Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Jeff

America’s Investigative Cartoonist

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Garry Trudeau is an American original. He draws a comic strip that has, over the past 26 years, taken on the major political issues, pissed off political figures on both sides of the aisle and entertained end instructed millions of readers.
For both faithful and new readers, his recent episodic series on BD’s recovery from serious wounds in Iraq has been a lesson in compassion, adding to our understanding of what it is to be recovering from serious war wounds, and all of this done with wry humor.

The Washington Post Magazine of October 22 carried a lengthy profile of Trudeau, Doonesbury’s War,  that is a moving description of Trudeau’s and BD’s journey.  Well worth a read.

Kaplan: Genocide in Iraq?

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Robert Kaplan describes his worries about the consequences of withdrawing from Iraq in the current Atlantic Monthly Unbound. Kaplan supported the invasion of Iraq but now realizes that it was “a bet not a policy” and that we have for all intents and purposes lost that bet. His concern now is that the U.S.  withdrawal could also be a bet rather than a policy and that it needs to be managed a whole lot better than the post-war period was “managed” (sic).

While President Bush claims to never have been a “stay the course”  kinda guy, Kaplan worries that politics will demand a precipitous withdrawal that will put Iraqi Sunnis at risk of a genocide that will create enormous problems for the U.S. in the region. Kaplan writes: “We simply cannot contemplate withdrawal under these conditions without putting Iraq’s neighbors on the spot, forcing them to share public responsibility for the outcome, that is if they choose to stand aside and not help us.”

Hmmm. So, we ignore all advice that told us not to invade, lie about intelligence information to justify the invasion, totally screw it up leading to a Civil War and a possible genocide and need those people who told us not to do it to bail us out.  How hopeful should we be?

The British Press, Darfur and the Bush Prism

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Much of the British press gave up on the United States when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, with Tony Blair’s support and blessing. Given the deception used to justify the invasion and the incomprehensible incompetence of the Iraq adventure this made some certain sense. The problem for journalism is that when reporters see everything through the prism of Bush’s obvious inadequacies, they can become blinded to other realities.

A case in point is Peter Beaumont, Foreign Affairs Editor of the Guardian who actually wrote in the fall of 2004 a piece claiming that problems in Darfur were being hyped by the Bush administration and that there was no real evidence of a coming genocide.

Beaumont used the classic journalistic ploy of assigning what was surely his own opinion to unnamed “international aid workers”. Bush, USAID head Andrew Natsios, and Secretary of State Powell were all blamed in Beaumont’s article for exaggerating the seriousness of the situation to suit their political agenda for Sudan.

Journalists make mistakes and of course it is not possible to always see into the future – but in the fall of 2004 there was ample evidence of the coming catastrophe and Beaumont was guilty of ignoring those realities and hyping his own theory that Darfur was a product of George Bush’s imagination.

Last month, the Guardian reported the estimated death toll in Darfur – some two years later – to be between 200 and 300 thousand. When does a “hype” become genocide?

The Press and Darfur

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The west is very slowly gaining awareness of what can certainly be characterized as genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. It will be another terrible reminder of the ability of the international community to watch while hundreds of thousands – even millions – are butchered as innocent victims of fights for political power. There is enough blame to go around on this one –many, if not most, of the member states of the UN – and therefore the UN itself – can share in it, as they did in Rwanda.

Warnings of what was to come in Rwanda began to surface in 1993 and included requests for assistance and permission to take preventive action from Major General Roméo Dallaire, U.N. force commander in Rwanda. Kofi Annan, then head of UN Peacekeeping Forces, refused those requests. Six months later 800,000 Rwandans were dead. But the list of responsible leaders is long enough to include virtually every Western leader, including President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright. The western response to the genocide in Bosnia was similarly late – although it eventually arrived, at least partly because it was occurring in Europe and easier to place in terms of the national interest of the Atlantic alliance.

The genocide in Darfur is approaching the dimension and dementia of Rwanda and we will in a few years be wringing our hands again and saying “never again” — again. But the warnings are there now and the opportunities to do something are there now and China’s oil is there now and the U.S. ability to act is hobbled now and as you read this people in Darfur are being slaughtered now.

Genocide in Darfur is also a reminder of how difficult it has become for mainstream Western press to pay substantial, ongoing attention to crimes of this dimension when they occur in remote countries with non-Western populations. A quick search of keywords and titles in LexisNexis for “Darfur” AND “genocide” for the past month gives 52 hits – 20 of them from non-U.S. sources. A similar search for “Foley” and “page” gives 568 hits. Recognizing this is a soft statistic, a disgraced Congressman’s dirty emails got roughly ten times the media attention received by a genocide responsible for hundreds of thousands of dead Sudanese – with more on the way. The press could do more if they chose to put resources into the story but when Congressman Foley is playing with pages, well…

“National Character Counts Week”: Russian Version

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In head to head competition with President Bush’s bizarre comments in support of Congressman Sherwood (see “Bush and the Philanderer”, below) Russia’s President Putin, referred to press reports that Israel’s President Katsav may face criminal charges for rape and sexual harassment of several women.

