War is the enemy of democracy. A protracted war is its nemesis. That means not only undermining civil liberties but an erosion of the honest discourse that is the essence of democracy. A truthful press is the first casualty.
The press' performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has been appalling. They have continually failed to meet their responsibilities to American democracy. There are three paramount functions that the press is supposed to perform: to inform accurately, completely and fairly; to observe critically the conduct of our government and to shed light on any dubious activities; and to sustain a public dialogue on policies of consequence. The media generally have fallen far short of this standard.
The bill of indictment is a comprehensive one. For years the press served as propagandist and cheerleader for everything that the Bush administration did. Even the august New York Times' played this role - most notably in acting as a vehicle for transmitting the skein of lies that paved the way for the Iraq adventure (remember Linda Miller & Michael Gordon on WMDs).. Let us recall as well its decision to bury the story of illegal surveillance and wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. for a year because, as its Executive Editor feebly said, the paper's policy is not to display details of legal matters. This is the rational of a kept press in an autocracy.
Second, passive acceptance of embedding on the Pentagon's terms has rendered most journalists loyal domestics most of the time. Ninety percent of the reporting from Baghdad (75% from Kabul) has been little more than a cut-and-paste collage of official communiques laced with the occasional calculated leak. It could have been done in New York or Washington just as well at less sweat. Reporters were unable even to communicate with the locals in their native language. Why didn't someone at the NYT think of telephoning Yousef Ibrahim (their senior Middle East correspondent of yesteryear), who is still active in the Gulf, instead of relying on a bunch of novices? It wasn't until three years into the Iraqi occupation that someone came up with the breakthrough idea of using Iraqi journalists as stringers. As a consequence, the gross distortions embedded in official explanations of what was happening were not subject to critical analysis or challenge.
Three, this state of affairs helps us to understand the paucity of reporting about Iraqi politics. Insightful reports on the behind the scenes politicking among Iraqi factions was a rare find. This despite the fact that Iraqi politicians at the other end of the Green Zone could be reached easily and safely by golf cart or skate board. Our ace journalists missed everything: inter alia, the split between Sunni tribes and the violent Sunni fundamentalist groups; Washington's massive support for Aliya Alawi (three times); Chalabi's self-exposure as an accomplice of Tehran (even when he was feeding the Bushies Iran-serving and self-serving tall tales); anything having to do with the Sadrists - most significant being how the Iranians forced al-Sadr to cease and desist at the time of the combat in Basra and Baghdad with Maliki/Petraeus in early 2008; how Maliki outsmarted us on the SOFA agreement; the impact of Baghdad's Sunni/Shi'ite civil war on the constellation of political forces in Iraq.
This failure explains the resilience of the great 'Surge' myth that deserves a Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category. Embedded journalists are compromised journalists - as we understand what 'embedded' means nowadays. If David Halberstam and his colleagues had been similarly 'embedded,' the country would have swallowed whole the fictional tale of success in Vietnam. Most recently, it was embedded journalists, including the Washington Post's star reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who for a whole month told us of Marjah, an imaginary city of 80,000 when in truth it is a dusty crossroads village. Hastings of Rolling Stone is on the mark when he says that if he wanted to be a Pentagon publicist, he would have studied advertising instead of journalism.
Specifically, how well has the press served the public interest in its explication of the Obama administration's judgments and choices on Afghanistan? Here are a few basic questions that deserve clarification. (1) Who is the enemy? In December, Obama said it was al-Qaeda; in June it was the Taliban. Are they identical? What distinction is made between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban? If the core of the movement is now across the border, how can our forces in South and East Afghanistan achieve an enduring 'victory'? (2) Yet, if we move into Pakistan, what dire consequences await us? What are the chances of the Pakistani government giving us permission to take over the Northwest quadrant of their country? What is likely reaction were we to do so without its permission? (3) Obama has said that this is a war we must win? How is that high stake reconciled with a commitment to begin withdrawing forces a year from now? (4) What is the definition of 'success"? Why have we still not gotten an answer from the White House or Obama's minions? (5) The McChrystal affair has exposed the unhappy reality that each of the President's senior officials is flying solo. What does Obama plan to do about this other than urge them to play nicely together?
Has the press demanded answers? I'm not aware of any serious effort to do so. Have we gotten answers from the White House? I'm not aware of any except the mumbo-jumbo on Sunday morning talk shows that passes intellectual muster only by the press participants' kindergarten standards.
Is this judgment too harsh? I suggest a mind experiment. Let's fast forward to next year's Super Bowl. It's Super Bowl fortnight. Let's imagine sports coverage of the superficiality and credulity that has marked the press' treatment of our overlapping interventions in the Greater Middle East. Imaginable? How long would any paper/network offering that sort of vapid coverage stay in business? The prosecution rests.
There are no straightforward fixes for this situation. After all, it is just one expression of the sharp deterioration in American public life generally. Honesty, integrity and fairness are crucial to making hard national choices and to establishing responsibility. Never in abundant supply in any country, they have become so scarce as to threaten the coherence and accountability of our political life. Virtual journalism is one of its symptoms.
