Posted on 05/17/2005 10:55:48 AM PDT by xsysmgr
We're in the grips of a pathology. And it's not media bias.
No kidding. Really. If you want to throw the off-switch for the cognitive part of your brain — as many conservatives seem only to happy to do this week — then, by all means, that is the story you want to run with in this latest media scandal.
Newsweek, in reckless pursuit of a scoop that might score the daily double of embarrassing the Bush administration while heaping more disrepute on the Left's favorite punching bag, Guantanamo Bay, falsely reported a martial toilet-flushing of the Koran. Oops, I'm sorry, I mean the Holy Koran — after all, I don't want to be left out of the new, vast right-wing "we can be just as nauseatingly pious as they can" conspiracy.
The false report, according to the New York Times, instigated "the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests" in the Muslim world since...well, since the last virulent, widespread anti-American protests in the Muslim world — particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where at least 17 people have been killed.
That's right. The reason for the carnage is said — again and again, by media critics and government officials — to be a false report of Koran desecration. The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.
Is that what we really think?
Here's an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.
Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour. But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies, or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran desecration to take to the streets and blame the United States while enthusiastically taking innocent lives. This is what they do.
The outpouring of righteous indignation against Newsweek glides past a far more important point. Yes, we're all sick of media bias. But "Newsweek lied and people died" is about as worthy a slogan as the scurrilous "Bush lied and people died" that it parrots. And when we engage in this kind of mindless demagoguery, we become just another opportunistic plaintiff — no better than the people all too ready to blame the CIA because Mohammed Atta steered a hijacked civilian airliner into a big building, and to sue the Port Authority because the building had the audacity to collapse from the blow.
What are we saying here? That the problem lies in the falsity of Newsweek's reporting? What if the report had been true? And, if you're being honest with yourself, you cannot say — based on common sense and even ignoring what we know happened at Abu Ghraib — that you didn't think it was conceivably possible the report could have been true. Flushing the Koran down a toilet (assuming for argument's sake that our environmentally correct, 3.6-liters-per-flush toilets are capable of such a feat) is a bad thing. But rioting? Seventeen people killed? That's a rational response?
Sorry, but I couldn't care less about Newsweek. I'm more worried about the response and our willful avoidance of its examination. Afghanistan has been an American reconstruction project for nearly four years. Pakistan has been a close American "war on terror" ally for just as long. This is what we're getting from the billions spent, the lives lost, and the grand project of exporting nonjudgmental, sharia-friendly democracy? A killing spree? Over this?
In the affirmative-action context, conservatives have written trenchantly about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" — the promotion of a vile dependency-ethos that says "you don't need to strive for better," as a result of which many people who might, don't. Our cognate sense of the Islamic world has become the smug delusion of base expectations.
Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim savagery — lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the violence, but offer no judgment about the societal dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. We hop on our high horses having culled from the Left's playbook the most politically correct palaver about the inviolable sanctity of Holy Islamic scripture (and never you mind those verses about annihilating the infidels — the ones being chanted by the killers). And we suspend disbelief, insisting that things would be just fine in a place like Gaza if we could only set up a democracy — a development which, there, appears poised to empower Hamas, terrorists of the same ilk as those in Afghanistan and Pakistan who see comparatively minor indignities as license to commit murder.
"Minor indignities? How can you say something so callous about a desecration of the Holy Koran?" I say it as a member of the real world, not the world of prissy affectation. I don't know about you, but I inhabit a place where crucifixes immersed in urine and Madonna replicas composed of feces are occasions for government funding, not murderous uprisings. If someone was moved to kill on their account, we'd be targeting the killer, not the exhibiting museum, not the "artists," and surely not Newsweek.
I inhabit a world in which my government seeks accommodation with Saudi Arabia and China and Egypt, places where the practice of Christianity results in imprisonment...or worse; in which Jews have been driven from almost every country in the Middle East, and in which the goal of destroying their country, Israel, is viewed by much of the globe as legitimate foreign policy; and in which being a Christian, an animist, or the wrong kind of Muslim in Sudan is grounds for genocide — something the vaunted United Nations seems to regard as more of a spectator sport than a cause of action.
In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the respectful deference of others, have been known tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots, and as snipers' nests.
There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable. The real problem here is a culture that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're giving it a pass. Again.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
mccarthy is not focusing on the media overlooking anything. He is turning his crooked finger at conservatives (and others) who are upset at newsweek. He scrawls out- If you want to throw the off-switch for the cognitive part of your brain — as many conservatives seem only to happy to do this week- then, by all means, that is the story you want to run with in this latest media scandal.
Who is being smug here? Not me. I've got friends and family serving in the mid east. I'm concerned about their well being. mccarthy has got a desk job that is endangered by the millions of new editors he has to answer to. And so he taps out articles like this one that are nothing more than a desperate smoke screen for the media. He implores - don't look at newsweek, look at those crazy militant muslims! Well, people are capable of looking at both.
I'm saying that lie or not 1) Newsweek was wrong, but 2) not as wrong as the jihadists.
Will have to re-read. I was thinking more along The Painted Word.
