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An Upside-Down Media
By Robert Parry
02/18/06 "Consortium
News" -- -- The gravest indictment of the
American news media is that George W. Bush has gutted the U.S.
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the
United Nations Charter – yet this extraordinary story does not
lead the nation’s newspapers and the evening news every day.
Nor does the press corps tie Bush’s remarkable abrogation of
both U.S. and international law together in any coherent way for
the American people. At best, disparate elements of Bush’s
authoritarian powers are dealt with individually as if they are
not part of some larger, more frightening whole.
What’s even odder is that the facts of this historic power grab
are no longer in serious dispute. The Bush administration
virtually spelled out its grandiose vision of Bush’s powers
during the debates over such issues as Jose Padilla’s detention,
Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination and the disclosure of
warrantless wiretaps.
For instance, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has defended the
wiretapping program in part by citing the inherent powers of the
President to override laws during war time, an argument that the
administration also has applied to detentions without trial,
abuse of prisoners, launching foreign military operations and
committing extra-judicial assassinations.
All Bush has to do, it seems, is deem someone an “enemy
combatant” or an “affiliate” of some terrorist group and that
person’s life and liberty are delivered into Bush’s hands,
without any impartial evaluation of the evidence.
Unique Authority
But what makes Bush’s assertion of authority uniquely dangerous
in U.S. history is that his claim of “plenary” – or unlimited –
powers as the Commander in Chief are not made in the short-term
context of a national crisis or a war with a definable end.
Rather these presidential powers have been asserted during what
administration officials are calling the Long War against
terrorism, a conflict that could well last for decades and quite
possibly forever. Instead of the Long War, it could really
become the Endless War.
In other words, the American system of government as the world
has known it for two-plus centuries – with its “unalienable
rights” and its “checks and balances” – has effectively come to
an end.
Yet this earth-shaking development is barely a news story in the
United States. Even when prominent Democrats and some
Republicans draw troubling conclusions about Bush’s megalomania,
the major news media barely mentions the protests.
For instance, Sen. Russ Feingold observed in a Feb. 7 speech to
the Senate about Bush’s warrantless surveillance, “this
administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal
program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and
stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the
world. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.”
But Feingold’s declaration, implicitly comparing Bush to King
George III, got far more attention on Internet blogs than in the
mainstream news media.
Another of the few political leaders who has sounded the alarm
is former Vice President Al Gore, who addressed the issue of
presidential power in a largely ignored speech on Jan. 16, the
holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
“An Executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the
legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free
of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that
the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution – an
all-powerful Executive too reminiscent of the King from whom
they had broken free,” Gore said.
“As the Executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed
role and is able to control access to information that would
expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the
other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost,
democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men
and not laws.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “End of Unalienable
Rights.”]
Info War
The Bush administration’s obsession with controlling the flow of
information also carries a foreboding sense of doom to anyone
who believes in a vibrant democracy. It now appears that Bush’s
concept of a terrorist “affiliate” is sliding inexorably toward
covering people who present facts that undermine Bush’s
“information warfare” goals.
On Feb. 17, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the battle over
information will be a decisive front in the War on Terror and
juxtaposed “the enemy” and “news informers” as part of the
problem.
“We are fighting a battle where the survival of our free way of
life is at stake and the center of gravity of that struggle is
not simply on the battlefield overseas; it’s a test of wills,
and it will be won or lost with our publics, and with the
publics of other nations,” Rumsfeld said.
“We'll need to do all we can to attract supporters to our
efforts and to correct the lies that are being told, which so
damage our country, and which are repeated and repeated and
repeated. …
“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic
communication framework into place, the more we can be certain
that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news
informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture
of what is actually taking place.”
Already, Bush’s allies in the right-wing news media have taken
to accusing “news informers” and other critics of Bush’s
policies of “aiding and abetting” the enemy and of committing
“treason.”
At times, the White House has coordinated these right-wing media
attacks with government leaks to target critics, such as the
disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity after her
husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenged Bush’s case
for war in Iraq.
Throwing Down the Gauntlet
So, in big ways and small, the Bush administration has thrown
down the gauntlet to Americans who want to protect individual
liberties and preserve the democratic Republic envisioned by the
Founding Fathers.
But a major obstacle to any unified resistance to Bush’s
authoritarian model is the failure of the news media to explain
these historic developments to the public. More often, the big
newspapers and networks have bowed to the administration’s news
management.
