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« UAE Catches "Election Fever" | Main | Saddam's Half-Brother and 29 Other Baathists Turned Over to Iraq By Syria »
February 27, 2005

"Hotel Journalists" Rooting For Failure in Iraq?

Great article from Prospect Magazine excerpted by Normblog:

January 30th turned out to be a better day for Iraqis than it was for reporters.

The failure of "hotel journalism" might be forgivable if it were truly about prudence or even laziness. But there has been something wilful about the bad reporting of this story. It is weirdly personal: Iraq must fail. It is in fact the press that failed, on a scale for which I cannot think of a precedent. Will the big media outlets demand the same accountability of themselves that they demand of everyone else? They should, for the success of these elections was not so surprising to those who dug below the surface of Iraq.

Thanks to JimW for tipping me to the story; more thoughts at Instapundit.

Another Trend?: Strange Women notes Jack Kelley is making the same demands for MSM accountability.

An Oldie But A Baddie: One of the clearest admissions of leftie reporters rooting for our enemies came from Gary Kamiya, an executive editor at Salon.com, writing shortly after the fall of Baghdad:

I have a confession to make. I have at times, as the war unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen.

I'm not alone…more casualties would have been a preferred alternative to the larger moral negative of a victory.... Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world.

When this hateful confession appeared, letters poured in from Salon readers congratulating Kamiya on his bravery and honesty, and admitting, too, that others had shared the same hopes for American failure.

Rooting for more casulaties? For the Arab world to "rise up"?

Can it be doubed that Kamiya is quite right that he is "not alone" in these wishes, and that this hope for American deaths and humiliation permeates much of the media's reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan (and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo)?

He wasn't alone, as The Nation proved:

Or take Jonathan Schell, writing in the Sept. 22 issue of the Nation: "[Democratic Senator Joe] Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United States must learn to lose this war a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time."

Conservatives are sometimes criticized, fairly I think, for wanting things to go right and letting that hope color their analyses of the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and the world at large.

But, as Kamiya "bravely" admitted, there are others who have quite the opposite hopes and desires. And they don't all work for Al Jazeera. (Or, let us say, they don't draw a paycheck from Al Jazeera.)

Letting hopes for American victory cloud a dispassionate analysis of the facts is dangerous.

But letting hopes for an American tragedy do the same is vicious, hateful, and, yes, fundamentally, and inarguably, un-American.


posted by Ace at 03:22 PM
Comments



Your link isn't working. Take off the quote.

Posted by: Some Guy on February 27, 2005 03:41 PM

Ace-- O/T, but check out this story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7037620/site/newsweek/

I don't know what's sadder: Putin's mirror-imaging, or the fact that Bush *could* have fired Dan Rather and gotten away with it.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on February 27, 2005 04:03 PM

Is there a way to see the entire article without paying? BugMeNot no help.

Posted by: The Old coot on February 27, 2005 04:08 PM

I am shocked - SHOCKED.

Next they'll tell us Pamela Anderson's boobs are fake.

Posted by: TallDave on February 27, 2005 04:42 PM

I think the correct term is "anti-American." We wish it was un-American to be anti-American, but it turns out to be all to commonly American.

Posted by: Alec Rawls on February 27, 2005 05:02 PM

Ah Screw semantics! Let's start racking up heads!

Posted by: Iblis on February 27, 2005 05:59 PM

BUSH LIED PEOPLE DIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Um Yeah on February 27, 2005 06:31 PM

From the British magazine Spectator, circa May 2004, via Instapundit:

The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool, fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.

She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.

But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.

She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it.

The moral degeneracy of these sentiments didn’t really hit me until later when I dined at the home of Abu Salah, a father of six who took over as the Daily Telegraph’s chief driver in Baghdad when his predecessor was killed a year ago.

Posted by: Moonbat_One on February 27, 2005 06:38 PM

The MSM are fundamentally immature and not serious. This discussion highlights their inability to distinguish between issues of global import and local politics. For further examples from lower down in the media food chain see http://pbswatch.blogspot.com/2005/02/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i.html

Posted by: pbswatcher on February 28, 2005 12:24 AM

"The MSM are fundamentally immature and not serious." True, but it's far worse than that. Being Liberals, they are all cowards and so fundementally dishonest that they are totally unbalanced. Very simply, they believe what they want to believe no matter how absurd or what the facts are. These universal Liberal personality traits express themselves through a profound lack of good judgement, they are incapable of seperating major facts from minor facts and major issues from minor issues. And typically, the jounalist was speaking from the local Hotel at which she probably spent most of her time in the bar talking shit instead of in the field.

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on February 28, 2005 11:28 AM

YO ACE - Let's bang the drum against Ward Churchill, Freeper reports a group of teachers just signed a letter of support for him. I hate to admit it, but it's only Monday and already I'm fed up with the Liberal toxic waste that comes out of their demented minds. LET'S DO SOMETHING!

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on February 28, 2005 12:08 PM

"Conservatives are sometimes criticized, fairly I think, for wanting things to go right."

Who? When? I can't think of a single example of what you're talking about.

Posted by: Joshua Chamberlain on February 28, 2005 02:25 PM

Joshua,

Go back and read the post. There was no period after 'right'. Why are you taking that phrase out of context? Are you a troll?

Posted by: BrewFan on February 28, 2005 02:45 PM
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