -- no I don't. I admit openly what my biases are. If the press would do the same I'd have less complaint, to be honest. If they'd just admit that they don't think we can succeed, that they believe we should never have gone and should leave now, they should just say so. It's obviously what most of them think, after all. The pretense to neutrality offends me. Well that and the clear lack of patriotism the attitude betrays.
(What, did I just commit the horrible sin of questioning someone's patriotism? Oh goodness me, watch the world end because I did that. The first amendment has been shattered and the ghost of McCarthy is upon us, someone questioned the press corps' patriotism!)
Here is the truth about my writing on the war: I never wanted to write about it. I still don't enjoy writing about it. I consider that work. I consider blogging to be about fun, and it's not fun to write about war. I only started because I saw it as my patriotic duty, my contribution to help get the word out that our boys and girls fighting overseas are being ill-served by a press that acts as the voice of doom and despair and rarely anything else.
And I must say, it infuriates me when people are so unpatriotic (there, I did it again) that they choose to see demands for more balanced and positive coverage on our war efforts as to characterize such requests as carrying water for the administration. Balderdash. I'm carrying water as best I can for our people doing the fighting and dying.
1) How does the media's reporting style in Iraq, which is admittedly focused heavily on sensationalism and negative events, differ from any other reporting? In other words, the media are always sensationalist and negative - how does the fact that they also display these characteristics in Iraq indicate bias?
It isn't much different.
Incessant negativity and sensationalism has become the unhealthy obsession of the press in many areas. Have you ever watched Penn &Teller's wonderful show called "Bullshit?" They covered this well in one of their shows, on how the press scares the crap out of people all the time.
Your average citizen actually thinks West Nile Virus and SARS and Mad Cow Disease are something to be scared of. The average citizen probably also thinks violent crime is a screaming crisis, that poverty is on the rise, that teen pregnancy is out of control, that the air and water are growing steadily more polluted, and so on. They sort of assume it by default because that's what they see in the news. The fact that all of that is the exact opposite of the truth usually comes as a surprise to most people.
I object to this in general, but I at least understand it. Bad news sells, and the belief is that good news doesn't.
However. We are at war. When at war, I believe the press has a higher duty and a higher obligation and should be called to task much more stringently for this kind of behavior.
I believe this also answers your #2, so, skipping to 3:
3) Keeping in mind that the goal of a news organization is to make money as much as it is to report the news, be honest: would you watch the news if it were all just candy canes and gumdrops?
Well, actually, yeah I would, because I like stories like that, and I also like debunking bad news trumpeters. I mean, haven't you seen me make fun of them for the SARS and West Nile Virus scares? Yeesh, what putzes.
I do like seeing good news. But still, there's something a little wrong with this formulation: who said we would should only have warm fuzzy stories? I want both bad news and good.
4) Most right-of-center bloggers have aligned themselves fairly closely with the official Administration line on the insurgency from the beginning. If you'll recall, it wasn't all that long ago that Rumsfeld was saying that we were fighting nothing more than a few disgruntled Saddam loyalists. Even as the Administration has slowly begun to admit that things are not going swimmingly - in other words, that many of the war's critics were correct - I have seen few pro-war bloggers modify their criticisms of the media. So the question is, if it really is going as badly as the media has been reporting, then where's the bias?
Well, it would be easier for us not to align with the administration line if the administration's critics would be issuing more constructive criticism rather than kneejerk opposition. I can tell you things I think the administration can or should have done differently or should do differently now. On the other hand, my #1 goal is that we succeed (we, America, and the Iraqis fighting for democracy in their own land).
If John Kerry hadn't campaigned saying "wrong war wrong place wrong time" and had instead simply been saying, "I want to conduct the war differently, and here are my specific proposals for doing so," I would not have vigorously opposed his election.
It is a given that in any war--any war any place any time no matter what--there will be mistakes, there will be miscalculations, there will be nasty surprises, there will be bonehead blunders. This is a given. It is childishly simple to sit back and look at such events and declare the whole venture a failure. Bollox.
The simple fact of the matter is that the facts on the ground haven't changed substantially in Iraq. We are still, to this day, taking a lower casualty rate than any operation of remotely similar scope in world history. To this day, the entire number of dead since the Iraq operation began is less than losses the US sustained in single battles in World War I or II. All but three of Iraq's provinces are peaceful and stable.
None of that's changed. It's all still true.
The initial resistance was mostly holdouts to the fascist regime we toppled, and has slowly come to be more a conflict with religious extremists who want to impose a draconian theocracy--and who are making it their mission to stop elections from taking place.
That's all still true too.