The New York Times, the Washington Post and other key U.S. news
outlets only grudgingly admitted that they let the country down
before the Iraq War by swallowing Bush administration claims on
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
But little has really changed in the past three years, either in
the media’s structure or in the pecking order of elite
columnists. With only a few exceptions, the commentators who
bungled Iraq's WMD have survived and are still shaping – or
misshaping – public opinion.
Indeed, most elite columnists are still acting as if all is
normal – that it’s not so strange that Bush is saying that he or
his successors can do whatever they want to anyone in the world
for the duration of the so-called Long War.
Even after the WMD debacle, most of these editorial writers and
commentators continued to behave as Bush’s cheerleaders, for
instance, praising his Second Inaugural Address on Jan. 20,
2005, for its endless invocation of the words “freedom” and
“liberty.”
The pundits also have kept spotting glimmers of hope in the
Middle East, even as the U.S. position has grown grimmer and
grimmer. A year ago, these commentators were hailing Bush for
unleashing the cleansing winds of democracy across the Middle
East.
But the pundits missed the fact that many of those regional
developments were unrelated to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. They
also didn’t catch the possibility that elections might not bring
the blessings of peace and moderation that Bush promised.
Like many of his U.S. press colleagues, New York Times foreign
policy columnist Thomas L. Friedman pronounced himself
“unreservedly happy” about the Iraqi election of Jan. 30, 2005,
adding: “you should be, too.”
But there was always a dark potential to the pleasing images of
Iraqis voting with stained fingers. Rather than pointing toward
an exit for the United States from Iraq, the election actually
was a way for the Shiite majority to consolidate its sectarian
control of Iraq, further isolating and alienating the rival
Sunni minority.
However, this sobering possibility was banished mostly to the
Internet and other fringes of American media.
At Consortiumnews.com, we wrote that “if the Sunni-based
insurgency doesn’t give up in the months ahead, American
soldiers could find themselves enmeshed in a long and brutal
civil war helping the Shiite majority crush the resistance of
the Sunni minority. The Sunnis, who have long dominated Iraq,
find themselves in a tight corner and may see little choice but
to fight on.” [See “Sinking in Deeper.”]
But the big media was busy waving its pom-poms.
‘Tipping Points’
After those Iraqi elections and several other regional
developments, Friedman was perceiving historical “tipping
points” that foreshadowed “incredible,” positive changes in the
Middle East. [NYT, Feb. 27, 2005]
To Friedman, this expected transformation of the Arab world
would also be a personal vindication for his endorsement of the
bloody Iraq War, which has now killed nearly 2,300 U.S. soldiers
and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
“The last couple of years have not been easy for anyone, myself
included, who hoped that the Iraq war would produce a decent,
democratizing outcome,” Friedman wrote. [NYT, March 3, 2005]
A lead editorial in the New York Times struck a similar tone,
crediting Bush for supposedly inspiring democratic changes in
Lebanon and Palestine, not to mention Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
“The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of
the credit for many of these advances,” the editorial said. [NYT,
March 1, 2005]
Over at the Washington Post’s Op-Ed page, there was similar
applause for Bush and the neoconservative vision of imposing
“democracy” on Arab nations by force.
“Could it be that the neocons were right and that the invasion
of Iraq, the toppling of Hussein and the holding of elections
will trigger a political chain reaction throughout the Arab
world?” marveled Post columnist Richard Cohen. [Washington Post,
March 1, 2005]
Another influential Post columnist, David Ignatius, also was
swept up in the excitement.
“The old system (in the Middle East) that had looked so stable
is ripping apart, with each beam pulling another down as it
falls,” Ignatius wrote. Crediting the U.S. invasion of Iraq for
the “sudden stress” that started the collapse, Ignatius wrote,
“It’s hard not to feel giddy, watching the dominoes fall.”
Ignatius hailed what he called “the Middle East’s glorious
catastrophe” and urged the United States to do what it could to
accelerate the process.
“We are careening around the curve of history, and it’s useful
to remember a basic rule for navigating slippery roads: Once
you’re in the curve, you can’t hit the brakes. The only way for
America to keep this car on the road is to keep its foot on the
accelerator,” Ignatius wrote. [Washington Post, March 2, 2005]
(It’s not clear where this Post columnist went to driving
school, but few instructors would tell their pupils, who find
themselves sliding into an icy curve, to step on the gas.)
