[NYTr] The Surge Pushers: The War and The New York Times
ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
[An excellent analysis of self-serving hypocrisy at The Paper of Record,
reminding readers that the Times's journalistic sins in their coverage of
the Bush War on Iraq did not begin, or end, with Chemical Judy Miller. Or
with their coverage of Iraq during the regime of George W. Bush. It goes
'way back. The US, after all, has been assaulting Iraq since Daddy Bush's
presidency. The New York Times loves to cover "designated dictators" as the
administration wishes -- especially when they can be painted as a danger to
Israel. But they've never met a designated dictator they didn't love to bash
-- as long as the US Government approves of the bashing. When the worm in
Washington turns, the Times is more than happy to comply. Here Cockburn
concentrates on the so-called "hard news" Washington/Iraq war stories,
especially by Michael Gordon. These are the most deceptive and manipulative,
but they are buttressed on the editorial pages by columnists David Brooks
and Tom "World Is Flat" Friedman, both Arab-hating war-boosters, and both of
whom are doing a lot of semi-embarrassed fancy footwork these days -- more
by Brooks than Friedman. See Brook's latest, "Making the Surge Work," in
today's paper: http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/opinion/07brooks.html
-NY Transfer.
Counterpunch - Jan 7, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01062007.html
The Surge Pushers:
The War and The New York Times
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The war in Iraq, one of the most disastrous military enterprises in the
history of the Republic, has the New York Times' fingerprints all over it.
The role the newspaper played in fomenting the 2003 attack is now one of
the best known sagas in journalistic history, as embodied in the reports of
Judy Miller, working in collusion with Iraqi exiles and US spooks to
concoct Saddam's imaginary arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons.
But so fixated have many Times critics been on the WMD/ Miller saga, that
they have failed to notice that across the past sixth months the Times has
been waging an equally disingenuous campaign to escalate American troop
levels in this doomed enterprises.
The prime journalistic promoter of the escalation - it is time to retire
the adroitly chosen word "surge" -- now being proposed by the White House
is Michael Gordon, the Times' military correspondent, a man of fabled
arrogance and self esteem.
Gordon's has been the mouthpiece for the faction -led by Gen. David H.
Petraeus -- inside the U.S. military in Iraq that has been promoting the
escalation. As Gordon himself triumphantly announced in the New York Times
this weekend, Gen. Petraeus has been picked by Bush to lead the open-ended
escalation of the war that Petraeus has long campaigned for.
Throughout his time in Iraq Gen. Petraeus himself has been very adroit at
fostering good relations with carefully selected reporters, like Gordon.
That strategy has been vindicated by the steady stream of stories in the
Times--not just by Gordon--reflecting his views.
On the face of it, the idea that the addition of some 25,000 to 30,000
troops will do anything more than add to the cumulative disaster is exactly
the sort of crackpot realism "Crackpot realism" defined by the great Texan
sociologist, C. Wright Mills in 1958, when he published The Causes of World
War Three, also the year that Dwight Eisenhower sent the Marines into
Lebanon to bolster its local factotum, Lebanese President Camille Chamoun.
"In crackpot realism," Mills wrote, " a high-flying moral rhetoric is
joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused
fears and demands. .. The expectation of war solves many problems of the
crackpot realists; ... instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without
end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplification of known
catastrophe....They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle
East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. ...
they prefer the bright, clear problems of war-as they used to be. For they
still believe that 'winning' means something, although they never tell us
what..."
Just as it seemed beyond the realm of possibility a month ago that the US
could contrive a situation in which Saddam Hussein would be resurrected as
a martyr, so now it still seems incredible that two months after an
election on November 7 in which the voters punished Bush for the Iraq
disaster by giving Congress back to the Democrats , Bush should be pressing
for an escalation, backed by almost daily doses of crackpot realism in the
New York Times.
A realistic appraisal of the situation in Iraq instructs us that the Shi'a
control most of the country, with the exception of the Kurdish areas and
the Sunni enclaves. Insofar as Iraq has a government, it is a Shi'a
government. The country is already effectively divided. The option of a
non-sectarian national army has long gone. So the idea of lengthening US
tours of duty, to up the US military presence in Baghdad is the essence of
crackpot realism. Of the 30,000 maybe a sixth will actually be combat
troops. This little force is supposed to make a long-term difference in a
savagely divided, vast city--an urban theater ideal for a guerilla
insurgency.
On New Year's Day the Times ran a piece by John Burns and Mark Santora
clearly dictated by US officials in Baghdad trying to recoup from the PR
disaster of Saddam's hanging. It was a comical essay in Pilate-like
handwashing, filled with self-serving accounts of how the Americans had
vainly counseled the Maliki puppet regime to observe a more dignified
schedule, in accordance with legal proprieties. Of course, the United
States controlled the trial and outcome from start to finish, even
postponing the announcement of the guilty verdict to November 5, right
before election day. The rush to execution was intended to produce
headlines overshadowing the 3,000th American death of the war.