I always thought we might face civil war. I always thought there would be miscalculations and mistakes and nasty surprises. So what? What kind of idiot does someone have to be to not expect such things to happen---no matter who's in charge?
So, the administration says now they may have been overoptimistic on some things. It's a huge leap to go from that to saying that those who opposed the war were right all along.
5) Finally, how exactly should the media be reporting? In other words, what specific elements of the reporting style would you change in order to remove the bias you believe is present? Would changing those elements simply result in bias in the opposite direction? If so, would this concern you to anything approaching the degree that perceived liberal bias does, or is the real problem simply that you believe the media should be biased in your favor rather than neutral?
I believe the media should be biased in America's favor.
However, I would remove not one bit of the coverage we see now. See what I said to Jack above. In World War II the press did not concentrate solely on death and despair and rely solely on Franklin Roosevelt and his administration to let everybody know when there was good news.
Every time I've seen positive reporitng from the press on Iraq I've made note of it. Read Art Chrenkoff's semi-regular "Good News From Iraq" roundup to see what I'm talking about. Why does a blogger, a damned blogger, have to be the one putting such news roundups together? Isn't this the sort of thing that's the press' job?
Well it is their job, and they aren't doing it. That's my issue. Just like you, they act as if this is the administration's war, Bush's war. That's horribly unpatriotic (YES! SEE I QUESTIONED SOMEONE'S PATRIOTISM AGAIN! HORRORS!), and horribly backwards.
It is America's war first and foremost, America and her allies' war. If you don't start with that as your default position, you're already on the wrong side.
There were hours in places like Okinawa where we lost more people than we have in Iraq so far.
Record low casualties. All but three provinces completely peaceful. A major victory for the fascist theocrat "insurgents" is when they bomb a fucking hospital or shoot down unarmed workers trying to get people registered to vote or secretaries on their way to work. When they face our soldiers and Marines, they're obliterated. Indeed, for the first time in history, it's not the front line troops taking most of the casualties, it's actually the support personnel--and even those are being hurt or killed in all-time-record low numbers.
Yet the conventional wisdom is now that Iraq is a mess, we need to get out, it was all a mistake, etc. etc. Yeah whatever. My position on this has never changed: it was the right war at the right time for the right reasons. I knew there would be mistakes and ugly surprises--in fact I expected much worse. It didn't make me waver in my support. That support would have been identical if it had been President Gore at the helm. And if he'd been in charge and had the political courage to do the right thing and take out Saddam, his administration would have made mistakes, had some failures and nasty surprises, and so on. It's a given. No war at any time or place is ever without such things, and expecting our leaders to be perfect is extremely immature, and in wartime it's downright unpatriotic (GASP! A THIRD TIME WITH THE PATRIOTISM THING! BE AFRAID!).
It is in the administration's best interest to show the positive results of their policies, and the administration does have the infamous "bully pulpit" on their side.
Right there. Right there nails the difference between us. It is in America's best interests to show the positive results of the Administration's war policies.
We are in this fight whether we all thought it was a good idea or not. Handing the enemy propaganda victories on a silver platter is not in America's best interests. It is not in the interests of the soldiers and marines doing the fighting and dying. It is not in anyone's best interests except the enemy.'
Dean, I recall your claim that you would leave the Pentagon alone to do what it does best, when discussing Vietnam &Iraq. Now, you quote this. When you state, 'We are in this fight whether we all thought it was a good idea or not.' you are obviating the very concept of the conscientious objector.
You've also shown a very lack of willingness to levy criticism at Bush &Co., when they clearly deserve it.
The MSM does have a bias for money, period. And a blown up body sells more than a school wall being repaired. the problem is that the good news, even if you could metaphysically weight such things, while perhaps more numerous, probably don't add up in the minds of people to the same as dead bodies.
Add in many folks w misperceptions. Literally, last week on NBC, I believe, a dead soldier's mom claimed she was terified that she'd be wearing a birkha if her son hadn't gone to war. Now, you can dismiss her as an extremist, but both sides play such games.
You claim, ala W, it wd be dishonorable to leave Iraq. I say it's dishonorable to fight a war predicated on false premises (and you can justify it all you want, but we'll disagree), and then continue to pursue it, for fear of admission of an error. Bush wd have climbed inestimably in public opinion, and won a Reagan style landslide had he just admitted he screwed up on WMDs, and said there was no dishonor in admitting error.
Society's ripen at their own pace, Dean, and even jefferson admitted blood need be shed for democracy. I submit its better that the blood shed be Iraqi's for Iraqi democracy, not American.
