Koranic Abuse In Other Places?
Dean
Aziz notes that there have been several previous reports of Koranic abuse by U.S. forces, and further, that the notion that the story caused riots is questionable.
If all that is so, and we combine it with the fact that at least some of the riots in question appear to have been planned events, then perhaps some of us overreacted.
* Update * Jack Grant blows a gasket and "takes the gloves off".
Hey Jack? You've never offered anything that I've seen but shallow and uninformed commentary on the war effort anyway. So by all means, don't let me stop you from giving up blogging.
In the meantime, did it occur to you to think maybe my remarks would not have been so "intemperate" in this Newsweek case if I hadn't spent the last three years documenting the string of deplorably unpatriotic and defeatist behavior by the press corps in its war reporting? If it hadn't been for the long string of abuses by the press, I would have found this incident barely worth mentioning.
John Van Laer said it perfectly for me in a recent comment:
Dean: "Show America in a bad light wherever possible, and don't even hesitate or worry about the effect of that." Right on. But that doesn't make the MSM Quislings. Quisling was a collaborator who sided with the Nazi conqueror and betrayed and killed resistants. We are in no such plight vis-a-vis our media. They are not Quislings, they are Fifth Columnists. They have commmitted themselves to the project of spreading alarm, despondency, and defeatism in wartime. No analogy can be pushed too far, but our media are like the left-wing press in France in the 1940s. Americans like to make jokes about "French army rifle, mint condition, never fired and only dropped once." That's because most of us don't remember or never learned that in 1940 Hitler Germany and the USSR were allies. Consider French working class draftees in 1940. They get their news from l'Humanité, the CP newspaper. Bombarded every day with propaganda urging them to desert, to refuse to fight and die for British imperialism, is it any wonder that those soldiers surrendered en masse?
Here and now the media do not target the soldiery, who regard them with the scorn and contempt they deserve. We, the citizenry, are the target and the aim is to overwhelm us with fear, loathing, and disgust so that we turn against the war. Worked like a charm, once Vietnam became Nixon's war. Should work even better with the Bush-Cheney-Neocon-Falwell war. Unlike L'Humanité, they don't want to saddle us with a commie dictatorship, just with a government dominated by Democrats. Benign, even justifiable motivation. But ostensibly good intentions are no excuse for attacking the nation and seeking defeat in wartime.
Am I accusing them of being unpatriotic? Believe it, and show me where I'm wrong.
Damn right.
Oh, and as for "Type M" arguments: I'm not arguing. I'm passing judgement. I've been angry with our unpatriotic, defeatist war press corps for three years. When I heard evidence that they may have created a setback for us that could endanger our people in the field, of course I became angry--as any decent American would have.
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Ever since 9/11, whenever conservative, libertarian, or liberal commentators have asserted that actions and policies by our elected officials in Washington helped motivate terrorist attacks against our nation, they have frequently been characterized as those who "blame America first" for terrorist attacks, and are accused of believing that we deserved to be attacked. They are accused of hating our nation. (Lew Rockwell addressed this claim here, and I gave my perspective about this issue here.)
So as per a broader understanding of the aforementioned axiom, those who believe that actions of American leaders can provide a motivation for violence and terrorism, and that some of those actions may be wrong, are in essence blaming America as a whole, and these "haters" may even be saying that the victims of said acts deserve to be victimized.
But if that is the case - if it is not reasonably acceptable to assert that actions or words of Americans can motivate violent acts by foreign Islamic militants, and that said provocations were wrong - then how can it be considered acceptable to assert that actions or words by American public figures - actions which are wrong - motivated acts of violence and terrorism?
A possible response to my question could be that one action was done by a public elected official, and another action was done by a private organization. But the fact is, some actions by those in Washington (such as Clinton's 1998 bombings of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan - which even David Horowitz said were not only wrong, but also fueled anger and hatred in the Muslim world) are done unilaterally, and under questionable circumstances, without the consent or approval (or sometimes, even the foreknowledge) of the American public. And many of those who hold to the aforementioned belief also believe that those who claim that non-governmental characteristics of our nation, or actions by Americans not within Washington, motivated the terrorist attacks are also "blaming America."
