I spent the weekend out of range of the internet and without a computer. It was an interesting experience. I bought the Sunday New York Times. It is an impressive collection, with a heft and gravamen befitting a national newspaper that prides itself as printing "all the news that's fit to print." Reading the Times on paper brings an illusion of authority; the printed words on the page suggest that behind the scenes, there exists a powerful and complex process by which the Times collects information, sifts through it, scrutinizes the details, and ultimately arrives at a story which closely approximates reality. If it is in the New York Times, it must be true.
Discovering that the Times was fallible, had hidden agendas, and slanted the news at every opportunity to further its political aims was a sad, troubling, sometimes frightening, but ultimately, necessary experience.
Every once in awhile I take a look at the Times on line to see if anything has changed, and find, to my further sadness, that nothing really changes at the Times. The Sunday Times showed that the writers and editors of our greatest newspaper are inhabiting a parallel universe. The insurgents in Iraq are always growing stronger; the government forces are ineffectual at best, with no hope of carrying the battle any time soon; in short, the war in Iraq continues its inexorable slide into a quagmire of Vietnam proportions.
Today, on line, Bob Herbert continues the theme. What Bush Doesnt Know is a remarkable article for a major American newspaper. The most extraordinary aspect of the writing is the impressive lack of factual content. Obviously, this is an opinion piece, and would not be expected to have much in the way of factual content. However, when one is constructing an argument, typically some effort is expended setting out the factual basis on which one's contention rests. If, for example I am to argue that the Iraq war makes us less safe (as Herbert does), I should have some basis for comparison. I might point out that there had been X number of attacks prior to the war and X + Y number of attacks since the war. It would still be debatable whether the increase in attacks is related to the war and how it might be related, but at least a reasonable argument could be made. Herbert does no such thing. He presents opinions masquerading as facts; he quotes people who just know that what they are saying is true.
Interviews over the past few days have shown that subway riders in New York almost instinctively understand what the president does not - that the war in Iraq is not making us safer here at home.
"No, in fact I think it makes us less safe here," said Edmond Lee, a salesman who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "We went over there with no real plan. No real thinking about what we'd be able to do."
He said he was concerned that "what happened in the London Underground might happen here."
Since the knowledge of Bush's perfidy and stupidity is "instinctive", I suppose no facts are necessary. The column is foolish, sophomoric, and shrill, but it is also disingenuous. Because I try to assume good intentions to people until proven otherwise, I wondered if it could be possible to read Bob Herbert's column through the eyes of someone who "instinctively" knows he is correct. I tried the "thought experiment" and I am troubled by the results.
Herbert finds another impeccable source to quote on the obvious stupidity of going into Iraq.
One of the people encountered in the subway was Andy Dommen, a musician from Germany who was pushing a shopping cart filled with luggage. He made the fundamental distinction between Iraq and Al Qaeda and said the war in Iraq was a distraction that "was taking the public eye off" other important problems, namely the fight against terror.
"Messing up other countries," said Mr. Dommen, "doesn't make the world or America safer."
And he concludes thusly:
There is still no indication that the Bush administration recognizes the utter folly of its war in Iraq, which has been like a constant spray of gasoline on the fire of global terrorism. What was required in the aftermath of Sept. 11 was an intense, laserlike focus by America and its allies on Al Qaeda-type terrorism.
Instead, the Bush crowd saw its long dreamed of opportunity to impose its will on Iraq, which had nothing to do with the great tragedy of Sept. 11. Many thousands have paid a fearful price for that bit of ideological madness.
As a reader who, for the purposes of my thought experiment, believes that everything in the New York Times is fact, and that Bob Herbert has his finger on the pules of the international terrorist networks, I agree with all his premises and his conclusion completely. Where does that leave me?
The obvious conclusion to be gleaned from Herbert's article is that we must get out of Iraq as quickly as possible to make us all safer from terrorism. But this is problematic. First of all, since the Times on Sunday pointed out that the insurgents are getting stronger and stronger, and they also have written that the nascent government forces have no hope of gaining competence anytime soon, the outcome of our abandonment of Iraq is that the terrorists would take over in a horrendous blood bath. As a "card carrying" member of the New York Times cognoscenti, I know that Bob Herbert cares deeply about the Iraqi people; after all, as a liberal with a love of all mankind, he has great feelings of solidarity with the oppressed colonial peoples of the world. Surely, he would feel terrible if and when the blood bath occurs. Perhaps he thinks the blood bath is already happening and even though it would get worse in the short run, it is the only way for Iraq to re-gain the stability it so obviously needs and wants. Presumably he would work hard to keep the focus of the World's press on Iraq after the Americans leave in defeat, and in this way would help save lives. Even if the bloodbath is an order of magnitude worse than the 100,000 the Lancet has already reported (please don't write me with a correction; I know the Lancet article has been thoroughly debunked. I am trying to read Herbert as a true believer would) it would at least make the West safer by removing the irritant of Iraq, which everyone knows is the best recruiting tool al Qaeda could ever dream of.
