Thursday, April 02, 2009
Netanyahu: "Stop Iran - Or I Will"
So says an exclusive interview in The Atlantic. I must say, it sounds good to me.
On the other hand, the headline is a bit misleading; nowhere in the article is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually quoted as saying that. It's not even a paraphrase; Mr. Netanyahu never talks about Israel attacking Iran at all. He simply describes the dangers of a nuclear Iran, in great detail, and explains why it is not just a problem for Israel.
So perhaps this is another case of a journalist putting words into a politician's mouth -- not words the politician said, but words that the journalist thinks the politician could have said.
I'm reminded of an alarmist headline on a non-alarmist article about global warming, a few years back. In that case, though, it's possible that an editor added a headline that the article's writer never intended. Here the sentiment is clearly part of the article itself, as can be seen in the first paragraph:
In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.Go look for yourself; does he ever quote Netanyahu as actually saying that?
Of course, as has been pointed out elsewhere, there is a "public narrative" about Netanyahu -- which is why it's virtually impossible to read a newspaper article about him that doesn't call him a "hard-liner" (instead of "conservative"), or that he does not favor a "two-state solution" (untrue, although he does expect the Palestinians to earn their state first). But it's not a journalist's job to tell us what he thinks a politician thinks; we need to know what the politician actually said.
Whether Israel will attack Iran remains to be seen. We know many of the pieces of the puzzle -- that Israel has stopped an enemy country from going nuclear before; that Iranian nuclear sites are not as well protected as they previously thought; that Israelis in positions of authority have spoken about this before. We can even surmise that this is more likely to happen now than under Mr. Netanyahu's predecessor, the hapless (and hopeless) Ehud Olmert. Nonetheless, we'll know about this when -- and if -- it happens.
Labels: Iran, Israel, journalism
Monday, February 05, 2007
Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007: RIP
I only just found out that Molly Ivins passed away, almost a week ago. Wow -- it feels like the end of an era.
My personal feelings about her could be described as "warm but ambivalent". I never met her, nor did I ever correspond with her; I do own a few of her books. In fact, it is instructive to track my evolution, from the liberal side to the conservative side of American politics, in terms of how highly I thought of Ms. Ivins when I first started reading her stuff, back in 1999 or so.
There's not a lot that she's written lately that I'd agree with; some of her writing, over the past few years, I've found to be pretty painful to read. And yet -- she had that touch. Her writing was warm, friendly, inviting; I sometimes found myself chuckling over her dry wit, while simultaneously shaking my head and wondering how she could possibly believe what she was saying.
I'm sorry she's gone. Godspeed, Molly.
Labels: journalism, obituary, U.S. politics
Friday, November 10, 2006
The Media on Gaza
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Friday, November 03, 2006
Another "Bush Administration Failure"
And this is a big one -- when the Bush Administration made thousands of Saddam's documents available online, they included some detailed plans for building nuclear weapons.
You know, the Iraqi nuclear weapons that were never a threat to us...
I wouldn't have thought that I'd see both statements in the same article. But here it is, courtesy of news.com:
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to "leverage the Internet" to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.Admittedly, this is very carefully-worded, so that it doesn't look like it's arguing against itself. But think about it for a moment. The complaints have been loud and unceasing, against the Bush Administration, that we invaded Iraq solely to find WMD (which is untrue), that we didn't find any WMD there (also untrue), that therefore there could not have been any WMD to find (which is a strange claim to make, about a country the size of California, with room to hide all sorts of things)... and that, therefore, Iraq was never a threat to us to begin with, and should never have been invaded.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
. . .
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
. . .
The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of the Web site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure.The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation's spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents--most of them in Arabic--would reinvigorate the search for clues that Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.
Except that, even if you manage to swallow all that, now we're also hearing criticism of the Bush Administration for mistakenly publishing documents -- Iraqi documents -- that give detailed instructions on preparing tabun, sarin, and rudimentary nuclear weapons. (Sounds like justification to me. Were we supposed to wait until after the weapons were built? Are we expected to believe that Saddam had the blueprints, but never planned to use them... except, maybe, as wallpaper?)
