Wife-Beatage Journalism 101
A fascinating exercise in elementary “When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife” journalism at a top-shelf deep-think venue is made all the more ironic because it involves 60 Minutes’ Kroft misrepresenting what Douglas Feith is saying about the administration’s line on the Iraq invasion. It could be used as a textbook case of Bush lied, people died logic:
Asked why was the decision made to go after Saddam Hussein after 9/11, when even then, the United States government realized Saddam didn’t have anything to do with the attacks, Feith answers, “What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack.”
Kroft follows up, asking, “So you’re saying you didn’t think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it — more important to go after people who weren’t responsible for it?”
“No,” Feith explains, “I think it was important to go after the people who were responsible for 9/11. But it was also important to disrupt the international terrorist networks and prevent whatever plans there were for follow-on attacks.”
In case any 60 Minutes viewers are unaware of this fact, the United States had invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, removed al Qaeda from its power base there and had been actively scooping up senior members of al Qaeda for a year and a half prior to the invasion of Iraq. Operations against al Qaeda continued throughout the Iraq war. While Osama bin Laden remains at large, there have been no further successful attacks on the United States mainland. Numerous plots have been disrupted. But that’s not the point of Kroft’s line of questioning.
Kroft observes that using those standards, the U.S. could have invaded North Korea or Syria or Iran.
Don’t forget Libya, Steve. Interested observers might recall there was considerable, serious public discussion in the immediate post-9/11 period about the desirability of taking out various rogue regimes, and an expectation that long-neglected foreign policy business might be tended to by the Bush administration. Syria became briefly cooperative, as ultimately did North Korea, though neither definitively. Libya capitulated in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. Iran became briefly more compliant, until it got embarrassed, remembering that all one has to do is wait out the fickle, squeamish Americans. Then Iran went back to business as usual.
Feith concedes the point, but counters that Iraq was a special case, in large part, because of Saddam’s record.
Saddam had already attacked Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia; that he had defied the United Nations, evaded economic sanctions, used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and had the know-how, if not the wherewithal, to build a nuclear weapon. Feith believes the U.S. invasion was justifiable as an act of self-defense. In his book, he uses the term “anticipatory self-defense.”
“In an era where WMDs can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm,” he tells Kroft, “the old of idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
It goes on. The primary point appears to be to badger Douglas Feith about the past, which is easy enough sport, to try to figure out exactly when he stopped beating his wife.
It would be interesting to see one of these deep-think programs, 60 minutes or Frontline, for example, seriously examine whether any of the premises of 2001-03 in fact represented legitimate concerns. What might the world have looked like, absent the invasion of Iraq. Large WMD stockpiles have not been found, but I think any serious examination has to conclude happy kite-flying was not in the Middle East’s future.
What was the status of the sanctions regime and was it sustainable? What is known about the intentions of Saddam and his European enablers? What is a reasonable range of expectations of what Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda and Iran might have done had the United States not removed Saddam from the picture and actively disrupted the murderous dynamics of Middle East dictatorships? That could include an examination of what is known about active contacts between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda, and perhaps acknowledgement that two years after the end of the bloody Iraq-Iran war, the belligerents cooperated against the United States when Iran allowed the Iraqi Air Force a refuge in Iran. It could look at the prospect of multiple hostile dictatorships with nuclear arms across the Middle East. Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria. What elections might or might not have happened. Would there be any impetus for Arab involvement in an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or would Arab states be afraid of running afoul of an unchallenged Iraq and an Iran less isolated? It’s a game of what-ifs. But that is what the American media has been playing, anyway … what if we knew what we didn’t know when we didn’t know we didn’t know it … though that game has been sharply limited to a few narrow points of why and how we invaded, viewed in the context of a blanket, unexamined assumption that we should not have.
Had enough of wife-beating reportage? For Iraq news, views that are actually relevant, the campaign, Congress, Petraeus and Sadr are rounded up at “Failure of Leadership.”
In other war coverage issues:
“Ever Been a Pall-Bearer Before?”
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:47 am on Monday, April 7, 2008
7 Responses to “Wife-Beatage Journalism 101”
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April 7th, 2008 at 9:35 am
“It goes on. The primary point appears to be to badger Douglas Feith about the past, which is easy enough sport, to try to figure out exactly when he stopped beating his wife.”
At this risk of stating the obvious, Jules, the entire reason why Feith was on the tellie was because he is publishing a book this week and WANTED TO BE ON 60 MINUTES.
In other words, he interjected himself back into the public debate with a book meant to revise the commonly beheld perspective of his days in OSD. He was the one who wanted to talk (for some 700 pages) about the past, his role in it, and how often he beat the metaphorical wives of WMD, regime change, Ahmed Chalabi and whatever else Powell, probably rightly, say Feith and SecDef Rumsfled FUBAR-ed.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:36 am
says
April 7th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Web Reconnaissance for 04/07/2008
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Why Iraq, and why then? It seems pretty obvious. International support for sanctions on Iraq was slowly crumbling and Saddam was one, maybe two years tops away from having billions in new, unrestricted cash to use for his weapons programs. Even knowing now that they were probably dormant at the time of the invasion doesn’t change that.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
If these guys had been half as curious as to what to do about Saddam back in the 90’s…think how different history might have been. No one doubted he was a menace, including 60 Minutes.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Oh heck, don’t listen to a card carrying neocon like Feith. Or a dorm room peacenik like Kroft.
Just listen to what the Jihadists say about Iraq: that it is the central front in their war against the “Crusaders”.
Since the Left are always extolling the native wisdom of the developing world as being more authentic and noble than us first world trogs, you’d think they would listen when its leading intellectuals speak.
I guess not when what they are saying that the world’s biggest moron accidently fingered terror central in his 18 month rush to war, a line which doesn’t fit any Lefty narratives.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I have no doubt that if we had not acted against Iraq, sometime between 2001 and 2010, one or more American cities would be a radioactive ruin, Israel would not exist, and the Middle East would be in flames (if not one big, glass-paved parking lot). Say I’m overstating, but prove me wrong.