No More Genocide in Our Names!
[I know that I'm back from vacation when I feel the pressing need to write a letter with political content. In response to the recent Pentagon project for Iraq first floated Thursday in The New York Times, I decided to write that newspaper. I figure it could be at least as effective as writing representatives or the current Administration. You're welcome to use any of it, if you feel similarly.]
I’m writing in regard to several articles since last Thursday, in which sources within the Department of Defense have floated the idea of a preemptive, Special- or limited forces strike against the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, with the express purpose of assassinating Saddam Hussein.
Before I discuss my view of this matter, I want to address what I see as a growing trend in journalism—at least at The New York Times—that seems to permit various sources floating actual or just obfuscating information, without anyone bearing responsibility for its content. Your reader all too often encounters lines like “a well-placed source in the Defense Departments says…” or “a Persian Gulf leader states….” Are you afraid of losing market share to, say, USA Today, if you, The Washington Post, and a few other influential newspapers pledged not to print articles with unnamable sources? Though not illegal, I see this practice as the journalistic equivalent of corporate accounting shell games. Certainly it has a similar result of confusing public assessment of the content. I’d like you to change this practice or see in print how you justify it.
Christopher Marquis’s analysis fortunately
does attribute the current Iraq plan to Secretary Rumsfeld, and notes the irony of his investigation into other Pentagon leaks, when it appears he uses them for some strategic advantage against the Iraqi leadership, American public opinion, or perhaps just nemeses within the State Department. Any student of American history knows that our country has been responsible for as many atrocities as any great power, but, am I alone in seeing the Pentagon’s attempt to rally public support for an offensive war with the stated policy of preemptive assassinations as something qualitatively new in our history? Mr. Marquis missed the boat by not asking Professor Blum to comment on this aspect.
What with all the unnamed sources floating various plans, President Bush evades the obvious criticism of flip-flopping on Iraq (as he has on Palestine too)—saber rattling one day, conciliatory the next. Michael Gordon’s article fails to address the obvious question for potential nation builders in Iraq. How will the various ethnic and religious factions ever work together to build a democratic state? It promises to be much more difficult than in Afghanistan, where the US can claim little more than cosmetic success.
So fearsome is Saddam Hussein that Democratic leaders offer little alternative to the Administration’s project for Iraq. Though no case has been made connecting him to Al Qaeda or the September 11th terror, with a catchall undeclared war on terrorism worldwide projected to last our lifetimes, his country, which we’ve bombed more or less unceasingly for the past decade, is slated for demolition, as presumably are Iran and North Korea (see "axis of evil"). Perhaps the Democratic leaders are just cowering from President Bush’s poll numbers, if they’re still high. It’s an odd time when a civil liberties-concerned peacenik makes common cause with right wingers like Representatives Armey and Barr, who deserve credit for voicing concerns about invading a country that hasn’t directly threatened us, even if their motivation has more to do with a post-Waco paranoia of the government possibly next taking their guns away .
If the New York Times is not going to fail in its charge to properly inform and provide the public with context for such disturbing prospects as the US everywhere at war, it’s going to have to do a better job of attributing sources and run much more critical analyses when plans such as this Iraq one are floated, leaked, or otherwise disseminated.
I remain grateful for the incisive journalism that you do routinely deliver, against all odds.
posted by Paul at 5:04 PM