For that matter, some people claim --see the article above -- that the invasion of Iraq is only justified if we can prove that Saddam restarted his WMD development programs after 1991, while UN sanctions were in place. But does that really make sense, now that we know he had blueprints like these sitting on the shelf? The man, and his regime, were a ticking time bomb; all that was in doubt was when the bomb might go off, and whether it was possible to stop him in time.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely think it was a mistake, and a big one, to let these documents out into the open. An understandable mistake, perhaps, given the tremendous volume of the documents -- but still a terrible mistake. (After all, if the CIA doesn't have enough people to vet all those documents, then they should have fixed that problem, long ago. Analyzing top-secret documents is their job, not ours. If the CIA doesn't have enough agents in the field, and doesn't have enough analysts at home, then we really do have to wonder what they do for a living.)
Nonetheless, it makes no sense to criticize the Bush Administration for not finding WMDs, and then to criticize them again for publishing the blueprints of the nonexistent WMDs. Why, that makes about as much sense as criticizing the Administration for permitting North Korea to go nuclear... while at the same time criticizing the Administration for daring to contemplate an attack against Iran before it goes nuclear. (Nobody would say that in the same article, would they?)
UPDATE: Dadmanly has more. And Smash points out that, for once, the New York Times should be applauded for blowing the whistle. I agree.
Labels: GWB, Iraq, journalism, NYT, WMD
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Joe Lieberman in Trouble?
Well, some people say he is:
Joe Lieberman has a new campaign finance problem, a "petty cash" one. We may never know what he bought with nearly $400,000 in petty cash, but it sure purchased increased cynicism in the political process. Some say these are the kinds of problems that occur when an Enron Lobbyist is your former Chief of Staff.Hmm. So he has money unaccounted for... which, we are expected to assume, was spent illegally and for purposes nefarious and evil.
Yep, Joe Lieberman's in trouble, all right. His former supporters are treating him the way they treat Republicans. (hat tip: Solomonia)
In other news, I'm glad to see that there are some things CNN just won't do --
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Major U.S. news outlets CNN and National Public Radio will not air paid ads or sponsor announcements for a controversial movie depicting the assassination of President George W. Bush, citing the film's content, network spokeswomen said on Tuesday.I'm not sure what led to this decision, but I applaud it.
The movie, "Death of a President," caused a stir at the Toronto Film Festival in September where it debuted, and two major U.S. theater chains have declined to screen the movie when it debuts in the United States on Friday.
"CNN has decided not to take the ad because of the extreme nature of the movie's subject matter," the cable television network said in a statement.
This is a time for uplifting people, for appealing to our better natures, for encouraging us to find the best parts of ourselves. We need as much of that as we can get; we need to believe in heroes, and to think we can aspire to be like them. Appealing instead to our blood-lust, by portraying the extreme left's fantasy of a President Bush gunned down in cold blood, will do us no good -- and CNN is right to choose not to take part in this. They can find plenty of other advertisers elsewhere.
Labels: 2006, Joe Lieberman, journalism, Loony Left
Monday, October 23, 2006
News Flash: NYT Apologizes
I'm trying to come up with something even lamer than this. But I'm having a hard time.
Okay, so the New York Times finds out about a top-secret NSA program to track down terrorists by following their finances, via SWIFT international bank transfers -- and, in spite of strong government pleas (pleas???) not to publish, including appeals (appeals???) from high ranking Democratic members of the 9/11 Committee -- the New York Times does it anyway, splashing the story on its front page and keeping it there for months.
It becomes abundantly clear, immediately thereafter, that (a) this harms America's reputation, and ability to conduct law-enforcement operations, in the world at large (because worldwide financial institutions counted on the United States to keep a secret, which we apparently can't do); and that (b) this harms America's ability to find the terrorists taking aim at us, because they will now avoid using SWIFT transactions.
(To the best of my knowledge, by the way, we've been able to deal with the former problem; somehow relations with the financial world and with other law-enforcement communities were repaired. But there's nothing we can do about the latter problem. Even if some terrorists suspected that SWIFT transactions were monitored, not all did, and enough used SWIFT to give us data we could use. Now a terrorist would have to be a drooling idiot to use SWIFT for any purpose at all -- and a valuable data-source for the terrorist-hunters has, I'm sure, dried up considerably.)
And now, several months after the barn door was swung open and the secret let loose on the world, the New York Times apologizes. Well, no, it's not the New York Times as a whole; it's just the ombudsman. And he isn't really apologizing, for jeopardizing national security or anything else; he's simply admitting that, months after the fact, he has changed his mind, and believes that a mistake was made.
