Cogitationes, 8-12-2008

• Our nation has a tendency to blame elected officials whenever something goes wrong, the implication being that these problems could have been prevented or solved with relative ease.  The news media provides an army of experts and pundits who reinforce this belief, since there is no shortage of people who have never had to make a more serious decision than what hair growth product to purchase who, if something does go wrong, know exactly what should have been done.  Democracies are uniquely intolerant of viewpoints that don't reflect the ideas of at least a large minority, and so no one goes on television to say that a certain problem is or was unavoidable, unforeseeable, or insoluble.  Well, I may not have a big audience, but I'll say it.  There is no real solution to the conflict in Georgia.  And, for all practical purposes, there never was.
• All that said, there are lessons to be drawn from this.  One is the sad fact that military strength and the expectation of its employment is the only real way to stop vile people from acting vilely.  Goodwill only goes so far, and only with others with a modicum of goodwill; brute force is sometimes needed, because sometimes there are brutes.  Another lesson can be drawn about the importance of energy-producing nations.  Russia will never face resistance from France and Germany, because that nation has become almost the sole supplier of energy to Europe.  If Russia completes their de facto conquest of Georgia, they will acquire as well the only pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Europe that had been independent of them:  that running from Baku, Azerbaijan, to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey at Ceyhan.  The United States, and our European allies, need to have a rational strategy for energy independence, including both transitioning to alternative sources of energy and to domestic oil production.  We need it, not because of the phantasm of global warming, but to counter rising threats from hostile and aggressive petro-empires.
• This lesson, however, deserves its own bullet point.  Its own cogitatio, if you will.  This will seem an unfair point, but I assure you, gentle reader, that it is only that:  a seeming.  The Guardian is Britain's premier left-wing publication, and a reliable standard for leftism around the world.  Resultantly, there is hardly a publication that can be more reliably counted upon to condemn America and its allies and justify its enemies.  Jonathan Steele delivers the predictable rebuttal against the community of common sense here.  It is a masterpiece of what amounts to moral equivalence, a charming renewal of the Western Left's long tradition of useful idiocy, once employed in the aid of international socialism, now in the aid of nationalist neo-tsarism.
• Speaking of the media!  Some will remember that last year there were rumors that several news organizations, notably the Los Angeles Times, had information about a presidential candidate's illicit affair.  Citing ethical reasons, all declined to publish that news--and, if I may say, it would have been admirable if those were truly the reasons.  Although personal integrity and strength of character are important qualities for a leader, there is still something grotesque about the gleeful publication of their various personal misdeeds.  (Readers will remember, or at least be informed, that President Clinton abused his power to get a job for his mistress, then obstructed justice and lied about it under oath.  These are not personal issues; these are felonies.)  Now, to put it frankly, there is no way in hell that ethics played a role in the decision not to publish this news.  After all, we are speaking of the news media here.  I therefore noted to friends at the time that the candidate was likely a Democrat; after all, if it were a Republican, the news would have been published before even being edited.  My liberal friends scoffed; some months later, the New York Times published a front-page spread about John McCain's possibly having had an affair with a female lobbyist nine years earlier, based solely on the testimony of two disgruntled former staffers.  During the last week, we discovered that, in fact, the LA Times's adulterous politician was a Democrat.  Jennifer Rubin discusses this "embarrasment" here.  My guess is that it's less "embarrassment," and more "wishing they hadn't been caught."

Not Just Sports Journalism

Bryan at MGoBlog says something interesting about sports journalists:

This might also be the place to relate that when Michigan was in Denver preparing for their semifinal against Notre Dame, they made it clear Billy Sauer didn't really want to talk about the North Dakota game last year. The first question (from a knob at the Denver Post) was basically "how do you feel about being such a g**d*** failure in the North Dakota game last year?"

It's one thing to ask a "tough question" when there is the possibility of an enlightening response or someone has undertaken ethically questionable activities. Tough questions in the context of the Ann Arbor News' investigation into independent study and the like are fine. (That the Ann Arbor news passed on the opportunity to ask those questions because they didn't want an email interview is another matter entirely.) A "tough question" to a 20-year-old kid when the answer to that question is going to be the standard athlete cliche boilerplate about taking it one game at at time is just being a dick.

But journalism has this weird machismo thing going on where that's prized: see any anti-blogging screed that claims the basement-dwellers inferior because they don't say rude things directly to the players themselves. I've always found it interesting that said screeds contain the implication that bloggers are wantonly negative because they don't have to face repercussions. Newspapers, meanwhile, are full of people who are wantonly negative because they like being wantonly negative even in the face of social approbation.

Ummm, yes. Dare I say this problem isn't just in the area of sports journalism?

Anyway, blogging is the ultimate in-touch news reporting by actual normal people. There's no pretense of objectivity--for pretense is all it ever is--just news reporting and commentary. It works better in sports reporting than in politics; after all, it's always more fun to read a sports article or column by someone who's fired up about their team, like Bill Simmons. But political news is also placed into a larger narrative, and anyone who thinks that narrative is objective is fooling themselves. Blogging is especially valuable for understanding others' narratives, while the national media gets stuck in whatever narrative favors its own (liberal) bias.

