Once again the Washington Post (5/14/19) presents the United States as “drifting toward war”—this time with Iran.
by Janine Jackson
The Washington Post editorial’s headline (5/14/19) had the US “drifting” toward war with Iran—another example, as analyst Nima Shirazi quipped, of the “world’s superpower somehow having no agency over its own imperialism.”
If we can still call things “surreal,” that would describe watching corporate media do the same things they did in the run-up to the Iraq War, things they later disavowed: the credulous repetition of administration claims about the supposed threat; the reliance, for interpretation of “intelligence,” on officials with well known records for manipulating intelligence; the stenographic reporting of ‘troubling’ actions by the enemy state, that later have to be walked back.
A May 13 New York Times piece led with the statement that Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan had “presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.” As researcher Derek Davison reminds, in a piece for LobeLog (5/14/19), there is, as the Times has acknowledged on other occasions, no evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, at whatever pace.
Later, the piece says:
Some senior American officials said the plans, even at a very preliminary stage, show how dangerous the threat from Iran has become. Others, who are urging a diplomatic resolution to the current tensions, said it amounts to a scare tactic to warn Iran against new aggressions.
So that’s both sides; Iran is a dangerous threat or it needs to be prevented from “new aggressions,” though the piece doesn’t name any previous ones. Indeed, the Times quotes and leaves unremarked the claim from a National Security Council spokesperson that “the president has been clear, the United States does not seek military conflict with Iran…. However, Iran’s default option for 40 years has been violence”—a frankly mind-boggling statement that surely warranted more than frictionless transmission.
At the very end of the article, Davison reports, the Times throws in that National Security Advisor John Bolton has been pushing for war on Iran since the George W. Bush administration, and has already asked the Pentagon to plan for a military strike at least once, before these new supposed “troubling” moves from the country. But by that point, readers may have concluded that Iran is an emboldened rogue state, threatening the US and pursuing nuclear weapons—and the revelation that Bolton is trying to drum up a war with them might sound less unreasonable.
Featured image: New York Times depiction of the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf (photo: US Navy).
Thank you for your courage to post whats on many people’s minds.
I think that all media should investigate how many journalists corporations , Congressional people, government people and military officials have investments in Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc. etc. etc. As WAR seems to be our biggest export , and if officials are making profits from war—–it seems that perhaps war is merely a money making prospect for many in government.
We all know that Teddy Roosevelt famously said,” Speak softly and carry a big stick”—–but when the big stick merely makes BIG money for some—–the People are NOT inclined to want to die so that the rich can make more profit!
Well said. The USA, as well as the UK, France and others thrive on war episodes to shore up their military-industrial complexes. Wars bring in the cash…
“Media Setting Up Iran as New ‘Threat’ That Must Be Confronted” “….watching corporate media do the same things they did in the run-up to the Iraq War, things they later disavowed…” Well of course they are..why WOULDN’T they? A corporate guilty conscience? There isn’t such a thing. Corporations are financial constructs setup to maximize profits, and for publicly owned companies there are even US laws specifying that they HAVE to ‘maximize profits for stockholders’ and can’t spend significant corporate resources on altruistic pursuits (the minor charities they support—often with customer or employee contributions—are just PR/advertising activities). To talk to them about ethics is like speaking to them in a lost Chinese dialect from the Ming Dynasty — they’ll smile at you and nod their heads in seeming agreement, and then go on doing what they want to do. So, until there’s some reduction in profits — or some government policy that somehow can affect them —- that can be traced directly to a corporate action, they’re not about to voluntarily change anything, even when they screw-up 2, 3, or more times as long as they can show a profit. Until readers/viewers stop paying attention, it’s hard to envision the MSM changing.