Another Washington Post columnist, neoconservative Charles
Krauthammer, sounded like a modern-day Trotsky and Robespierre,
urging an escalation of Bush’s radical strategies. “Revolutions
do not stand still,” Krauthammer wrote. “They either move
forward or die.” [Washington Post, March 4, 2005]
This conventional wisdom of Bush bringing democratic
enlightenment to the Arab world also permeated the news pages.
“A powerful confluence of events in the Middle East in recent
weeks has infused President Bush’s drive to spread democracy
with a burst of momentum, according to supporters and critics
alike,” reported the Washington Post in an awestruck page-one
article. [March 8, 2005]
Failed Promise
Just a year later, however, it is clear how off-the-mark these
columns were. Many of the developments – viewed by the pundits
as interrelated and inspired by the Iraq War – were actually
reactions to distinct local conditions.
The Lebanese protests against Syrian occupation were not
influenced by Bush’s invasion of Iraq or his “freedom” Inaugural
Address, but rather by growing impatience with the longtime
Syrian presence. Those tensions were brought to a head by the
assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and
suspicions of Syrian complicity.
A year ago, a brief revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
was sparked by the death of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and
the desire of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to leave
behind a more positive legacy. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocon
Amorality” or “Bush’s Neocons Unbridled.”
Another giant hole in the conventional wisdom was that elections
– which would likely reflect the angry mood of Muslims at this
time – could well take the region in the opposite direction,
toward greater religious fundamentalism and extremism.
Contrary to Bush’s happy rhetoric about how “history has proven
that democracies yield the peace,” the reality can be the
opposite. Historically, voters in democratic societies often
have responded to fear, hate, religious fervor or some other
irrational stimuli in supporting political demagogues who
provoke unnecessary wars.
Historians can trace this pattern from Ancient Athens to the war
fever that Bush released in the United States in 2002 before
invading Iraq. While democracies have many admirable qualities,
moderation and peacefulness are not always among them.
Anyone with a sense of history and an awareness of the
animosities in the Islamic world should not have been surprised
that some recent elections served to exacerbate sectarian
tensions and bring religious fundamentalists to power.
In Iraq, elections indeed did solidify the power of the Shiite
majority over the Sunnis. The pro-Iranian Shiite parties and
their Kurdish allies also have consolidated their control of the
nation’s oil riches, leaving the Sunnis without either political
power or oil wealth – and thus creating new incentives for them
to fight on.
The year-ago optimism about Palestine also proved to be
misplaced. Not only have prospects for peace talks foundered,
but a stroke removed Sharon from power and a new crisis has
emerged after Islamic militants in Hamas defeated the more
secular Fatah movement in a Palestinian election.
Now, rather than hailing those blessings of democracy, Israel
and the United States are considering ways to isolate, bankrupt
and destroy the elected Hamas government.
Blind Media
So, instead of democracy ushering in a new era of peace and
moderation in the Middle East, the opposite appears to be
occurring.
By pushing for elections while simultaneously stirring up
Islamic fury over Iraq and other issues, Bush is opening the
door to more violence, more extremism and more anti-Americanism.
All of these possibilities were logical outgrowths of what was
occurring a year ago. Indeed, it should have been obvious to
U.S. analysts that elections represented a huge risk amid Muslim
animosity over the Iraq occupation, the abuse of prisoners at
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and long-term U.S. support for Israel
and corrupt Arab leaders.
But many leading U.S. columnists were caught off-guard by these
developments, much as they were duped by Bush’s claims about
Iraq’s WMD. Yet these error-prone columnists haven’t been fired
or replaced.
Now, the danger is the media’s failure to react to Bush’s
unprecedented assertion of power inside the United States.
Just as the nation’s elite editorial pages misunderstood the
reality in the Middle East, most columnists are missing the
extraordinary transformation now underway toward a system of
American authoritarianism.
The pundits would rather bathe in the feel-good rhetoric abou
For more on
Consortiumnews.com’s reporting on the media crisis and the
Middle East, see “Politics
of Preemption,” “Giving
War a Chance,” “The
Bush Rule of Journalism,” “Washington’s
Ricky Proehl Syndrome,” “LMSM
– the Lying Mainstream Media,” “Iraq
& the Logic of Withdrawal,” “Explaining
the Bush Cocoon,” “Alito
& the Point of No Return,” and “Alito
& the Media Mess.”]
Robert Parry broke
many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated
Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise
of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras,
Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
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