But because they're in print or on TV, the mainstream media has become proud and arrogant. It was only a matter of time before a Rathergate happened, or any of the other media debacles that have occurred in the last half-decade or so. For many, "fake but accurate" said it all. There will always be snobbery attached to print, to national syndication, and to prestigious journalism schools, but bloggers will inevitably play a larger role in national politics from here on out.

Report Proves No Link Between Iraq and Al Qaeda! (?)

At least, as PowerLine's Scott Johnson reports, that's what several major news outlets would have you believe.

But Stephen Hayes, contributor to The Weekly Standard and author of the book The Connection, begs to differ. With what evidence? Why, the report itself. As Scott Johnson writes, "If you have only learned of the report via reportage such as (ABC News and The New York Times), take a look at the report with your own eyes before drawing any conclusions about it." Verily. Here is the report; here is Hayes's post about it.

I'm not going to go into detail about the contradictions themselves, since Johnson and Hayes have done such a fine job of it already. But it seems that the main distinction that has not been made here by the news agencies is the difference between "ties" and "operational ties." Just because Iraqi and al Qaeda agents never conducted joint operations hardly means there are no ties between them. In fact, the report gives powerful evidence of cooperation between the two organizations. And, as Hayes points out, their short-term goals are extremely similar, so why not?

Beyond which, Saddam Hussein's ostentatious support of terrorism, whether cooperatively with al Qaeda or not, justified invasion under the Bush Doctrine, in principle if not in practice (which is a different debate altogether.) The idea that Hussein had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism is one simply dreamed up by anti-war (but mostly anti-Bush) folks after the fact. Atheistic Westerners loathe religious people, so I suppose it's easy for them to imagine that a secular nationalist government like Hussein's has the same loathing for jihadis. They may be forgetting that, whereas Westerners have the luxury to despise religious folks from the comfort of their studies in their enormous houses around San Francisco, California, Hussein and other such leaders kept power by encouraging and harnessing anti-Western emotions, just like al Qaeda, and shared with al Qaeda a violent hostility toward the West. The notion that cooperation between the two is philosophically impossible is absurd. Divergent philosophies never got in the way of marriages of convenience before (think Molotov-Ribbentrop).

BBC: Fake But Accurate

(Via Michelle Malkin)

In the face of many scandals in the last few years involving major media outlets using false information to run stories popular with people of a certain political persuasion (CBS's Rathergate and The New Republic's Scott Beauchamp debacle come to mind), the BBC is often touted as the ideal news agency. Au contraire:

On Friday, March 7, 2008, the BBC’s World News with Jonathan Charles (seen in the U.S. on PBS stations as part of BBC America) aired footage purporting to show the demolition and burning of a house that belongs to the family of Ala Abu Dheim, the terrorist who murdered eight students and wounded nine others in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva (Rabbinical Seminary) .

Against footage of a bulldozer destroying a burning home, BBC reporter Nick Miles was heard in voiceover proclaiming:

In the hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his [the terrorist’s] family home. Later, his mourners set up Hamas and Islamic Jihad banners nearby.

But the BBC allegation was patently false.

In fact, the film clip selected by BBC staff could not possibly have been of the terrorist’s family home, as it is still standing (as of March 12) and, together with the nearby public mourning tent erected by the family, serves as a shrine dedicated to the "martyred" terrorist. That such a shrine is still allowed to remain in place has, in fact, prompted public outrage among Israelis and members of Knesset across the political spectrum. On Monday, March 10 – three days after the report aired – Knesset speaker Dalia Itzik (Labor) petitioned the Attorney General to order the demolition of the public tent and the terrorist’s family home.

The fact that this deceptive reporting targets Israel is not much of a surprise. Many of the examples of false news reporting, photoshopping, and mythologizing (think Jenin "massacre") are merely instances of media activism against Israel designed to inspire sympathy with Palestinian murderers. The BBC itself has a notorious recent history of anti-Semitism, or at the very least hatred of the state of Israel.

Notice, for example, the headline of this story: "Israelis kill four in West Bank." The article makes it sound like cold-blooded murder, but the "four" are members of the violent Islamic Jihad and were carrying assault rifles. The Israelis were a commando team. The next section describes Islamic Jihad's claim that the Israeli raid undermines any chance of a ceasefire, and the subheading reads, "'Ceasefire undermined.'" This is a ridiculous accusation from an organization dedicated to destroying Israel by any means necessary, especially in light of the constant rocket attacks launched against Israel daily and the repeated violations of negotiated ceasefires by Palestinian groups, but that's what gets the headline. The only background information in the article is the recent violence in Gaza; no mention of the yeshiva students ruthlessly gunned down days ago.

The McCain Attack and Switft Boat Vets

Back from a busy morning schedule!

