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 Iraq
Policy Is Real Target Of Bush Bashing Media
Katrina is the liberal media’s perfect storm…
[by Cliff Kincaid] 9/8/05
It is becoming
apparent that one element of the new anti-Bush media strategy
is to blame the Katrina disaster on the president and argue that too many
resources are being spent on Iraq. This enables the media to bash Bush
on two fronts. But a U.S. withdrawal will not end the war in Iraq, any
more than a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam ended that war. It only meant
an enemy victory and millions more dead. Only through continued American
involvement in Iraq do the forces of moderate Islam who are friendly to
the U.S. stand any chance of being ultimately victorious. This hard fact
of life is why so few liberal Democrats currently favor a withdrawal from
Iraq.
However,
Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine,
was making the case for withdrawal from Iraq even before the
hurricane hit. In an August 22 editorial, he argued that “the
editorial pages of American newspapers face a moment of truth
on the Iraq war” and that it is time for them to call
for U.S. disengagement. With the new argument about the federal
government failing to respond adequately to Katrina because
of the costs of the Iraq War, Mitchell’s editorial might
be taken more seriously in the newsrooms and on the editorial
pages of our major papers.
Contributor
Cliff Kincaid
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM) Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and The O'Reilly Factor,
where he debated O'Reilly on global warming, the death penalty, and the homosexual
agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire (filling in for Pat Buchanan)
in the 1980s, where he confronted the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with
evidence of Libyan involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org),
he has been an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism and
has published reports and held conferences critical of the United Nations.
His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Chronicles,
Human Events, Insight, and other publications. He served on the staff
of Human Events for several years and was an editorial writer and
newsletter editor for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North
at his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or co-authored
nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign policy issues. Cliff is
married and has three sons.[go to Kincaid index]
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Predictably,
Mitchell invoked Vietnam several times, and quoted Nebraska Republican
Senator Chuck Hagel,
a veteran of Vietnam,
to the same effect. He also quoted Knight Ridder’s Joe
Galloway and Gannett’s Al Neuharth, as well as Sen. Russ
Feingold, (D-Wis.), who favor some kind of timetable for leaving
Iraq.
Although he quotes a Republican and a Democrat, it is quite
extraordinary for the editor of a major media house organ to
take such a radical position that is so far to the left of most
politicians, including Democrats. Democratic Party leaders who
have argued against a timeline for withdrawal are former Gen.
Wesley Clark, Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid, ranking member
on the Senate Foreign Relations committee Joseph Biden, Sen.
Joe Lieberman and both Hillary and Bill Clinton.
It is worth remembering that the liberation of
Iraq has been a long-standing U.S. policy, supported by Democrats
and Republicans,
and dating back to the days of the Clinton Administration. The
war was the ultimate implementation of the 1998 Iraq Liberation
Act, which called for the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime.
When President Bush got congressional approval for the war itself,
17 United Nations Security Council resolutions had already been
violated by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 demonstrated what
can happen when radical regimes in the Middle East are left
alone and emerge
as bases of international terrorist operations. Iraq was already
a designated state sponsor of terrorism, and Bush did not want
to see Iraq turn into another launching pad for global attacks
on America, possibly using weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Still, he went to the U.N. and gave Hussein one last chance,
through Resolution 1441, to prove to the world that he had in
fact destroyed his WMD. Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, who was sent
by the U.N. to seek compliance by Saddam’s regime, returned
to the UN in 60 days and announced to the world that “Iraq
appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today,
of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs
to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in
peace.”
We have documented the case for the war more
extensively in a documentary, “Confronting
Iraq,” and
a recent AIM
Report.
It’s true that stockpiles of WMD were not found, but it
has to be noted that because of the regime’s elaborate
deceptions about its WMD programs, it would have been risky to
the point of gross negligence to have assumed they were not there.
And if you got past the headlines of the Iraq Survey Group report,
you would find that Iraq had the infrastructure and every intention
to continue to produce several types of WMD, including apparently,
nuclear weapons. After 9/11, Bush decided that America could
not take chances with an Arab regime that was already deeply
implicated in terrorist activity and had waged wars against its
neighbors. The Congress agreed.
While the war is costly, in terms of lives and resources, the
regime has been eliminated and the war has the potential to positively
shape the future of the Middle East and the world. We have already
witnessed moves toward democracy in Lebanon, which for decades
had been under Syrian occupation. This is why many liberals,
most notably Christopher Hitchens, see the value of staying the
course in Iraq, and why they think the military intervention
has been a success. A democratic Iraq can serve as a model that
could mean freedom and justice for literally hundreds of millions
of people in the region.
Such monumental gains might be in jeopardy if
the U.S. media follow Mitchell’s advice and assume the role played by
their predecessors during the Vietnam War, when it became fashionable
for the media, led by Walter Cronkite, to raise the white flag
of surrender in the war against communism in Southeast Asia.
Mitchell is, of course, entitled to his personal opinion, but
when he provides it under the authority of his position with
Editor & Publisher, he is creating the impression that he
is speaking for those who run America’s major newspapers
and magazines. This is a very serious development.
It is made more serious by the eagerness with
which the media have assumed their Bush-bashing pose in coverage
of Hurricane
Katrina. If journalists get away with political finger-pointing
on the matter of a natural disaster, and manage to exonerate
state and local officials of any blame, they may think they can
get away with further manipulation of public opinion and destroy
the Administration’s Iraq policy. This would be a man-made
disaster, inevitably resulting in an attack on America that could
dwarf both 9/11 and Katrina. tRO
copyright
2005 Accuracy in Media
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