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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
16, 2006
Operation Last Resort
The
New Media Offensive to Prolong the Iraq War
By NORMAN SOLOMON
The American media establishment has
launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing
U.S. troops from Iraq.
In the latest media assault,
right-wing outfits like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal
editorial page are secondary. The heaviest firepower is now coming
from the most valuable square inches of media real estate in
the USA -- the front page of the New York Times.
The present situation is grimly
instructive for anyone who might wonder how the Vietnam War could
continue for years while opinion polls showed that most Americans
were against it. Now, in the wake of midterm elections widely
seen as a rebuke to the Iraq war, powerful media institutions
are feverishly spinning against a pullout of U.S. troops.
Under the headline "Get
Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say," the Nov. 15
front page of the New York Times prominently featured a "Military
Analysis" by Michael Gordon. The piece reported that --
while some congressional Democrats are saying withdrawal of U.S.
troops "should begin within four to six months" --
"this argument is being challenged by a number of military
officers, experts and former generals, including some who have
been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration's
Iraq policies."
Reporter Gordon appeared hours
later on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, fully morphing into an unabashed
pundit as he declared that withdrawal is "simply not realistic."
Sounding much like a Pentagon spokesman, Gordon went on to state
in no uncertain terms that he opposes a pullout.
If a New York Times military-affairs
reporter went on television to advocate for withdrawal of U.S.
troops as unequivocally as Gordon advocated against any such
withdrawal during his Nov. 15 appearance on CNN, he or she would
be quickly reprimanded -- and probably would be taken off the
beat -- by the Times hierarchy. But the paper's news department
eagerly fosters reporting that internalizes and promotes the
basic worldviews of the country's national security state.
That's how and why the Times
front page was so hospitable to the work of Judith Miller during
the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. That's how and why the Times
is now so hospitable to the work of Michael Gordon.
At this point, categories like
"vehement critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policies"
are virtually meaningless. The bulk of the media's favorite "vehement
critics" are opposed to reduction of U.S. involvement in
the Iraq carnage, and some of them are now openly urging an increase
in U.S. troop levels for the occupation.
These days, media coverage
of U.S. policy in Iraq often seems to be little more than a remake
of how mainstream news outlets portrayed Washington's options
during the war in Vietnam. Routine deference to inside-the-Beltway
conventional wisdom has turned many prominent journalists into
co-producers of a "Groundhog Day" sequel that insists
the U.S. war effort must go on.
During the years since the
fall of Saddam, countless news stories and commentaries have
compared the ongoing disaster in Iraq to the Vietnam War. But
those comparisons have rarely illuminated the most troubling
parallels between the U.S. media coverage of both wars.
Whether in 1968 or 2006, most
of the Washington press corps has been at pains to portray withdrawal
of U.S. troops as impractical and unrealistic.
Contrary to myths about media
coverage of the Vietnam War, the American press lagged way behind
grassroots antiwar sentiment in seriously contemplating a U.S.
pullout from Vietnam. The lag time amounted to several years
-- and meant the additional deaths of tens of thousands of Americans
and perhaps 1 million more Vietnamese people.
A survey by the Boston Globe,
conducted in February 1968, found that out of 39 major daily
newspapers in the United States, not one had editorialized for
withdrawing American troops from Vietnam. Today -- despite the
antiwar tilt of national opinion polls and the recent election
-- advocacy of a U.S. pullout from Iraq seems almost as scarce
among modern-day media elites.
The standard media evasions
amount to kicking the bloody can down the road. Careful statements
about benchmarks and getting tough with the Baghdad government
(as with the Saigon government) are markers for a national media
discourse that dodges instead of enlivens debate.
Many journalists are retreading
the notion that the pullout option is not a real option at all.
And the Democrats who'll soon be running Congress, we're told,
wouldn't -- and shouldn't -- dare to go that far if they know
what's good for them.
Implicit in such media coverage
is the idea that the real legitimacy for U.S. war policymaking
rests with the president, not the Congress. When I ponder that
assumption, I think about 42-year-old footage of the CBS program
"Face the Nation."
The show's host on that 1964
telecast was the widely esteemed journalist Peter Lisagor, who
told his guest: "Senator, the Constitution gives to the
president of the United States the sole responsibility for the
conduct of foreign policy."
"Couldn't be more wrong,"
Sen. Wayne Morse broke in with his sandpapery voice. "You
couldn't make a more unsound legal statement than the one you
have just made. This is the promulgation of an old fallacy that
foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States.
That's nonsense."
Lisagor was almost taunting
as he asked, "To whom does it belong then, Senator?"
Morse did not miss a beat.
"It belongs to the American people," he shot back --
and "I am pleading that the American people be given the
facts about foreign policy."
The journalist persisted: "You
know, Senator, that the American people cannot formulate and
execute foreign policy."
Morse's response was indignant:
"Why do you say that? ... I have complete faith in the ability
of the American people to follow the facts if you'll give them.
And my charge against my government is, we're not giving the
American people the facts."
Morse, the senior senator from
Oregon, was passionate about the U.S. Constitution as well as
international law. And, while rejecting the widely held notion
that foreign policy belongs to the president, he spoke in unflinching
terms about the Vietnam War. At a hearing of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, on Feb. 27, 1968, Morse said that he did
not "intend to put the blood of this war on my hands."
And, prophetically, Morse added:
"We're going to become guilty, in my judgment, of being
the greatest threat to the peace of the world. It's an ugly reality,
and we Americans don't like to face up to it."
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