Michelle Malkin has had a few posts about the relationship between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the John McCain hit piece by The New York Times.

I once saw a cartoon posted on someone's door here at Michigan State that had Karl Rove trying to convince Plato that something was true if it was repeated over and over again. I think that more accurately applies to the MSM.

Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? They were a 527 committee comprised of former swift boaters who revealed the truth about John Kerry's military record. Despite the fact that their claims could not seriously be disputed, they were castigated as vicious political hit men with an agenda. In reality, the MSM was trying to cover for a politician who lied to Congress about what he actually did in Vietnam.

The drive-by of John McCain is of a totally different quality. Why? Well, first of all, it was shoddy reporting. There's really no evidence that John McCain ever had an affair with the woman in question. Second, it was released by an allegedly major news institution at exactly the time when it would deal the most damage, even though they had the "story" for three months. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told just that: the truth. And in this a 527 committee outdid The New York Times, which instead resorted to hearsay and rumors, more fitting for a tabloid than an objective news source. The Grey Lady is losing circulation, and this isn't a step in the right direction.

The New York Tabloid

This is all over the Blogosphere, but I got it from Powerline Blog.

Remember those rumors that the news media knew that one of the presidential candidates was having an affair, but they didn't want to release it because it was kind of a cheap shot? Well, it appears as though they found out when they should use it; right when the alleged adulterer won his party's nomination. I wonder which party? The evidence isn't even all that great; this is just plain old bad reporting by a once-great national news institution.

The media's backstabbing of media-friendly John McCain is one of the most predictable stories of the election. They will always, always, always back whichever candidate is more liberal, and hopefully that's always the Democrat. It certainly will be this election.

Why the LAT is SOL

("Sorry Out of Luck," that is, as my friend Mike Stein would put it.)

Captain Ed Morrissey comments on the absurd editorial in the LA Times today. Here's a sample from that editorial:

Ironically, all this good news might make it harder to get American military personnel out of the country. The better things go in Iraq, the less likely it is that U.S. generals (or politicians) will want to risk jeopardizing their hard-won gains by drawing down. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has agreed to a request by Gen. David H. Petraeus to return to the pre-surge level of about 130,000 troops by August, and then allow a "strategic pause" to evaluate whether more can come home.

Battlefield commanders know best how many troops are needed to keep the country stable, but as a political and economic matter, U.S. forces must leave Iraq eventually -- sooner, if voters choose a Democratic president, much later if the president-elect is Republican John McCain. Either way, the United States needs a logical, orderly exit strategy that minimizes the risk that civil war will resume when our troops leave.

Where to begin? Captain Ed notes that we're still in South Korea and Germany, and no one complains about that. Come to think of it, isn't there a lot more strategic importance to keeping a troop presence in Iraq than in Germany? After all, the most dangerous forces in the world today are in the Middle East, including Iran's pursuit of nuclear arms and Saudi Arabia's funding of jihadist madrassas across the globe. Disengagement from that area after a hard-fought victory is folly, and shows that the Los Angeles Times and the Democratic Party do not understand and are not prepared to fight the war against Islamic jihadism.

By the way, you can just taste the disappointment of the editorialist. What they most want is American failure and retreat, not victory, which would almost certainly mean a small, long-term troop presence to remain involved in an extremely important region of the world. Make no mistake; it may sound extreme, but they want us to lose. Progressivism, you've come a long way.

Helprin Barges Clumsily In

J. C. Watts's reasonable, somewhat pro-McCain column is followed by this piece of garbage from Mark Helprin.

This is perhaps the worst part:

Along comes John McCain, who has an 80% positive rating from the American Conservative Union but who as a truly independent soul does not fit, at the margins, some of the transient notions of what makes a conservative. Because of his independence and flexibility, he is the only Republican candidate who has a chance of winning, and thus preserving the core principles of conservatism, in relation to which he is unimpeachable. They are national security (in particular the strength of the military after Iraq and vis-à-vis China and a resurgent Russia), Constitutionalism (as in individual vs. collective rights), and the economy (free markets vs. government industrial policy).

...although his words for talk radio are absurd, as well. (Still..."transient notions." Ugh.) Mr. Helprin's column is by a wide margin more vitriolic and angry, and simultaneously contains less depth and erudition, than the average monologue from Rush or my personal favorite Rush stand-in, Jason Lewis (whose show podcast you can listen to on the sidebar over on the left). It's the same Old Media trope: those crazy people who don't write for newspapers or appear on network news! Thinking they have a right to comment on issues! This cannot stand! This is just more evidence that McCain represents the old, country club wing of the party: all the old-timers and conventional-media pundits are telling everyone else to shut up and get in line.

By the way, Mr. Helprin, conservatism's core principle (singular) is this: freedom at home, strength abroad. How exactly do restrictive global warming measures and an open-borders policy advance those goals?

Most absurdly, he talks of Huckabee as talk radio's savior against John McCain. Incredible.