I have discussed here more than once the strenuous efforts over the past
few months of the Times' military correspondent, Michael Gordon, to promote
a hike in US forces in Iraq. A long piece on January 2, under the byline of
Gordon, John Burns and David Sanger, made these promotion efforts
particularly clear. The piece was a prolonged attack on Gen. George Casey,
top military commander in Baghdad, depicted in harsh terms as espousing a
defeatist plan of orderly withdrawal.
Finding favor in the reporters' eyes was the military/policy-making faction
urging the escalation ceaselessly promoted by their tool, Gordon,
Gordon managed to dodge the fall-out from the WMD debacle he played a major
part in contriving. For example, he co-wrote with Miller the infamous
aluminum tubes-for-nukes story of September 8, 2002, that mightily assisted
the administration in its push to war, In the latter part of 2006 he became
the prime journalistic agitator for escalation in troop strength.
On September 11, 2006, the Times ran a Gordon story under the headline,
"Grim Outlook Seen in West Iraq Without More Troops and Aid". Gordon cited
a senior officer in Iraq saying more American troops were necessary to
stabilize Anbar. A story on October 22 emphasized that "the sectarian
violence [in Baghdad] would be far worse if not for the American efforts"
There were of course plenty of Iraqis and some Americans Gordon could also
have found, eager to say the exact opposite.
When John Murtha -- advocate of immediate withdrawal -- was running for the
post of House majority leader in the new Democratic-controlled Congress,
Gordon rushed out two stories, both front-paged by the New York Times. In
"Get Out Now? Not So Fast, Some Experts Say" (11/14/06) Gordon sought out
the now retired General Anthony Zinni and others, who "say the situation in
Baghdad and other parts of Iraq is too precarious to start thinning out the
number of American troops," while "some military experts said that while
the American military is stretched thin, the number of American troops in
Iraq could be increased temporarily"
The next day, November 15, 2006, a second Gordon story was headlined
"General Warns of Risks in Iraq if GIs Are Cut" Gordon cited Gen. Abizaid's
warnings that phased withdrawal of troops would lead to an increase of
sectarian violence, and that more troops might be necessary temporarily.
At the start of December, the infighting in Washington rose to feverish
intensity. With Baker and Hamilton about to issue thneir bipartisan Iraq
Study Group report, the White House--as the New York Times' Jan 1 story
acknowledged--was desperate to have a "victory" strategy ready to counter
the gloomy assessment of Baker and Hamilton. This is what Gordon and the
Times had helped provide.
On December 4, with the Iraq Study Group about to issue its report, Gordon
returned to General Zinni. In a story headlined, "Blurring Political Lines
in the Military Debate" Gordon gave warm, supportive coverage to Gen.
Zinni's plan for temporary increase of troops on the grounds that they are
needed to offset Iranian influence. The story promoted the line that any
precipitate withdrawal would destabilize Middle East and leave Iraq in
chaos.
On December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, Gordon was at it again, flailing away at
Baker and Hamilton's Report. Headline: "Will it Work on the Battlefield?"
Lead: "The military recommendations issued yesterday by the Iraq Study
Group are based more on hope than history and run counter to assessments
made by some of its own military advisors." Precipitous withdrawal, Gordon
charged, would leave Iraqi armed forces unprepared to take over security
burden.
Reporter with a propaganda mission can always find the mouthpieces to say
what they want. Gordon's "troop surge" campaign has been politically much
more influential than the mad-dog ravings of the right-wing broadcasters.
One of the most famous lines in the history of journalism is William
Randolph Hearst's 1897 cable to his artist, Frederic Remington, in Cuba,
who was complaining there no war for him to draw pictures of. "You furnish
the pictures," Hearst cabled his man." I'll furnish the war."
The Times helped furnish the 2003 U.S. attack on Iraq. Now it has played a
major role in furnishing a likely escalation. There is blood on its hands,
and grieving mothers like Cindy Sheehan have as much cause to demonstrate
outside its offices as outside Bush's ranch in Crawford.
In his syndicated column published January 2, Robert Novak reported that
barely more than a dozen Republican senators favor escalation. The rest
remain impressed by the November 7 verdict of the electorate and fearful of
worse in 2008. the Democrats' leaders in Congress--Reid and Pelosi--waver.
One day they profess to oppose any escalation. The next, they refuse to
countenance any effort to cut off funds for the war. They need 20,000 Cindy
Sheehans in their faces, day after day, reminding them forcefully that they
have one prime mandate: to bring the troops home.
*
================================================================
.NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
. Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us .
.339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
.List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
.Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
================================================================