According to both Russian and Western press reports Putin finished a meeting with Israeli Prime minister Olmert, the press was ushered out, and Putin thought the microphones had been turned off.  He told Olmert: “Say hi to your president. He turned out to be quite a powerful guy. Raped 10 women. We’re all surprised. We all envy him.”

According to a report on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s website Putin’s “spokesman said that ‘these remarks are not to be commented on’ because they were ‘personal remarks for his counterpart and not for journalists’ ears.’

The RFE/RL report concludes with a reminder that “After Putin called earlier in 2006 for increasing the birthrate, critical journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov dubbed the president ‘Russia’s phallic symbol.’ Rakhmankov is now on trial for ‘insulting a representative of the state.’”

No Pain, No gain

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Our Kiwi correspondent has sent a link to a piece from the Weekly Standard’s website that presents serious criticism of the Bush administration – but from a conservative writer in a flagship magazine of conservative thought. Irwin Seltzer’s piece, “Guns and Butter: How the Bush administration’s fiscal policy has narrowed its options in the realm of foreign policy” is worth a read, but raises some questions. These led to an email to Kiwi that is in the Comments below….

Another Reason to Vote Democratic

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Senator McCain, on a visit to Iowa to campaign for Republican congressional candidates, was asked his reaction to a potential Democratic takeover of the Senate in the November 7 elections.

“I think I’d just commit suicide,” McCain told reporters.

Murder, the Press and Putin

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The Moscow Times comments on the recent death of the Russian investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, in its October 19 issue. The piece places her murder in the context of a country run by former KGB officials with a love of authority and personal presidential power. It describes a country that offers little in the way of hope for a permanent thaw of Cold War realities.
From the Moscow Times:

“The 12 journalists who have been killed in Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to power were probably killed to avenge something already written or to prevent the publication of something else. But an atmosphere in which individuals and free institutions are held in open contempt also facilitated these murders.

This contempt was evident in the remarks Putin made after two days of silence about the slaying of Anna Politkovskaya. ‘I think that journalists should be aware that her influence on political life was extremely insignificant in scale.’ The woman is two days dead and the president of her country pronounces her life’s work “extremely insignificant.” But Putin takes her death almost as an affront, at the very least, a smudge on his regime: ‘This murder inflicts more harm and damage to the governments of Russia and Chechnya than did her publications.’

Kerry Healey’s Lee Atwater Imitation

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Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor and candidate for governor Kerry Healey has connected to Lee Atwater. He gained notoriety managing Bush Senior’s media campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988 when he promised to “strip the bark off the little bastard and make Willie Horton his running mate.” Horton was a black man who raped a white woman while on a weekend furlough from prison. The mugshot of Horton, who is African-American, gave what Atwater described as “every suburban mother’s greatest fear.”

Healey is channeling Atwater by running essentially the same campaign. She is buying a lot of TV time to scare the bejeesus out of those suburban mothers by attacking her opponent, Deval Patrick, for having provided competent legal counsel to defendants in court. Patrick defended a man convicted in Florida, now serving a life sentence, of shooting a policeman. Healey, who had no professional involvement with that or any other case, simply wants the defendant dead, and apparently does not believe in defendants having competent defense counsel. Other ads focus on a case in which her opponent supported a convicted rapist receiving a DNA test to prove his guilt or innocence. The DNA test did not prove his innocence and he remains in jail. End of story.

But not for Healey, whose ads are exactly what Atwater would have done back in the day.

Atwater contracted brain cancer in 1990 and died in 1991. His words as he approached death contain a lesson for Kerry Healey: “In 1988, fighting Dukakis, I said I would ‘strip the bark off the little bastard’ and ‘make Willie Horton his running mate.’ I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not,’ he declared….The eighties were about acquiring wealth, power and prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. It took a deadly illness to bring me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.’

So far, Kerry Healey has not learned that lesson. She will likely end this campaign a loser in more ways than one.

Former State Department official leaves Bush Ranch

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Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations previews in the Financial Times an essay on the troubled future of the Middle East, which will be published in the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs. The Op Ed in the Financial Times indicates a switch for Haass who was something of an administration cheerleader for the effort to bring democracy in Iraq. (see W. Post editorial, Dec. 29, 2002) who left the State Department in mid -2003.

Haass’s movement away from the Bush Administration on its Middle East policies seems to be peaking as he writes in the FT: “It is just more than two centuries since Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of a modern Middle East; but now – some 80 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism and less than 20 years after the end of the cold war – the American era in the region has ended. Visions of a new Europe-like Middle East that is peaceful, prosperous and democratic will not be realised….No one should count on the emergence of democracy to pacify the region….”