But aside from that, there is the overall logic of the aforementioned axiom - Some of those who belive in it have claimed that to suggest the concept of "provoking terrorism" is equivalent to suggesting the concept of "provoking rape." If this is true, then how can people now assert that the Newsweek magazine article provoked or motivated the terrorism in Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of innocent people?
Please let me know what you think.
I find the question probably says more about the person asking it than any answer I could give. But to me the answer is self-evident: any nation will make some people angry with its foreign policy, especially if it uses military might--no matter how just the cause, no matter what your intentions, someone will hate you for doing it.
The key question to ask anyone who claims American foreign policy causes terrorism, therefore, is to ask "which specific policies are those--and in what specific way would you change them?"
I invariably find that those making the accusation can't give a coherent response with any real specificity, just a lot of vague generalizations. Moreover, my experience to date (and I've been at it for years) is that those making the accusation that America's foreign policy is evil pretty much see almost everything we've done in the last 20, 30, even 50 years as evil. There have been exceptions, but they're rare.
Normally all I get to such inquiries is a litany of complaints about how evil American actions are or have been. Usually every action is portrayed with America in the worst light possible. Go through enough arguments like that and you start losing patience--and I've gone through it many times. Still, even the ones who don't consistently paint America as evil usually still cannot give coherent and specific response as to what they think we should do differently.
The "be specific" part usually causes people to dissolve. So, I go back to where we are now: in a war where the goal is A) to kill those enemies of America who are part of a murderous hate-ideology and will do anything they can to kill us, and B) convince the rest of the islamic world that modernity is better than either these scary creeps or the horrible thug regimes that rule them now.
I do not blame the press for causing terrorism. I blame the American press when they act as a propaganda arm for the enemy and as apologists for terrorists, since it lengthens the war, helps terrorist recruitment goals, and makes victory harder for us to achieve. I expect the American press to act like Americans first, and whatever else they are second--and routinely, they refuse to see themselves as Americans first, and actually act offended when you ask them to.
If you cannot see your own knee-jerking in your "passing judgement", and if you cannot see that you are indeed assigning motivations to others in a way you wrote once that you did not like, and if you are not willing to look at what you have written and realize that, it is truly unfortunate.
I think Aakash has a slightly valid point: There is not a 100% correlation between "America did wrong" and "Blame America First"; in other words, you can say America did wrong (ie, brought some of it's problems upon itself) without being a blame-America person. However, the blame-America mindset is pernicious, and the American MSM is shot through with it.
In a way, everything which happened prior to 9/11 played it's role in creating 9/11, including US government policy. Of course, the blame-America people put the overt fault entirely on the US; they never say that inaction by the US government was complicit in 9/11 happening...we'll never see a blame-America person saying, "if only we'd bombed the crap out of Iran in 1979, none of this would ever have happened". All we ever get from blame-America is along the lines of "if only we'd been more understanding", this wouldn't have happened.
The main thing for our times is to acknowledge we are at war; the prime problem with the anti-war types is that while they are out there protesting the war, they will never in their heart of hearts admit there is war. For them, it is all just a scam to enrich Haliburton or whatever is the current conspiracy theory. If, however, one acknowledges the fact of war, then certain things become required - the first and foremost is to never act in a way which hampers eventual US victory in the war. The problem with Newsweek's story (and the reason they really do have blood on their hands) was that it was printed with no thought to it's likely effects upon the US war effort. Of course, Newsweek is not alone in this guilt; pretty much the entire MSM (including Fox News) is guilty of at least partially playing the enemy's game in the War on Terrorism.
The excuse given for the MSM reporting, aside from rank incompetance, is that "if it bleeds, it leads"; so whenever there is a terrorist outrage, out it goes on the top of the newscast and above the fold on the front page. This, though, is nonsense; "if it bleeds, it leads" is a news truism, but the enemy is bleeding, too, and there is plenty of enemy blood to lead the news with...but we don't see it. Last week our Marines battles all across Anbar province and killed at least 125 terrorists...I can recall seeing just a few snippets of combat video....meanwhile, I saw the terrorists bombings of last week played again and again on the newscasts. The MSM is not only covering only part of the war, they are additionally only covering the enemy's part of the war...because, once again, the MSM doesn't acknowledge there is a war. Newscasts of glory-drenched US Marines whacking the enemy from pillar to post indicate a war is on...newscasts of terrorists bombings indicate a failure of President Bush.