We did get rid of Saddam- that makes it a jump ball for who'll control the country. let them fight it out, and withdraw to Kurdistan, and petition for its legitimacy as a sovereign nation. The Kurds have shown they want democracy. Let the Shias and Sunnis go at it, and wean themselves of hatred for us on each other, and get back to hunting Al Quaida- the folks who attacked us, recall?
'It is a given that in any war--any war any place any time no matter what--there will be mistakes, there will be miscalculations, there will be nasty surprises, there will be bonehead blunders. This is a given. It is childishly simple to sit back and look at such events and declare the whole venture a failure. Bollox.
The simple fact of the matter is that the facts on the ground haven't changed substantially in Iraq. We are still, to this day, taking a lower casualty rate than any operation of remotely similar scope in world history. To this day, the entire number of dead since the Iraq operation began is less than losses the US sustained in single battles in World War I or II. All but three of Iraq's provinces are peaceful and stable.'
This is Nixonian logic, at best, and why he's on the hotseat below. How many millions more died because he didn't end the war, as he promised? You r last sentence is not true as of a few days ago, as the insurgency seems to be spreading. Regardless, the media will do what it wants, just as it clammed up b4 the war, and 'embedded' itself- a great term to show their whorish nature- with the gov't.
One only need look at the diff between Am &foreign media to see how pro-war the Am media has been and still is. Being Am doesn't mean being knee-jerk, it means being independent, and I hope it doesn't take an Iraqi Tet b4 Bush's folly is on the other end of history's butcher block, although, if that Inaugural speech is any indication it will take far more. Hopefully, it won't be left to his successor to play Tricky Dick to his LBJ. DAN
Beyond that: I find your position on Iraq morally repugnant, anti-humanist, anti-progressive, and reactionary. Cheap, shallow comparisons to long-dead politicians over very different wars don't impress me much, either.
It is true that the mass media generally report bad news (deaths, disasters, crimes) more than good news because it sells better. Unfortunately, if a newspaper or television station started to report the really good news, parents would have to forbid their children to look at it. The best, most interesting, things have to be kept private or reserved only for a select few. That's just the way it is.
I agree completely with Dean and with Mark Noonan that, whatever their motive, the mass media are acting unpatriotically in this War, a War for the very survival of the West.
But there is a deeper, ideological factor involved, and DSmith nailed it at the very outset of this thread.
DSmith wrote:
"They have aligned themselves with the enemies of the West."
Very true. All too true.
Drew Vogel then asked:
"Are you joking? You don't really believe that the American News Media, comprised mostly of Americans, is actively working to assist the so-called "enemies of the West", do you?"
To which DSmith replied:
"Yes, I do. Depending on how you define "actively", I suppose. I don't think very many Western reporters are in active consipiracy with al Qaeda, for example. But are they active members of the army of the Post-Modernists, the transnationalists, the moral-relativists? You bet. And all those groups are enemies of the West, and by that I mean the great liberal tradiions of the Enlightenment. In the Islamists they have found enemies of their enemy, if not friends."
That says it. Yes, the capitol of the Left has shifted since its inception in the French Revolution, from Paris to Moscow to Peking to Havana and, now, to Mecca. The Left used to be characterized by Utopian optimism. Now, it is characterized by nihilist cynicism and despair. The Left has given up, or is in the process of giving up, its old dream of changing the West into its ideal of an atheist-rationalist Utopia of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" (or just "Equality", since, by the very nature of things, there can be no Fraternity between Equality and Liberty). Since the Left has tried and failed to change the West in its preferred direction, since it has not been able to abolish the West's religious roots and historic hierarchies, it has turned to the destruction of the West, and has therefore aligned itself with the enemies of the West, even if those enemies are so far from the original Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution as to make Joseph de Maistre look like a flaming liberal by comparison. Leftism, as James Burnham noted, is the ideology of the Suicide of the West.
Do I believe that it is possible for intellectuals in America and the rest of Europe, growing up with all the material and cultural riches with which our civilization has blessed them, to become so alienated, so rootless, Godless, and soulless, so spiritually sick, as to turn against that very civilization that has nurtured them, to betray their own country? Yes, unfortunately, I do. Even with all our magnificent technological advances, we are living in the age of the Decline of the West, as Oswald Spengler predicted. We are breeding our own enemies. The barbarians are not only outside the gates but are within as well, ensconced within our institutions of enculturation.
Senator McCarthy warned of Communist infiltration in our institutions, of the perils of subversion from within. He was ridiculed. Now, we see how right he was.
We are at War for the very survival of America and the West. We must fight to win, and to do so we must not only kill our external enemies, we must expose those within who are working for our destruction.
That is the first defense of McCarthy I've seen since, well, I defended him some years ago on the old CNN Community boards - and man, oh man, did I catch heat for that!