Bingo. That's why our leaders from all branches are hell-bent on the endless pursuit of it. The Dark Lord and his ward, Junior, invaded Iraq in part as an excuse to erect the national security state. It worked. Obama continues their policies for the same reason. It's working. Americans meantime are enthralled by the unfolding Lohan drama.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/
“help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering"…I think the more pertinent issue would be getting Westerners to recognize this and acknowledge their role in the stagnation that has crippled them for so long. A better way to “fix” Muslim self-esteem, which apparently is in tatters, would be to get Westerners can begin to see them as equal—many too but too many don’t as well—stop waging unjust wars on them & being truly impartial in the Israel-Palestine issue (the last 2 are biggest issues, I think).
In the other hand, Muslim nations are a great source of rocket fuel (kerosene) and a few of them are said to be developing rocket technology; perhaps Obama is making an outreach through NASA for these reasons. Iran, for example, has made huge inroads in this area, especially considering the fact that they are ostracized & sanctioned so much.
The press has been made much less free, and even enslaved by embed at times.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/07/empire-strikes-back-3.html
The Congressional staffs are filled with ambitious young people from good schools, as are the lobby shops, the think tanks and the media. I guess it's been quite a while since reporters really felt free to really get to the bottom of things in so many places needful of investigation. After, they know these people. They were at school tigether.
Media is a business. Like all businesses, Media is all about maximizing senior management pay.
Media is all about selling advertising. That's where the money comes from. Subscriptions are a much smaller percentage of profits.
News stories exist only to entice the readers (remember it's really all about the advertising..)
Entire daily newspapers are now put together by literally a tiny handful of poorly paid overworked page designers who simply cut, paste, and edit canned wire feed stories.
Senior management picks the sexiest headlines and stories to entice the readers.
Beyond the fact that senior management controls what gets featured is the fact that most newspapers now employ few if any actual reporters. The same goes for TV and Radio media.
BUT, the press - what we as citizens should be able to depend on for truth has failed us miserably. This is the main reason Americans mistake mouthpieces for journalists and entertainment for hard news. We've had very little of the tried and true to compare to.
I cant boast to know the history of journalism or when the dramatic and toxic switch occured exactly. But I do remember clearly that when the spinning toward war began on September 12, 2001, the media as an institution was ready, willing and able to jump aboard the propaganda train and have never jumped off. Lest they be titled UNAmerican!
Perhaps the most important entity in a free society, a free press, sold its soul and has failed us all, not unlike most other big corporations. Make the news and truth all about the bottom line, bottom line will win every time.
And just to add--apart from the press, and the congress and the war apologizers all serving the same corporate agenda, something has also gone terribly wrong in the social structure of these estates.
It's damn near impossible to ask hard questions and do investigations on the same people your kids go to an exclusive private school with, play soccer with, have sleep overs with and who you go golfing with, hang out in the steam room with and who give the best dinner parties you've ever hoped to go to.
Could I be confrontative with *my* neighbors? With the parents of the kids I want to play with my kids? Not likely. I might disagree with these neighbors politically--but slowly over time--gee whiz, "we just have so much in common".
The relationship between the fourth estate and the object of their scrutiny has become too cozy, too comfortable, too blurred. Too personal.
That beach party of the Bidens was just the most recent glaring example but it was very disturbing.
The people "outside" of that sealed world--which is us the People-- become more and more the "other" to the exclusive, privileged round of contacts between our politicos and our press.
When the Russians were there, we armed the Taliban. They could not have booted the Russians without us. And we were perfectly satisfied to have them come to power. When they suppressed opium production in Afghanistan, we admired them.
The Taliban was willing to turn OBL over to us. Our government felt a need to get in there and kick butt and do some revenge, and maybe (or not) that was fine. That also was then.
Today, the government portrays the Taliban as evil monsters we must crush. At the same time, it complains the monsters are not interested in "laying down their arms and negotiating". Of course, that would constitute surrender. Since no one is saying we are winning, why should the other side surrender? If the Taliban agrees to a power-and-turf sharing deal with us, they will become the not-so-bad rough-at-the-edges natives.
Whatever we actually want in Afghanistan, pipeline, mineral rights, permanent bases, it does not justify the damage to our economy and our young men. OUT NOW.
What's most troublesome about what you mention is that these parties, whether it's the taliban or Saddam Hussien or whoever, never change their behavior. We have always known what they are. We are the ones who change the rules or game or what have you based on what our particular interests are at any given time.
Central to this increasingly negative development is the lowering standards of education substituted with distractive mindless entertainment. Nevertheless, and though its pervasiveness is clear for everyone to see, greater political tribalism is being exaggerated to further divide and conquer. Meanwhile, we've permitted consolidation of nation's press into near monopolies and colluding entities through "gentlemen agreements" though words need not be spoken between them.
Without earnestly and honestly leading the moral and political fibre of the nation, and its global interconnections thereto, the American experience is likely to move from one lowering disaster to another until reason and sense re-enters the public discourse. Obama campaigned to be that refreshing voice and leader among a swarm of 'others' having displayed preferences for advocating special interests’ positions. Before having won access to the White House, however, he'd changed his position on every issue while assuming the presidency with both hands amply tied behind his back.
And, for whose benefit, you ask? Obama leads by acquiescing to special interests in every sphere of political engagement whereas change is needed.
The fact that Americans are willing to accept an accusation of "attack media" by the likes of Sarah Palin and Rand Paul shows that the population is a willing accomplice to this entire farce.