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Times Watch for 04/07/03
We Want Blood
First it was Times TV reporter Alessandra Stanley -- now magazine reporter David Carr is complaining there’s not enough blood on TV. In “Telling War's Deadly Story at Just Enough Distance,” a Monday piece reported by Carr, Jim Rutenberg and Jacques Steinberg and written by Carr, he argues: “Some cultural critics say that the relatively softened imagery has more to do with a political need to celebrate victory without dwelling on its price. If this is war, they ask, where is the gore?”
Carr quotes left-wing scholar Susan Sontag: "War is about dead people, not gorgeous-looking soldiers.” What Carr doesn’t quote is Sontag’s New Yorker piece from the days after 9-11, in which she likened the 9-11 terror to the then-NATO sorties enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq:
“Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq?”If Sontag thought America’s actions in Iraq before 9-11 resembled the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, it’s no surprise she’s opposed to the present-day war on Iraq. Another Carr source is a news executive from the Arab news network Al Jazeera, who tells Carr, "What happens in Iraq is not covered honestly on CNN, BBC. We don't see any of those killed by the American forces."
For the
Times R.W. Apple, the Worm Turns -- Again
Times scribe R. W. Apple can’t make up his mind about Iraq. His March 30 piece “Bush's Peril: Shifting Sand and Fickle Opinion,” outlines possible perils for the war effort, including street-to-street fighting in Baghdad.
Perhaps realizing that’s a non-starter, Apple’s front-page piece this Saturday, “Dash to Baghdad Leaves Debate in Dust,” basically says “never mind” to all that. Apple writes: “The allied invasion of Iraq has accelerated with stunning speed in less than a week. No less remarkable has been the transformation of the political atmosphere at home and, to a lesser degree, abroad.”
But on Sunday, a newly sour Apple reverts to form: “No vainglorious pledge was made to capture Mr. Hussein, ‘dead or alive,’ as had been made with respect to the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, …who is embarrassingly still at large, as far as anyone here can discover. If the Iraqi dictator has indeed survived so far, he might well survive a little longer. He might even slip out of the encirclement of Baghdad, making his way through the chaos of defeat to try to mount a long, costly underground campaign against first the American occupiers of the city and then the new Iraqi government there. Certainly he could find shelter in any of several Arab countries hostile to the allied forces' invasion, if not enamored of the old government.”
And Hussein could sprout wings and fly—as usual, Apple’s speculations ride way ahead of the facts on the ground, just as they did in Afghanistan, when he termed the conflict a Vietnam-style “quagmire” less than two months into the war.
Apple’s idle conjecture isn’t limited to Hussein: He also fears prolonged American presence in Iraq could generate “resentment if not handled with a deftness rare in the annals of triumphant armies. That, in turn, could fuel the kind of resistance to a new government that the United States wishes to minimize, even if Mr. Hussein is killed or captured. It could also further destabilize the Middle East as a whole — precisely the opposite of what Washington has set out to achieve.”
Apple states it’s also vital Bush finds Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction—though Apple himself seems to doubt they exist: “It is crucial for allied forces to find the weapons of mass destruction that Britain and the United States insist the Iraqi government has hidden away. Failure would not only make Mr. Bush and his British ally, Tony Blair, look a little foolish, striking at the central pillar of their justification for the war, but it would also leave the lingering possibility that the weapons were smuggled out of Iraq before the allies even arrived there. That would leave the possibility of their use in future acts of terrorism in the West.” Speaking of looking “a little foolish,” note that Apple declines to speculate whether Iraq will become another Vietnam.
…Three words not often associated with Times columnist Maureen Dowd. But her tribute to fallen journalist Michael Kelly satisfies all three requirements.
From the
“Oh Yeah?” Department
Front-page headline for the Sunday
Times:
“Defiant Iraqis Say U.S. Push Was Thwarted”
Jane Perlez shows a little impatience in “Preparing for Post-Hussein and Potential Dangers,” her Sunday story from Kuwait:
“As the war has dragged on longer than expected, and the Iraqis have put up stiffer resistance, the security of the members of the Americans in Baghdad has become a more urgent matter.”
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org