But, this leads me to a troubling conclusion. If we pull out of Iraq at the cost of 500,000 or 1,000,000 dead Iraqis and an Islamist terror state, it is hard to imagine that we would then be safer. I suppose it could be possible that al Qaeda would declare "peace in our time" and give up all their demands of Shariah law and the restoration of the Caliphate, but that seems somewhat unlikely. The Islamic fascist sage Osama bin Laden once said that the Arab always prefers the strong horse. If the Jihadists were flocking to his cause because of Iraq as claimed, a war theater in which the Jihadists are routinely being killed in 30-50:1 ratios by our soldiers & Marines when they aren't blowing themselves up in their efforts to murder as many innocent Iraqis as possible, wouldn't even more flock to the banner of a victorious al Qaeda? If we are having trouble tempering Islam's support of Jihadi terror when we are killing so many in the fields and streets of Iraq, what possible influence would we have if we were seen to have surrendered (not lost) in Iraq. Instead of 1-2% of Arab young men picking up the cause, there would be 50-75% ready to join in Jihad. We are already doing all we can to support Pervez Musharaf, a disaster by almost any measure except when compared with the alternatives, in power in Pakistan; is there any chance he could survive if we lose in Iraq? Would we be safer abandoning Iraq if the trade-off includes a Pakistan even further in the hands of the Islamists? Most agree that Saudi Arabia is a major source of Jihadist money and bodies; we treat them with kit gloves in order to maintain their fragile stability and a decent supply of oil, without which the Western world's economies, not to mention the developing world, not to mention China and India, would fall into recession or depression. Does Herbert think the world would be safer if China's economy collapses? Perhaps he has read in the archives how well things worked out for the world when Germany's economy collapsed in the 1920's and 1930's.
How does the Herbert true believer reconcile these questions?
I could ignore the questions altogether, which seems to be the method of choice by the anti-war left. That is the easiest way to go. And there are precedents. The New York Times famously neglected to mention all the deaths Stalin caused in his vicious, paranoid purges in the worker's paradise in the 1940's and 1950's. [Neo-neocon has a wonderful three part series on the progression of Paul Robeson from American negro suffering terrible discrimination to committed communist to Soviet apologist; his development lead him to lie and deny for a regime which proved itself one of the most repugnant we have ever seen. Her series is worth reading for its illumination of the evil of the ideologue who sells his soul for his cause.] After the fall of Saigon, very little was made of the fate of the South Vietnamese who were sent into re-education (concentration) camps; estimates have ranged from 750,000-1,000,000 victims of the communist victors and Viet Nam still has not been freed or recovered from the loving caresses of communist dictatorship. Iraq would likely disappear down the memory hole as soon as American troops were out of the country and all those weeping crocodile tears at the depredations of the evil American war machine, could pat themselves on the back, and sleep soundly, without ever troubling themselves to recognize how they had contributed to the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis whose only crime was wanting to have a chance at a decent life, the kind we take for granted here.
Another option is outright denial. We will leave Iraq and the Baathists will resume power; oh, a few will die in the power struggle, but eventually, things will sort themselves out and stability will ensue. Furthermore, since the Baathists are secular and al Qaeda is religious, they will fight each other and al Qaeda will be tossed out of Iraq. This doesn't pass the smell test or the humor test. The issues in Iraq and in much of the middle east are not discrete but are hierarchical and tribal. All of Islam is allied against the infidel (note Pakistan as the source of bombers in infidel England and apostate, infidel loving Egypt).
The only conclusion that can hold up is that the Bob Herbert's of the world simply do not care about Iraq, Iraqis, the war on terror (or perhaps, as they prefer to have it be known, the "criminal investigations of terror") and therefore feel no obligation to listen to themselves and follow their own logic to its conclusion. The narcissism is breath taking: Consequences do not matter as long as the Bob Herbert's of the world win.
If he had one iota of intellectual honesty, Bob Herbert and his ilk would present their suggestions for how to achieve a good outcome in Iraq, would turn their mighty pens toward supporting the goal of a free and stable Iraq, and would stop offering al Qaeda propaganda fare at every opportunity.
Is there any hope of such from the New York Times? The question answers itself.
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