Well have to start up the McCarthy-Fortuyn Society...dedicated to defending the West against its internal enemies of freedom.
But that begs the question - how much money would the MSM, and the entertainment industry, make if they highlighted the great things America is doing?
Stuff being blown up sells - that is for sure; so highlight the terrorists being blown all to hell (which they are, on a daily basis - and in much, much higher numbers than American military personnel); make movies about our heroic troops and their exploits...they'd be blockbusters, plus providing in the intense drama of war the ability of our best actors to display their talents.
If the only bias was money, then they'd make far more money being patriotic than being unpatriotic...in fact, some of the MSM/entertainment industry seem determined to lose money if it means they can continue to put out an anti-American message.
No, it isn't money - it is a built-in anti-American bias which we see in the unpatriotic reporting.
Let's see- non-invasion under false pretenses, not killing those that did not attack us, expecting people to fight their own battles, and supporting a people- the Kurds, so conveniently forgotten- who actually are willing to be democratic and independent. If that's morally repugnant, under those Goddist strictures the term implies,I say Hallelujah for secular humanism and its ethos!
Mark- your idea of patriotism as simply being pro-Am is shallow. First off, the whole idea of patriotism, that of allegiance to a nation-state above all other things- like the humanism and morals Dean so vociferously declaims- is ethically ambiguous at best, for many an ill regime has expected such patriotism of its body politic, as well.
I submit the Nazi-defiers in Germany were more Deutscher patriotic than the Hitler youth, as was Al. Solzshenitsyn more patriotic than Vladimir Mayakovsky. I disagree w much of what the Left does, and criticize the eco-tree spikers as I do the abortion clinic bombers, but to support a war whose grounds have slipped away is not patriotism, it's childish defiance, despite Dean's inability to see it, and history does not shine brightly on past follies as this.
But, back to the crux of the media. The posit inherent in your ideal of the positive things rests upon material gains for a few vs. dead innocents and the guilty. In a life &death equation death wins. As for the terrorists- here's the truth:
Their lives do not matter to Joe Average, but Joe Average, Jr's life does.
Ask yourself this, Mark- &be honest. If some all powerful being- angel, alien, demon- whatever floats yr boat- came to you, proved their merit, and said, 'Mark, I'll revive every person killed in the Tsunami, if you will only lay down the lives of the five closest people to you. Would you do it?
I wouldn't. Would I trade my wife for 200k dead strangers? Hell no.
So, the death of strangers, pro or con, matters not as far as money. This is realpolitik. Dean engages in it when he speaks of war's accidents and casualties. It's easy to do so when it's not your relative that's dying for a lie. And, the longer the unnecesary deaths pile up the more folks, like the old shampoo commercial about telling two friends, will turn.
People will ask, let's see; We have a democracy in Iraq, or is it? Will it be worth it only if that democracy is as good as ours or Japan's or Europe's? Will we settle for banana democracy, as in our vassal states in this hemisphere? How about Egyptian democracy, where elections have been held for a century, but if they followed the true will of the people, the majority, it would overnight become a theocracy? Which definition of democracy will equate with success, or worthiness for a war that was not essential to our goals of eliminating Al Quaida will it be? And at what price? Is another Egypt worth 5k Americans? Or do we raise the stakes to 10k for Euro-socialism, or banana republicanism? Will 50-60k, and Vietnam level deaths be worth it for an Arab US (excluding inconvenient anti-democratic things like set aside ballots if your skin color is too dark?)?
I agree that the media is biased, but it has been lapping at the government's feet for the last few years.
What you're suggesting the MSM do is go Rambo in the Mid-East, but it shd be noted Rambo only worked as after the fact revisionism. It's hard to sell that when real pain is being felt.
The fact is that bootlicking is profitable, and the media knows it. The MSM is like the plantation system- no one cares if the slaves all think one way, it's what the massahs say that matters, and do you really think that Murdoch, Viacom, GE, and Michael Eisner are a bunch of unpatriotic, bleeding heart liberals?
If so, then them's is Bush folk, because he's got them in the palm of his hand.
As for the common alarums about the Loony Left owning the colleges- no kidding. But, if I'm a Con I love the fact because obviously they are alienating the vast majority of grads, who do like many of the old hippies did, ala Jerry Rubin, and became yuppies.
Are there unpatriotic folk on the Left &Right?- sure. But it's actions that are unpatriotic, not mere beliefs alone. When SDS &the Weather Underground railed against Vietnam and racism they were being patriotic, when they bombed and killed innocents they were not, and it's a travesty that some of those SOBs are now tenured college profs.