What Newsweek did, unintentionally, is highlight this state of affairs. It should be kept in mind that the Newsweek story is of a piece with the past stories of massacred civilians during the Korean War and the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam...stories straight out of enemy propaganda mills, reported by American MSM outlets as straight news. No one back in 1943 would have thought of reporting a Goebbles broadcast as anything other than lying enemy propaganda...because a war was on and who gave a shit what the enemy was saying? Newsweek peddled a story which has been circulated in Islamo-fascist circles since (at the least) shortly after we entered Afghanistan. It is an old, old Islamist story that the Christians have come to destroy Islam...100 years ago, they ascribed these motivations to the British, now they charge us with it...simply because we are now (as the Brits were then) the paramount non-Moslem power standing athwart the Islamist desire for a revived and expansionist Islamic Caliphate (back in 1897, Islamists stirred up trouble in British India because British doctors were insisting upon examining Moslem women to see if they had bubonic plague...the Islamist line was that the Brits were lying about the plague and using this as an excuse for dishonoring Moslem women as a precursor to turning them into Christians). The story of the desecrated Koran has been told 1,000 times since 9/11...but only on the 9th of May did a heretofore reputable US news outlet pick it up; and this was immediately used by Islamists to stir up trouble (some of which was apparantly long-planned and just awaiting some sort of excuse). Were the MSM living in the real world in which we are at war then this story never would have run...a patriotic Newsweek editor would have snorted "crap" when told the story and advised the reporter to find something about Marines killing terrorists to report about.
The final and disgusting irony of this is that because we have so many people who mentally have not accepted we are at war, the war will be much longer and bloodier than it otherwise had to be. If everyone would just get on the same page here the war would be wrapped up in weeks or months, not years or decades as is likely.
I've explained many times what a patriotic press mentality would look like to me, and countless people agree. Today, there is quite possibly no group in America more despised and mistrusted by everyday Americans than mainstream journalists. This did not used to be the case. It has been a long time developing, and the reasons for it are fairly easy to spot. It starts with the notion that publishing positive news on the war effort amounts to "touting the Bush administration line," a mind-bogglingly stupid sentiment that I've seen uttered so many times it's ridiculous.
My judgement is merely based on the data I've seen.
Not really. It has been said, by people who believe in the accusatory axiom that I described in my comment, that: "provoking terrorism is like provoking rape" - in other words, there is no such thing as provoking militant Islamic terrorism or acts of violence, and those who suggest otherwise are saying that the victims "deserved" it, or are "making excuses" for those actions.
We've been told that emphasizing what made Islamic militants commit acts of violence or terrorism is not the issue, and that doing that can cause us to lose focus:
It Doesn’t Matter "What Made These People So Angry." What Matters is to Eliminate Them.
Whenever I read the words "She was killed because," I mysteriously and suddenly lose interest. Generally speaking, I don't give a sh*t why an innocent civilian — and a woman — was killed. I just don't give a d*mn.
If there is no such thing as "provoking" Islamic terrorism or violence, and if saying so is considered "making excuses" for the evildoers, or perhaps even providing legitimization for their actions, then why does this viewpoint not apply in this case?
BK
If a white woman in, say, 1935 made an accusation of rape against a black man that turned out to be untrue, would it be unreasonable to consider her somewhat morally responsible for the lynching that resulted, though she never touched a rope and might not have wanted that lynching to take place? Would it be relevant in the slightest if it were shown that there were other accusations of black men raping white women in circulation, not all of which had been proven to be false?
Rioting is wrong--killing innocent people is wrong--publishing unverified reports that are likely to inflame stupid and/or evil people into rioting and killing is wrong. These concepts are not inconsistent with one another.
I would simply ask you: what item of American foreign policy could possibly change to make them stop murdering people? If they hate Americans, they hate Arabs who wish such simple things as free speech, the right to vote, and rights for their women even more.
Provoking or inciting riots, or handing these people propaganda victories they can use in recruitment is another kettle of fish.
It is possible that changing US foreign policy can have beneficial long-term effects in reducing terrorism. I'd simply have to ask you to specify what you think those would be. But if you're starting from the position that U.S. foreign policy is the PRIMARY cause of all this in the first place, I'd have to say such an analysis is fatuous and shallow at best--if not just plain hateful and insane.