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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Friday, May 14, 2004
   
   

Abu Ghraib and Nicholas Berg

Mainstream media's double double standard.

First, Diana West writes at TownHall, May 10:

Forgive me, but the head reels. A prison scandal in Iraq — already investigated, already in repair, but only recently and sensationally publicized — is now our nation's destiny, not to mention our national character. City on the Hill? Abu Ghraib. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Abu Ghraib. Yorktown, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Verdun, Midway, Hamburger Hill, Baghdad? Abu Ghraib. Mark Twain, Mickey Mouse, the Salk vaccine and bubble gum? Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib.
Why? Because Abu Ghraib is, more than anything else, the fulfillment of the media dream, the Vietnam they think they never had (or had a very long time ago), the aberration to obsess about, the disgrace to exult in and the opportunity — and this is key — to shift the political landscape. That is why 30-some instances of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which range from acts resembling extreme fraternity hazing to actual sexual assault, have sucked all the oxygen from the conflict's urgent questions of life and death, truth and falsehood, and civilization and barbarism....
Just as the media stampede to depict the U.S. military as a bunch of war criminals came sweeping by, a posse of good guys in white hats — Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — stood up to say it wasn't so. That is, it wasn't so in Vietnam, they said with great seriousness at a remarkable Washington press conference (which the Associated Press, incidentally, failed even to report), directly contradicting everything John Kerry has maintained since jump-starting his public career with tales of unproven wartime atrocities in 1971. "It is a fact that in the entire Vietnam War we did not lose one major battle," said Robert Elder, a member of this organization of sailors who served with Mr. Kerry and who believe he is unfit for the presidency. "We lost the war at home," Mr. Elder continued, "and at home John Kerry was the field general."
Strange that a man who once marshaled the forces of the Vietnam antiwar movement to transform, symbolically, the American soldier from good guy to baby-killer would vie for the presidency at a time when the still inchoate forces of the Iraq antiwar movement seek a poster boy, an atrocity, a way to pull the plug. That slander long ago, amplified by a willing media, eroded support for the Vietnam War, leading to our unconscionable abandonment of the South Vietnamese people in 1975. No wonder the rush to tar our armed forces as "torturers" today has that sick-making '70s ring. Abu Ghraib, however, doesn't have to be a turning point — unless we let them make it one.

Also, Jeff Jacoby writes a scorching column at The Boston Globe, May 13:

.... Poor Nick Berg. The anybody-but-Bush crowd isn't going to rush to publicize his terrible fate with anything like the zeal it brought to the abused prisoners story. CBS and The New Yorker couldn't resist the temptation to shove the Abu Ghraib photos into the public domain — and the rest of the media then made sure the world saw them over and over and over. But when it comes to video and stills of Al Qaeda murderers severing Berg's head with a knife and brandishing it in triumph for the camera, the Fourth Estate is suddenly squeamish.
As I write on Wednesday afternoon, the CBS News website continues to offer a complete "photo essay" of naked Iraqi men being humiliated by Americans in a variety of poses. But the video of Berg's beheading, CBS says, "is too gruesome to show." No other network and no newspaper that I have seen shows the gory pictures, either.
What exactly is the governing rule here? That incendiary images sure to enrage our enemies and get more Americans killed should be published while images that show the world just how evil those enemies really are should be suppressed? Offensive and shocking pictures that undermine the war effort should be played up but offensive and shocking pictures that remind us why we're at war in the first place shouldn't get played at all?
Yes, Virginia, there really is a gaping media double standard. News organizations will shield your tender eyes from the sight of a Berg or a Daniel Pearl being decapitated, or of Sept. 11 victims jumping to their deaths, or of the mangled bodies on the USS Cole, or of Fallujans joyfully mutilating the remains of four lynched US civilians. But they will make sure you don't miss the odious behavior of Americans or American allies, no matter how atypical that misbehavior may be or how determined the US military is to uproot and punish it.
We are at war with a vicious enemy, and propaganda in wartime is a weapon whose consequences can be deadly. Nick Berg lost his life because the Abu Ghraib pictures were turned into a worldwide media event. Yes, those who did so were sheltered by the First Amendment. That makes what they did not better but worse.

One paragraph is worth another look:

What exactly is the governing rule here? That incendiary images sure to enrage our enemies and get more Americans killed should be published while images that show the world just how evil those enemies really are should be suppressed? Offensive and shocking pictures that undermine the war effort should be played up but offensive and shocking pictures that remind us why we're at war in the first place shouldn't get played at all?