But, by the same coin, when the Right claims to support liberty and equality they are being patriotic, but when they bomb abortion clinics, dismantle Civil Rights legislation, support dictatorships friendly to US interests, and accuse any dissenters to their hegemony as blanket unpatriots it is they who are unpatriotic.
Get rid of such noxious thought, and just deal with facts, and alot of this is better off.
But, therein lies a new problem. Even 15 years ago most folk had common sources of 'facts'. Now, every splinter group has their own facts, gleaned from their own sources- college profs, dj's. bloggers, newsreaders, news bimbos, and the like, so facts have become subjective.
I know Dean claims the search for truth is his highest pursuit, but his 'truth' becomes his enemy's lie, and he and the other demonize each other, then the 3rd guy, 4th gal, and 5th person of indeterminate gender, all with ample claims to the truth, just like the 7 blind men and the elephant. The elephant remains, but their claims of it being fan-like, tree-like, etc. are all equally teur, insofar as they go- and therein the real problem, and failure of the media. Instead of dicumentaries we have noxious Datelines. Instead of real reports on social ills we have movie infomercials on Jesus &Mel Gibson, or The Da Vinci Code. Instead of the next Walter Cronkite we get the next Connie Chung, or her sickening hubby- Maury Povich. The MSM is merely another Entertainment Tonight, or one of its knockoffs. If you are railing about its perniciousness you are only playing rt into the hands of their masters who use it as a smokescreen or a beard. Thank God Brian Williams finally replaced Tom Brokaw! He's the only anchor I can stand. Brokaw, the flag-draped, and Jennings the Born Again- yes, real Liberalsm there. And with Homer Simpsons like Dan Rather as enemies, please- gimme enemies like him, and I'll cruise in life!
Thusm the jabbering masses. Barnum goes down as perhaps the most prescient social observer of his or any other day! And this is the MSM's market- there is no 'safe way' for them to appeal to a rich niche, and be 'sexy', save for the default 'back the gov't' position.
Ask yourself this- do you really think that LBJ and Nixon would have not wet themselves with glee had they been able to embed the media? To have embedded Cronkite? My god, what a coup!
I think the MSM is a sham and a shame, but for reasons wholly opposite than you do. But either way, somewhere, you just know Old Man Hearst is smiling and saying, 'That W.-he's everything I wished to be! And those who support him, please give me their addresses!' Yellow journalism wins in the end. And we know what that color stands for. DAN
Excellent! Yes, we must begin the McCarthy-Fortuyn Society. I really must get back to blogging again.
"Ask yourself this, Mark- &be honest. If some all powerful being- angel, alien, demon- whatever floats yr boat- came to you, proved their merit, and said, 'Mark, I'll revive every person killed in the Tsunami, if you will only lay down the lives of the five closest people to you. Would you do it?
I wouldn't. Would I trade my wife for 200k dead strangers? Hell no."
Hell no, indeed. NO! NO!! NO!!! NEVER!!!! And I would kill the monster who asked me to. I am selfish and proud of it. That is what it means to be selfish: to be loyal to your spouse, to your God, to your country, to your values, and never to surrender them.
non-invasion under false pretenses, not killing those that did not attack us, expecting people to fight their own battles, and supporting a people- the Kurds, so conveniently forgotten- who actually are willing to be democratic and independent. If that's morally repugnant, under those Goddist strictures the term implies,I say Hallelujah for secular humanism and its ethos!
Let's see:
1) "non-invasion under false pretenses"
What kind of phrasing is that? You call yourself a poet? Feh!
If I attempt to translate this into English, I take it to mean you are asserting that we invaded under false pretenses. This makes you either a liar or willfully ignorant. One of the two. We were given over a dozen reasons for our action, every single one of which was valid--including, by the way, the claim of weapons of mass destruction, since we had every reason to believe they were there and by his own treaty obligations it was Saddam's responsibility to prove he didn't have them and by universal agreement he was failing to live up to that side of his bargain.
So already you're off on the wrong foot. But let's continue with our deconstruction of your barely coherent ramblings, shall we?
2) "expecting people to fight their own battles" -
If I understand this correctly you believe that we should let the Iraqis overthrow their own despots and not help them do it. You realize that this is a very reactionary, old-school Taft Republican, isolationist right-wing view, don't you? Because it certainly is.
But sorry, Dan, you lose. No matter how much your old-school reactionary, cruel, selfish, closed-minded heart would like it, instead of just turning around and abandoning those people to the tender mercies of whichever bloody-handed strongman or theocrat would seize power, we're instead helping them open hospitals, send their children to school, get their electricity and water and telephone and internet services working, and helping them start elections. And you're opposed to that because why again? Oh right. Because allowing a strongman dictator thug to take over by brute force is your idea of humanism. God, you make me laugh, you're so cute!