But no, it's even lamer than that. Did Barney Calame run a front-page column for this? No, his change of heart appears in the Opinions section of yesterday's Sunday Times -- and it's buried in the bottom of a column on something else entirely (titled "Can ‘Magazines’ of The Times Subsidize News Coverage?", with a lead paragraph that deals with perfume critics, fer Gossake).
And we're not done; it's even lamer than that. I quote verbatim, from paragraph 16 (and onwards) of the column:
Banking Data: A Mea CulpaSo, let's see if I have this straight:
Since the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, there’s a special responsibility for me to acknowledge my own flawed assessments.
My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.
Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.
The source of the data, as my column noted, was the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. That Belgium-based consortium said it had honored administrative subpoenas from the American government because it has a subsidiary in this country.
I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws. Although data-protection authorities in Europe have complained that the formerly secret program violated their rules on privacy, there have been no Times reports of legal action being taken. Data-protection rules are often stricter in Europe than in America, and have been a frequent source of friction.
Also, there still haven’t been any abuses of private data linked to the program, which apparently has continued to function. That, plus the legality issue, has left me wondering what harm actually was avoided when The Times and two other newspapers disclosed the program. The lack of appropriate oversight — to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention — was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight.
In addition, I became embarrassed by the how-secret-is-it issue, although that isn’t a cause of my altered conclusion. My original support for the article rested heavily on the fact that so many people already knew about the program that serious terrorists also must have been aware of it. But critical, and clever, readers were quick to point to a contradiction: the Times article and headline had both emphasized that a “secret” program was being exposed. (If one sentence down in the article had acknowledged that a number of people were probably aware of the program, both the newsroom and I would have been better able to address that wave of criticism.)
What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press — two traits that I warned readers about in my first column.
Mr. Calame now disagrees with the need to blow the whistle on this program, because it was (a) legal, and (b) has not been abused vis-a-vis the private data of American citizens. (Gee whiz, couldn't you have figured that out before going public?)
He says it is still "a close call" -- and continues to call it that, while simultaneously demolishing any valid reasons for publishing it in the first place. (If a top-secret government program, during wartime, is producing positive results, is legal, is not adversely affecting American citizens or their civil liberties, and is under wraps, with government officials from the Cabinet on down begging that the story stay secret -- then why on Earth should the decision to publish be a "close call"? What rationale remains for publishing it at all, other than the NYT's falling ratings and political bias?)
Oh, and just for good measure, we have a full complement of weasel-worded phrases here. He calls it "a once-secret program", but doesn't mention that it's no longer secret because of the organization he works for. He also laments that a particular sentence in the original article could have been phrased better, so that the NYT could have handled the criticism more easily -- which, of course, has nothing at all to do with whether or not it was a good idea to run the story.
Then he cites his "embarrassment" as a factor. (Hmm, I have to wonder -- if a terrorist attack is not averted when it could have been, because the NYT spilled the beans, will Mr. Calame still be embarrassed?)
And finally, just to make it even lamer, Mr. Calame blames "the vicious criticism of the Times by the Bush Administration" for coloring his judgement and causing him to behave unprofessionally. (As many others have noted, just what does the Bush Administration, no less, have to say to the NYT, no less, to be called "vicious"? Presumably it would have to be at least as bad as what the NYT has been saying about the Bush Administration for the past five years.)
Oh, and then Mr. Calame has the audacity to blame his readers -- by insisting that he told them about his bias "for the underdog" in his very first column. So, you see, we really couldn't have expected any better of him -- because he warned us.
How lame. How incredibly, incredibly lame. (How does that guy pronounce his last name, I wonder?)
The blogosphere is all over this. Michelle Malkin digs a bit deeper into what, exactly, Mr. Calame could have meant by "vicious criticism". Powerline has more. Glenn Reynolds says: "So the New York Times damaged national security by tipping terrorists off to the existence and nature of a legal program that was not being abused. Remember that the next time they declare their own fitness to be trusted with national security decisions." The Squiggler has a link-rich roundup.
Many people (Ms. Malkin among others) are calling for Calame's resignation. I disagree, on two counts. First, I don't think he should lose his job, just for being the only person at the NYT to show even a modest amount of integrity on this issue. Heck, if he's showing higher ethical standards than the NYT general editor -- albeit not by much -- then perhaps he should be promoted.
Second, if this is the best that the NYT has to offer, then by all means, let him stay in place. He's a better advertisement for the Republican Party than he knows.