Print that out in big letters and hang it on the wall.

All this brings to mind some perceptive words of David Warren: The media have been discovered to be an enemy, pure and simple....

Commit that little sentence fragment to memory.

P.S. See Too Tender for All but Our Own Evil.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 05:58:49 PM
Categorized as Media.


   
   

Patrick Madrid Unfortunately Proven Perceptive

Perhaps you thought one of last week's Blogworthies might have been a bit too extreme:

.... Early this morning, I logged onto the Internet news sites and saw the latest round of images of U.S. troops leering and mugging for the camera as they forced Iraqi men to stand naked and hooded, made them sprawl across one another on the floor in groups, simulating homosexual acts, humiliated them in for the cameras in other sexual ways, dragging a naked Iraqi man on the floor, a dog leash around his neck, and other atrocities.
It occurred to me that the reason this is happening, and the reason our country may be shocked by shouldn't be in the least surprised that this is happening, is the following: The pornography chickens are coming home to roost. Or to say it the way the Bible does, the American, indeed Western, fascination and enslavement to pornography has sown the wind and now we’re reaping the whirlwind (cf. Hosea 8:7)....

Patrick has, however, been vindicated:

Shocking shots of sexcapades involving Pfc. Lynndie England were among the hundreds of X-rated photos and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shown to lawmakers in a top-secret Capitol conference room yesterday.
"She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual," said a lawmaker who saw the photos.
And, videos showed the disgraced soldier — made notorious in a photo showing her holding a leash looped around an Iraqi prisoner's neck — engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners, Pentagon officials told NBC Nightly News.
"Almost everybody was naked all the time," another lawmaker said....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 05:44:06 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.


   
   

AIM Bloggers

Accuracy In Media, that is.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 05:36:48 PM
Categorized as Other.


   
   

Happy Second Blogiversary to Mark C. N. Sullivan

And thanks for his unique contribution to St. Blog's.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 07:13:24 AM
Categorized as Other.


   
   

Spectator Reports on Nameless Traitor

That's what I call her.

By Toby Harnden of the Daily Telegraph, dated May 15:

... But what do the abominations perpetrated at Abu Ghraib really tell us about Iraq and the faltering American-led project to plant the seeds of democracy here? And why are so many people who were against the war, or are incapable of viewing any American action as anything other than evil or stupid, greeting each fresh revelation with an almost indecent glee?
The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool, fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.
She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.
But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.
She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it....
Into this journalistic vacuum it is all too easy for the prejudices of the press corps — tourists looking through telescopes — to flow more freely than ever and the resulting reports to be distorted and incomplete. After the horrifying videotape slaughter of Nick Berg, there will be even greater reluctance among Westerners to leave their fortified hotels and compounds.
Whatever we thought about the war before it was launched, it is imperative that the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamism that now threaten to destroy Iraq are defeated. If America fails in Iraq it will be all of us in the West, not just Bush, who will suffer. But those who would be most in peril, of course, would be the Iraqis, who deserve better than to have their country treated as an electoral playground by the American Left or Right. To wish otherwise is as sick as the grins on the faces of the Abu Ghraib torturers.

Don't get me wrong: the "journalist", if characterized accurately, isn't merely a traitor to the USA. She's a traitor to humanity.

But you know she looks down her nose at you and me, Faithful Reader.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 07:07:20 AM
Categorized as International & Media.


   
   

Homosexualist Clergy Not Dissuaded

Brownshirt appeasement.

At The Arizona Republic, May 11:

Neither Methodist policy nor Catholic defections are curbing clergy enthusiasm for the pro-gay Phoenix Declaration.
Although five Catholic priests have followed Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted's order that they remove their names, no other clergy member has withdrawn. On the contrary, the publicity surrounding the Catholic situation is resulting in additional signatures on the statement, said the Rev. David Felten, secretary of the No Longer Silent group that drafted the declaration last year.
The Rev. John Cunningham of St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church, who is under investigation for celebrating Mass with a Protestant minister, was the latest Catholic priest to remove his name. Four other Catholic priests have remained on the list.
The majority of the 120 declaration signers represent denominations that cannot require clergy members to drop off, usually because the bishop or denominational leader does not possess official authority....

(Thanks, Dom.)

The profanation declaration is here with a list of signers here.