I know who the enemy is... and I know their religion. You don't yell fire in a crowded theater and then blame the panic-stricken for the injuries they caused.
All true. But no one contributing to these pages will let NW off the hook where it rightly belongs--though we're arguing somewhat as to which wrong to hang it for. If it lied (for whatever reason), that's obviously wrong; add to that that it might have lied with a motive--wronger still. Suppose, however, that it told the truth: KNOWING that the "truth" could inflame jihadists to murder&mayhem (which EVERYone apparently accepts as de riguer behavior from jihadists when a Koran is "violated"), the publication of that truth is treason, murder, atrocity. NOT KNOWING that the "truth" could inflame jihadists . . . is incompetence on a scale we don't often see--even from the media, and STILL treason, murder, atrocity. Newsweek CAN'T be held blameless, can't be forgiven.
BUT, tho the Fonda/NV example is a good one, it's not entirely analagous: there were folks in the U. S. who thought, said, wrote that communism was EVIL, worthy of our destruction. Mr. McCarthy's one of the few who has named and would like to hold accountable the current, particular evil of our adversary.
Yes. (Was a little thrown by the first line, tho--obviously a quote).
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3mi.htm
Isikoff "...The big point that leaps out is the cultural one. Neither NEWSWEEK nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did."
What planet does this guy live on?
a) Planes into buildings
b) Fatwahs against writers
c) Destruction of antiquities
d) Hourly chants of "Great Satan, Great Satan"
Oh sorry. Only a journalist would recognize this. My bad.
Isikoff to story's reporter: "You told me they would just write a letter of protest to the editor. SHEESH! Call that home security company that Ollie North used. Better yet, call my realtor."
Oh ... On that there is no denying!
Hear! Hear!
The Islamofascists live in the latter half of the 16th century, culturally. They do not think like we do. They are not blameless but any rational person should know that they will explode if the right cultural buttons are pushed.
Newsweek is to blame and Washington Post Corp should be sued out of existence.
-PJ
great article and right on!
"For the record...
"And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade."
...
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/fdr-prayer.htm"
Uh, for the record...
I think Eisenhower made his "crusade" statement to the troops before the invasion, Roosevelt made his crusade prayer known to the world after the invasion had begun. Unless Roosevelt made it before Eisenhower, so as to warn the Nazis the allies were landing on the 6th of June?
"Eisenhower gave the final order that put the vast operation in motion in the early morning hours of June 5, as meteorologists predicted a temporary break in the stormy weather.
Source: NARA
Transcript of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Order of the Day (1944)
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
"Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world."
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:_W3CmaA-Gy4J:www.classbrain.com/artteenst/publish/article_70.shtml++d-day%2Beisenhower%2Bgreat+crusade&hl=en
Seems Europe is just chock full of crusades no matter who spoke of them first.
BUMP
another one :-)
Maybe Newsweak needs to grow an American consciene and stop acting like Abu Gharib is the Mi Lia massacre of this war. Maybe they can put thier own safety ahead of their ideology for once.
There are still those foolish enough to think that Newsweek or anyone else for that matter ignited the riots. They didn't. There have been reports for over 2 years of toilets and the Koran as I pointed out on my blog, the Washington Post article of March 2003 that stated almost the exact same thing as the Newsweek article did.
Islamofascists don't need a spark to set them alight with hatred.
What spark did they need to blow up ages old statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan?
What spark did they need to fly planes into the World Trade Centre and kill over 3000 people?
What spark did they need to kill over 200 people in Bali?
What spark did they need to kill over 300 people in Madrid?
What spark did they need to issue a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie?
They don't need a spark to ignite themselves. They are set on auto-destruct and fueled with hatred.
For us to feel that somehow we are to blame for their hatred is a psychosis more insideous than Stockholm's Syndrome.
They fail to understand that by laying the blame where it is due on the Islamofascists themselves does not in anyway excuse or exonerate Newsweek for their shoddy anti-american rhetoric. Newsweek was wrong. I admit it.
But to say that Newsweek is responsible for the deaths of Islamofascists on a rampage would be like blaming JD Salinger for the death of John Lennon.
While many still foam at the mouth over Newsweek, they fail to see what we as a nation are losing. Our freedom.
An American Expat in Southeast Asia
(Im reminded of a scene in the movie Schindler's List where the maid of Amon Goeth talks in the basement to to Oskar Schindler as she wonders what she can do to be liked and what she and her people have done to raise the ire of the Nazis. - If anyone has the transcrip of that scene I would like to see it)
Correct. And the commie left didn't need an allegation about a book they don't remotely care about to decide to slander the US military. They didn't need anything revealed or alleged to oppose their country and side with exactly that crowd of monsters. They didn't need the US to do anything to side with communist murderers in central America. They didn't need any shred of principle to prefer genocidal enemies of the US to the US military. They didn't need any evidence to worship tyrants that murdered tens of millions of people. They didn't need any regard for the truth to whitewash Stalin, defend revolutionary terror, defend treason, or to commit it. Treason is what they do.
Setting fire to a copy is much more preferrable.
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