By the way: while writing my closing paragraphs, above, I wanted to look up the contact info for the head honchos at the New York Times. To my surprise, they don't want to publish that information -- and they provide more weasel-words to justify themselves:
Unfortunately, because of the volume of mail from readers, we cannot do research for the public or provide general contact information. You can find the e-mail addresses for many reporters, editors and departments by sending a request to staff@nytimes.com or directory@nytimes.com. Readers are welcome to send reports of errors that warrant correction directly to the newsroom at nytnews@nytimes.com, but such e-mails may also be sent to the public editor's e-mail address below.Translation: "our editorial staff receives too much e-mail, so we don't want to publish their contact information. Ask us for it nicely, and we'll provide it to you privately, if we feel like it".
Now that's what I call a responsive newspaper.
Labels: incompetence, journalism, NYT
Thursday, October 19, 2006
al-Dura Lives On: Philippe Karsenty Found Guilty
Well, the verdict is in, for what is concisely misnamed "the al-Dura trial" -- in which Philippe Karsenty, the modern-day Emile Zola who accused French TV of fabricating the al-Dura myth and promoting it, and was sued for "being insulting" -- Mr. Karsenty has been found guilty, and ordered to pay a fine and court costs. Mr. Karsenty has vowed to appeal the decision.
I can't possibly do this story justice. Please check out Prof. Richard Landes, who testified at the trial and has been covering this extensively at his blog, The Augean Stables. (In the case of this story, it's unfortunate how extremely apt that name is.) Initial coverage is here and here; no doubt there will be more, lots more, in days to come.
Please don't miss Prof. Landes' seminal work at www.SecondDraft.org; his original video clip, Pallywood, along with a new follow-up on the al-Dura case, can be found here.
For those who have not yet heard what this case is about -- in the unlikely event that I have such a reader -- Mohammed al-Dura was photographed, supposedly being shot and dying in the arms of his father, at the scene of a confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis. It has become a cause celebre, and was one of the justifications for starting the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 -- which makes it all the more important to determine if, as seems increasingly likely, the whole thing was a hoax from start to finish. A hoax, in fact, that has claimed several hundred lives so far, and may well claim more.
It is understandable, if perhaps not excusable, that the French journalist who produced the al-Dura footage -- and the Palestinian cameraman who filmed it -- want to defend their work against any accusations of fakery. (Their vigorous defense is even more understandable, given that they must know it was faked.) But that a French court would side with them, and fine a journalist for the "crime" of insulting another journalist, in unconscionable. (Roger Simon put it well when he suggested that perhaps he should move to France, where he can now sue the people who insult him.)
al-Dura was not the first case of Palestinians attempting to perpetrate an outright hoax on an unsuspecting press and the world; nor has it been the last, nor even the most outrageous. It is, however, quite possibly the hoax that has killed more people than any other in recent Mideast history.
UPDATE: Neo-neocon is in France, where she will be watching the second al-Dura trial. Stay tuned.
Labels: al-Dura, journalism, Pallywood
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
CNN: Four U.S. Soldiers Charged With Rape And Murder
I've only just heard about this, but I must say, the details sound horrifying.
Two thoughts come to mind. One: as bad as it sounds, I do not approve of the copious details that have apparently been leaked to the press. The soldiers in question have only had a hearing; their court-martial, which will determine if they are guilty (and, if so, what punishment is merited), has yet to be held. Releasing details from their hearing, before the trial, constitutes a trial -- and conviction -- in the court of public opinion, and that's not how our justice system works, nor should it.
My second thought relates to the death penalty, which the murderers and rapists could face if found guilty. To which I reply: good. If they are found guilty of the crimes for which they stand accused, I want them to fry.
* * * * *
I believe strongly, you see, that soldiers on occupation duty have high standards to maintain -- much higher than in other situations. Offenses that might get an American soldier a slap on the wrist, or a night in the brig, if they happened Stateside, could cause an international incident if they happened in Iraq. Even a relatively minor offense -- stealing, say, or extortion -- would reflect badly not just on the soldier committing the offense, but also on the soldier's unit, on the U.S. military as a whole, and even on the entire United States. The punishments resulting from such crimes should reflect that.
And it is hard to imagine a more horrific crime, on a personal level, than the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl (and the murder of her family and the desecration of the bodies). It is part of the military's job to protect little girls.
I could almost wish that, were Spec. James P. Barker, Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Steven D. Green, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard to be found guilty, that they would be turned over to the Iraqi criminal justice system. But that will not happen, nor should it. The U.S. Army bears responsibility for all of the actions of all of its men and women in uniform, and must shoulder the burden of finding out what happened -- and of punishing the guilty. These obligations cannot be handed off to someone else.