By the way, why is it that I utterly believe that if we had actually done what you propose--simply turned around and left once we'd toppled Saddam--you would be among the chorus of voices saying that our action was immoral and that we shouldn't have just abandoned those people and should have helped them reconstruct their country and be welcomed again into the community of nations?
Face it Dan, you're not a progressive. You're a kneejerk, paint-by-numbers reactionary.
3) "the Kurds, so conveniently forgotten- who actually are willing to be democratic and independent."
Kurds forgotten? What the fuck are you talking about? Forgotten by whom? Not by me. Not by the administration. Not by any serious observer of the situation over there that I'm aware of at all.
But leaving that aside: I love your racist view that it's only the Kurds who are willing to be democratic. Really now, Danny, why are you even pretending to be a progressive? You're a fool who can't write decent prose and who thinks just blathering about a situation he clearly has only the most shallow understanding of makes him a progressive. One who thinks that shallow, ill-informed criticism is a substitute for careful thought. Do you realize just how pathetic you look?
I'll put you in touch with lots and lots of non-Kurdish Iraqis who want democracy, "cosmo." Shia, Sunni, Christian even. We know for a fact--a fact--that the vast majority of Iraqis want democracy and are planning on participating in the elections. So why are you making up stupid racist bullshit about how only Kurds really want their fundamental human rights?
What you propose to do to the Iraqi people is murderous and evil.
4) "If that's morally repugnant, under those Goddist strictures the term implies,I say Hallelujah for secular humanism and its ethos!"
"Goddist?" Fah-hahahahaha! Cute word, did you make that up in one of your poetry workshops where you intimidate and bully anyone who isn't up to your standards? Don't answer that, the question is rheteorical.
In any case, I'm an atheist, you prejudiced fool. And no secular humanist worthy of the name would EVER accept the bitter, reactionary, shallow, ill-informed view you espouse about Iraq and the Iraqi people.
Go back to writing mediocre poetry and slamming poor housewives who just want to express themselves with a little simple verse, will you? At least poetry you know a little something about.
As for fighting their own battles. Yes, societies have to want to overthrow tyranny and stand up to it, ala Ukraine. If democracy failed there, and still cd, it wd be far more unsettling than in Iraq, since they are farther along the continuum. It's the idea of the Big Stick that has plagued this nation from 1898 on, although others may argue that that was merely an extension of Manifest Destiny.
Unlike you, Dean, I believe that if the will of the Iraqi people is to be democratic, they will stand up. I don't believe that Arabs are incapable of such w/o American aid.
Say we left Iraq, overnight- and I don't suggest that. I say we head back up to Kurdistan- a people, in all yr posts, whom you seem to have utterly forgotten- mainly that they want to be free from the Iraqis. Regardless, we withdraw to Kurdistan, let the Shias &Sunnis battle it out. And then see what happens. Are you saying that these fighters are incapable of saying, 'Sorry, I son't wanna fight your war, Mr. fill in the blank mullah.' They all, every last one of them, is capable of making that choice. If they choose to throw their lives away, so be it. We don't have to throw our kids' lives away if these people don't care enough to stand up for themselves. That's paternalism, Dean. That's the white man's burden. I thought you'd be against that!
You are, in fact, the reactionary.
'Really now, Danny'- Dean, if you're going to try and be snide at least show some wit, for Pete's sake. Otherwise you just come off like Al Bundy &George Will, sans the former's humor, and the latter's knowledge. What I propose for the American policy is let the raving dogs on either side of the Moslem Axis to do what they will. If they decide to throw their ethical agency away, so be it. But, they make the choice. I support their freedom to do so without an American paternalist patting them on the head.
Because a Ted Bundy did not murder the last few years of his life, because he couldn't, did not make him a suddenly ethical agent. It's about free will, and I suggest giving it to the Iraqis. Hey, we did the hard part, something they couldn't do for decades- we got rid of Saddam and his Baathist monsters, who were once neatly tucked into our pockets, like many of the former Soviet nation tyrants currently are.
Now is the time for all good Iraqis to come to the aid of their party, or nation, or cause- democracy if they want it. But, if they toss it away, so be it.
Goddist- look it up. I did not neologize. You can be a Goddist or Girl Scout, Dean, but when you dip into morals you are writing with non-secular ink- thus the difference between morals and ethics.
In fact, most secular humanists are anti-war, but since you like neologizing definitions like a limbo dancer, let's call them Girl Scouts.
As for poetry, I doubt you want to go there, since you're already foaming about the ethical contortions you use to justify your Iraq policy.