The declaration and the list of signers each contains the following example submission, simultaneously telling & hilarious: For example, "Pat McGillicuddy, Pastor, Church of What's Happening Now, Phoenix."

P.S. I see that Dom has blogged another article, saying two more priests have removed their names from the list; it also says this about the list:

.... No Longer Silent has been posting the words "name removed at request of signer in obedience to church hierarchy" in the place where the priests’ names previously had appeared on the signers list on the Web site....

That is no longer the case.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 06:53:45 AM
Categorized as Religious.


   
   

Blink: Lose

"But what is needed above all is consistent political and military willpower, publicly demonstrated and explained. Without this, the media will create the future."

There's a scary thought if there ever was one.

An excellent analysis by Charles Moore at The London Telegraph, May 11:

.... It is necessary, but not sufficient, to point out that much of the drama at this moment is generated by politics. Mr Bush is seeking re-election (and Tony Blair is not far behind him). He therefore desperately needs everything to look good. His opponents (and these include almost all the television networks both here and in America) even more desperately want it to look bad. Even people who, in essence, support the war, such as John Kerry in America and Michael Howard here, feel a bit happier with bad news than is altogether decent.
And, of course, the terrorists have their electoral politics too. They believe they have got rid of a government in Spain. Think of the joy of unseating an American president. The transfer of sovereignty in Iraq – whatever, exactly, that means – takes place on June 30. So many people have such strong motives for trying to knock the baton out of the hand that tries to pass it. Expect even more sound and fury between now and July. And do not expect the cameras to show you those large expanses of Iraq where there is order, running water, regular electricity and well attended lectures on how to build democracy....
Comparisons give a bit of perspective. In Vietnam, 55,000 US servicemen died. The figure so far in Iraq is less than 1.5 per cent of that. In the Mesopotamian campaigns of the First World War, there were more than 900,000 British and Imperial casualties (those figures include hundreds of thousands suffering from disease). Casualties among indigenous civilians are also much lower than in the great conflicts of the past. Such perspective is almost entirely lacking in television reporting.

Anyway, we are where we are, and where we are, according to all my varied collection of experts, is far from hopeless. A tyrant who ruined his country and defied the free world is in prison. Iraq is becoming more prosperous and the infrastructure is recovering, though too slowly. From July 1, it will have the inklings of self-rule.
Although the country is an artificial construction of the colonial mind, it has acquired reality over time: most of its inhabitants see themselves as Iraqis rather than solely as Kurds, Sunnis or Shias. They want an Islamic nation, but a modern one, not a theocracy. Even the main theocrats (the "moderate" Shia leaders) prefer stability to al-Sadr's Mahdi Army or Iranian intrigue. No, Iraq is not about to become Sweden on the Tigris, but it could become the fairly open, prosperous and educated society which, once upon a time, it was. If it did, it would set an example that changed the shape of the region.
And the coalition attacks on Afghanistan, and then on Iraq, not to mention missions in the Philippines, and gentler tactics in Libya and Pakistan, have made a difference. If you are Yemen, Syria, Iran, you have been given pause for thought. All these warnings against "setting the Muslim world ablaze" ignore the fact that the fire was burning fiercely before anyone thought of the war against terrorism (and that there have actually been fewer terrorist attacks since September 11 than in the preceding years).
As Osama bin Laden himself made clear in advance, the attack on the World Trade Centre was a response to American weakness, not strength. It was America's departure from Beirut in 1984, and from Mogadishu in 1993, that emboldened terrorists to further attack: imagine the violence that would follow an allied retreat from Iraq. People who want the troops to leave now must realise that they are asking for something as politically big, though perhaps not as militarily significant, as calling for all Nato troops to leave West Germany in, say, 1980....
But what is needed above all is consistent political and military willpower, publicly demonstrated and explained. Without this, the media will create the future. Mr Bush and Mr Blair need serious speeches about why it matters so much to get it right and what getting it right means.
They will, from now till polling day, be tempted to slide away from what is happening in Iraq, but they should, in fact, do the opposite, challenging their opponents to back them. In Iraq itself, they need to enforce their will quickly, preferring the quick assault to the siege. They need to keep up the push for a plural society with elections, rather than one where some new strongman is found to replace the old. And they need to make sure that trouble-making neighbours, especially Iran, are repudiated, not courted. If they blink, they lose.

(Thanks, Deacon.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 05/14/04 06:08:26 AM
Categorized as International & Political.


   

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