I also regret that, from the sound of it, Steven Green -- since he was discharged from the Army in May due to an "anti-social personality disorder" -- will be facing criminal charges in a civilian court. (He is currently under arrest in a Kentucky jail.) Somehow, I suspect that he may wind up with a much lighter sentence than his alleged partners-in-crime -- which is a damn shame, since he seems to have been one of the ringleaders.
But again, I do not want to pass judgement without the facts -- and the facts will be determined at the courts-martial (and at Green's trial), not at the preliminary hearing. It is not up to us to decide their guilt or innocence, and it's emphatically not up to the press. The courts will decide -- and, if the evidence points to their guilt, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Army will waste no time with kid gloves.
I don't think there's any need to hope for justice; I'm confident that justice will be done. Instead, let us pray for Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, whose all-too-short life ended in a most horrible way, allegedly at the hands of soldiers who should have been protecting her.
UPDATE: Blackfive points out that there are important reasons, other than the report above, to have issues with CNN.
When CNN reprints a story that has been covered worldwide, by al-Jazeera among others -- it's not clear to me where the story broke first -- then the ethical issues can seem cloudy. (Does it make sense to spike a story such as this, on the theory that the soldiers do not deserve to be pilloried in the press before their trial, if the story is covered by everyone else anyway? Reasonable minds may well differ.)
But running a story from the perspective of the terrorists -- while they are actively shooting at American troops, no less! -- is, or should be, beyond the pale for an American news organization. (Whether they like it or not, CNN is an American news organization. They are based in Atlanta, as they always have been -- and it is the laws and society of the United States that enabled CNN to be founded and thrive in the first place.)
Terrorism cannot thrive -- indeed, it cannot survive -- without the press. Without press coverage, a terrorist attack cannot cause terror in the general population, because the general population simply doesn't find out about it. When CNN disseminates the terrorists' press releases and talking points, they are doing more than assisting terror -- they are participating in terror.
On a less theoretical subject, I'd very much like to hear how U.S. soldiers respond -- the same soldiers, perhaps, who were targeted by terrorist snipers in the film CNN so carefully aired -- when next CNN demands military protection.
Labels: CNN, journalism, military matters, terrorism
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Self-Contradiction at the AP
I wasn't intending to post today -- I've been busy lately. But this just made me laugh:
RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Democrat Mark R. Warner, the former governor of Virginia, has decided not to run for president in 2008, Democratic officials said Thursday.This is so self-parodying, I'm not sure where to begin. Is it not obvious that these two nameless "officials" are upstaging Gov. Warner by spilling the beans early? What was their reason for remaining anonymous, then?
Warner, 51, scheduled a late morning news conference in Richmond to make the announcement, according to two Democratic officials who refused to be identified because they did not want to upstage Warner's announcement.
It's well-nigh unbelievable that anyone would say such a thing. My officemate, the long-suffering Daniel T., suggests that perhaps the two "officials" remained anonymous for the usual reasons -- so as not to get into trouble for leaking information they had no business leaking -- and that it was the AP reporter who invented the "upstaging" reason. If so, however, it seems that some journalists, anxious to avoid saying anything negative about Democrats (or anything positive about Republicans), are going to absurd extremes. (Call it Journalistic Objectivity, 21st-century style.)
Or perhaps the leakers in question explicitly asked that the news not be released before Gov. Warner's press conference... and later insisted that, if the information was to be published, that their identities be withheld. (I could then see a reporter cheerfully filing the story anyway, and thinking "hmm, they seem reluctant to upstage Warner; let me say something about that too".)
I'm not sure who is less responsible here -- the people who leaked the information, or the journalists who published it. Frankly, I'm not overly confident of either at this point, even though the information is pretty trivial.
But isn't that the point of integrity -- to maintain high standards, even when the results aren't important? If you try to maintain standards for the important stuff, while allowing yourself to get lazy for the small stuff, then where do you draw the line -- and how do you know you've drawn it in the right place?
Labels: humor, journalism, U.S. politics
Thursday, September 21, 2006
A Daily Smorgasbord
I don't have time for much in-depth blogging today, so I'll just link to a few things that caught my eye.