As for the media- wasn't that what this was about? I stand by my claim that I loathe it, too, but cite its flaws as being toadying and hypocritical. On that we agree. In that vein- 2 recent articles of note.
This 1st is from a fellow whose view of Bush, his fellow classmate, whose opinion of the Prez mirrors mine- that he's a nice guy who's made bad choices, but doesn't deserve demonization, only head-shaking:
Link was too long- Lanny Davis's in the LA Times.
Dionne's piece is especially interesting since the Rt views him as a Leftist and the Left views him as a crypto-Fascist:
EJ Dionne's in WaPo
Arabs are not necessarily and/or innately savage. They must be free to choose their own path, but you, and others, have to realize that might not be US democracy. As I said, Egypt is a 'democracy', but only for an elite. If it were to truly be it wd no longer be- thus the enigma, and shading that people in dark glasses, Dean, cannot see.
That said, I think that these sorts of rants you go on do an important service in delineating blogs from other sources of media, in that they are primarily, at least pop blogs as yours, about entertainment. On that you rate highly, but as your recent crash and burn effort on HIV proved, take yourself a little less seriously and with a dose more humor, lest you fall to hypertension before 50. DAN
Willful ignorance is a sad thing, but I accept that it's a disease only the sufferer can cure himself of.
As for the Kurds: I'll kindly thank you not to claim I've forgotten about anything, since I've written repeatedly on this blog about the Kurds in the last three years, and will again.
Your proposal for what to do in Iraq--to pull everything into Kurdistan and leave the Iraqis to the tender mercies of those who would deny them their fundamental human rights--is racist to the core, anti-humanist, selfish, cruel, and malignant. In no sense is it defensible in any ethical way. In pragmatic terms, perhaps, but barely even that.
I know a great deal more about the Kurds and the Kurdish situation than you obviously do. If you have any questions feel free to ask. But I'm not going to argue with an idiot who makes up his facts and thinks that his prejudices are substitutes for thought.
By the way, if you think morals are the property of theists and that secularists can only speak of ethics, you're a bigger idiot than I thought you were. Ditto if you think anything we're doing in Iraq is "white man's burden" thinking. It is not, and thinking otherwise is still more proof of your inherent bigotry and thickheaded ignorance. It's also still further proof of your fundamental racism.
You are a funny little man, Dan. I hear you're tall but that doesn't mean you're anything but tiny--small minded, bigoted, ignorant, anti-humanist, anti-progressive, and worst of all, willfully ignorant. If you ever decide to grow up and actually learn how to think, let me know, I'll be happy to help you unlearn your prejudices.
But as I say, the trapped mind can only free itself.
Excellent.
I've never heard of a theologian using the word "Goddist", it sounds like an illiterate's coinage. The term we use for one who believes in a God who hears prayers is "Theist", "Deist" for one (such as some of our Founding Fathers) who believes in a God who created the Universe and then went on vacation, "Pantheist" for one (such as a Hindu) who believes in a God who is the Universe, "Monotheist" for one (e.g., a Jew or Muslim) believes in only one God, "Polytheist" for one (such as myself) who believes in more than one God, "Trinitarian" for one who believes in the Christian God (Father, Son [Christ], Holy Spirit), "Atheist" for one who believes in no God, "Agnostic" for one who has no idea.
Among Atheists or Humanists, there are those such as Ayn Rand who believe that Man is God vs. the Communists who believe that the State is God and the Nazis who believe that Race is God.
You're right- the White Man's Burden is inapt since the 19th C. Brits were more than willing to do their own nasties, what you're advocating may more properly be termed The Couch Potato's Burden, a variant on The Chickenhawk's Burden. Hit the remote Dean.
It is curious how you always seem to need to declaim your self-morality. Is it that you need to hear it, or is it not self-evident.
I believe it may have been Christopher Hitchens who said 'All saints are presumed guilt until proven otherwise'. The same may be applied to echolalic moralists.
Here's a qu from the EJ Dionne piece that's cogent:
' And then there is the profoundly uncomfortable question: Do we want Sept. 11 to dominate how we define ourselves indefinitely? The president seems to think so. It's not polite to say at a moment of pomp and ceremony, but defining our politics in terms of that horrific event served the president's interest and was a central reason why he was standing before us yesterday.
Many who supported the president in his bold response to the terrorists in Afghanistan cannot escape the suspicion that Sept. 11 will be used again and again as a political rallying cry to justify genuinely radical foreign policy departures that serve neither our nation nor the cause of freedom.