It seems that Thailand has experienced a bloodless coup -- its first coup in fifteen years, according to the LA Times -- and is under martial law for the time being. The population seems happy enough that the corrupt ex-Prime Minister Thaksin has been ousted, and General Sondhi Boonyaratkalin -- who is now chief of state, it seems -- promises to hold free elections "by October 2007" and to have a new interim Thai constitution "within weeks".
Well, my hat's off to the Thai military for managing a bloodless coup; they couldn't have done it unless avoiding bloodshed was a top priority for them. Apparently it was, which speaks well for them. Nonetheless, much as I'd prefer a bloodless coup to a bloody one, the idea of open-ended martial law gives me the creeps. (Remember, we have a brand-new ball game in Thailand now... and, under martial law, the law is whatever Gen. Boonyaratkalin says it is. Can we count on him to keep his promises, now that he's effectively appointed himself chief of state? We don't really know; we'll just have to wait and find out.)
As I commented on Smash's site, though, statements like this really bother me:
"I heard about the coup this morning when I woke up," said Jay Brooker, a 23-year-old British traveler walking in Khao San, a neighborhood popular with backpackers and foreign youths.Well, I'd consider the soldiers patrolling the streets to be a big change. Perhaps that's just me. Then again, the argument that "life goes on" under a dictatorship never made much sense to me. Let's wait and see what happens.
"My friends back in North London were e-mailing me to see if I was all right. I told them that I was just fine. Other than the soldiers, the place hasn't changed one bit."
Closer to home, Frank Warner notes that popular American support for the war in Iraq is increasing... and wonders why the mainstream media isn't making a bigger deal about it. (They made a big deal about the "increasingly unpopular Iraq war", didn't they? Perhaps now we'll see a lot of headlines about the "decreasingly unpopular Iraq war"... or maybe "Expected declines in popular support for Iraq war fail to materialize; some experts worried".)
In a related topic, Frank also asks an interesting question. Given that tens of thousands of Bronze Stars have been awarded in the Iraq war, along with more then 10,000 Purple Hearts, nearly 200 Silver Stars, and even a Medal of Honor, where are the heroes' stories? In an era when Americans are crying out for heroes -- have you seen the movie marquees lately? -- there are genuine heroes, who put their lives on the line to save their comrades, who volunteered to fight on distant shores so that we wouldn't have to fight at home.
You don't have to agree with their purpose in fighting. They volunteered, and their heroism counts. Where are the stories? We desperately need to hear them... for we need to know that such people are among us. In the words of Billy Dean: "That's why we call them heroes, and the best thing they ever do / Is point to the best in us all -- and say, 'If I can, you can too...'".
Matt at Blackfive has done great work, in his Someone You Should Know and Someone You Should Know (Radio) series. But, as he and others point out, the Department of Defense really should be doing this. It would cost virtually nothing to set up a central clearinghouse for these stories... and it would provide an invaluable public service.
In re the speech by Ahmadinejad at the United Nations -- which sounded almost sane and reasonable compared to Hugo Chavez's speech at the UN the next day -- well, people have written a lot of good stuff. But the comment that caught my eye was Varifrank's, who points out that the West was facing an onslaught from Persia nearly 2500 years ago... and that the rhetoric then was frighteningly similar. Have a look.
UPDATE: I almost missed this:
By choosing not to cover it, the MSM not only violated basic principles of journalism (and the NYT its own credo), but missed the most important story of the day.What story was that? Well, first of all, it's the 35,000-strong crowd demonstrating outside the UN. As many have pointed out, an anti-Bush rally could have gotten front-page coverage with 35 people. But it was a pro-Israel rally -- focused mostly on "bring the kidnapped soldiers home!" -- and the mainstream media ignored it completely.
But actually, the story was even bigger than that:
When there is a demonstration involving tens of thousands of people, on the steps of the United Nations, when the attendees include the Governor of New York, a Foreign Minister from a nation in the Middle East, three Ambassadors, prominent individuals such as Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz, and when -- in addition -- one of the speakers is . . . the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, you might (if you’re the MSM) check in and see if he says anything significant, since he is appearing at an important moment in a highly visible public forum.And, indeed, John Bolton did have some things to say. Rick Richman of Jewish Current Issues, reading between the lines, says that the message was subtle but unmistakable -- that Iran is an important threat, to the United States and to the world, and that President Bush will deal with that threat before he leaves office.
Well, I certainly hope so! -- I would not want to leave this festering sore for the next generation to have to deal with. Read the whole thing, and see if you agree.
Labels: general interest, heroes, journalism, military matters, NYT, world affairs