I pray that I am wrong, that the coming elections in Iraq will begin to "break the reign of hatred and resentment" and that the idealism of the president's words will translate into realistic policies. But I do not want our nation to be defined for decades by what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. I want a nation that loves liberty so much that it can move beyond tragedy and embrace not only the call to battle but also the promise of peace. '
&two from the Lanny Davis piece on Bush:
'One of my most vivid memories is this: A few of us were in the common room one night. It was 1965, I believe — my junior year, his sophomore. We were making our usual sarcastic commentaries on those who walked by us. A little nasty perhaps, but always with a touch of humor. On this occasion, however, someone we all believed to be gay walked by, although the word we used in those days was "queer." Someone, I'm sorry to say, snidely used that word as he walked by.
George heard it and, most uncharacteristically, snapped: "Shut up." Then he said, in words I can remember almost verbatim: "Why don't you try walking in his shoes for a while and see how it feels before you make a comment like that?"
Remember, this was the 1960s — pre-Stonewall, before gay rights became a cause many of us (especially male college students) had thought much about. I remember thinking, "This guy is much deeper than I realized."
In light of that memory, I wondered last year why Bush chose to exploit the gay marriage issue in his campaign. I'm still not sure, but I think that's what politics sometimes does to a person. Now he appears to be backing off, and I am not surprised. I hope it suggests a return to the "compassionate conservatism" I remember and that he practiced in his two terms as governor of Texas.
But there's one potential obstacle. The trait that I remember that worries me most of all today is his stubbornness.
I remember a late night of playing pool in the grubby pool room at the Delta Kappa Epsilon house where we spent our evenings when George insisted on trying to complete a double-bank shot in the side pocket. He attempted it over and over, and he wouldn't give up until we forced him to leave.
I admired that competitive stubbornness at the time and still do today. But I must admit it also worries, even scares, me today as I watch him in the White House on the issue of Iraq.'
'There were no WMD; we know that now. And far from helping us in the war against terror, the U.S. presence in Iraq has created opportunities for new terrorists. A stubborn decision to "stay the course" will only mean that more lives will be senselessly lost and his presidency will go the way of Lyndon Johnson's.
In truth, if he ever makes that very difficult decision to get us out as quickly and humanely as possible, it would be consistent with the George Bush I remember, still like and admire — a man who is humble, not afraid to admit a mistake, and optimistic about the future.'
I'd say Davis's comments about Bush apply to you, too. Which Dean will win- the Couch Potato rhetorician or the principled man who can admit error?
Resume the tap dancing at your leisure. DAN
You also do a poor job of redirection and obfuscation: I've never proclaimed my own morality, merely rendered judgement on the moral depravity of the position you take. It does not take a saint to note the moral depravity of others. And "moral depravity" is the only proper label any thinking person, theist or atheist, could apply to your vile, racist, and murderous suggestions for what to do in Iraq.
E.J. Dionne asks interesting questions well worth pondering, but then, Dionne is an excellent writer and a crisp thinker. You, unfortunately, are quite evidently neither. So far I see no evidence of it anyway, especially when you trot out tired old cliches and act as if they have any weight, meaning, or significance. Really now, first I'm Nixon, and now we're on about how September 11th shouldn't define us forever and this somehow justifies your view that the people of Iraq should be abandoned, and anyway I'm a chickenhawk? Feh. What are you, 12 years old?
In any case, it's entirely separate from the question of what should be done in Iraq now. It has always been clear what the best thing to do is: attempt to help them rebuild, and attempt to help them choose their own form of self-government. This effort may well fail, and as much has been admitted by many observers, including quiet off-the-record admissions by some administration officials. What of it?
The most morally depraved possible answer is to simply leave now. The Iraqis are owed certain minimums in payment for what was done to them, not just by Saddam but by our 12 year long economic and military sanctions against their country that did so much to increase their suffering.
The best that can be done is to attempt to help them build their own democratic, human rights respecting nation. The plan for how to do that has been in place all along. They will have an election on January 30. Then those who are elected will, on their own, spend a year debating, and create a new Constitution, and hold elections again under the new Constitution they hammer out for themselves.
What if this fails? What if it's a complete disaster? Well then, it will be time to think about other choices.
It's just amusing to watch people who demand that we leave now at the behest of radical extremists who cut people's heads off and bomb hospitals. Amusing only becuase the alternative to laughing is to vomit.
But shallow arguments are nothing new from the so-called "progressives" who argue for isolationism and for abandoning people who are struggling for independence and basic human rights.
"As to the matter of Bush: Some claim the action in Iraq has worsened the threat of terrorism. I continue to believe they are in error. Time will tell on that matter."
There's one thing I know will worsen the threat of terrorism: Appeasement.