The “Judith Millerization” of the NY Times was the end of any objectivity of NY Times journalism regarding its promotion of aggressive, illegal warfare. In the frenetic, vicious economic world for media profit, the institution compromised its reporting standards. Miller herself said it’s not a reporters job to report on the accuracy of sources or to protect against media manipulation by the government. She made herself a media rock star at the expense of the public trust. NY Times editors sold the reputation of their paper to a charlatan reporter simply because she was getting lots of clicks. Likewise remember Jeff Gannon, the Bush supporter who faked that he was a journalist, and for nearly two years was a Bush plant in the pool of White House reporters, sidestepping normal journalistic requirements by getting day passes, which would have exposed his amateur, rank partisanship. Everyone is still keeping hush on what he was doing checking into and out of the White House on days on which there were no press conferences.
Reporting on war is such a titillating, profit inducing business for the NY Times (and all media, for that matter), that they can’t help running a full spectrum of opinions, even the outlandish ones that posit non-existent conflict scenarios in order to drive profitability of reporting on the non-existent conflict until it actually becomes a real conflict. There is now a jaded business in “non-event events,” as the term is used to described “wondering” about weird, bizarre things that may or may not exist whenever there’s a lull in the news cycle.
All challenges to the warmongering class are branded as weak, mushy thinking, opening us to attack, sourced by appeasers whose sexual virility is decidedly limp. These people won’t simply “man up,” get a gun and do the right thing. That was Sarah Palin’s response to pressing issues: men need to “man up.”
Notice how in contrast there’s never any investigative journalism centered on how the post-menopausal hormonal imbalances in the dry uteruses of Veep Pence and permaculture-war Bolten are affecting their rationality and making them emotional and hysterical (men) where they see everywhere giant Lord of the Rings spiders like someone on a bad psychedelic trip. No, instead we must all submit to their Father knows best stentorian tones about the end of the world, and the return of Jesus riding madman style in a saddle strapped to a tomahawk cruise missile. Their apocalyptic philosophy makes the Unabomer’s dissertation look normal by comparison. We should immediately move to DEFCON 1 and put all our nuclear bombers, submarines and high orbit laser weaponry on high alert just in case something might happen to which — for the sake of the Jesus, the Prince of Peace, we would need to respond in a first strike so as to annihilate all life on the planet in order to usher in — like the Heaven’s Gate and Jim Jones communities — the reign of God.
These people are not unhinged. That makes it sound like their doors can be put back on hinges. Rather their houses have no hinges or doors at all, neither windows nor walls. They live on spaceships orbiting planet earth where they pore over compute models simulating the probabilities that various civilizations will outlast one another as well as the efficacy of various mind control mechanisms in attenuating those who would deviate from the scripted allowable behaviors.
One day people will look back on all the ranting of the warfare class in the U.S. with the same wonderment that we do now of a previous time when industries pumped the industrial residue of heavy metals into our own drinking water, poisoning ourselves on our own self-created toxins. This summer the Arctic ice pack is predicted to shrink to the point where intercontinental cargo ships will navigate across the top of the world. Pay no attention to the mere distraction of the extinction of the biosphere of the planet. Maybe Jerry Seinfeld can make up a good joke.
You’ve said it all…!
Set aside that it’s no more legitimate for the US to have nuclear weapons than Iran. And set aside that US intelligence has perennially reported that by all ostensible proofs Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Why shouldn’t Iran pursue a nuclear weapon given that the US has abrogated the JCPOA and leveled at Iran crushing sanctions. Years ago when I read Alexander Cockburn assert that so long as the US had nuclear weapons all countries should have them. I was aghast and horrified that Cockburn could aver such. But the more I thought about it the more sense it made. If the most martial and reckless country on Earth can have and threaten the world with nuclear weapons, why shouldn’t everybody?
Ask that question to Israel…!
I think of words as i think of all mysteries. But words like Trump, god, gods, NT god, OT, god, demon, satan a lot more mysterious [thus also more dangerous] than words like bread, home, water, etc.
To help prevent war with Iran, please sign the petition:
https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=13684
Thank you.
americans are fucking stupid and they deserve this rubbish government
Do we in the rest of the world do?
Johnnie,
You said, “americans are fucking stupid and they deserve this rubbish government”
Being American, therefore “stupid”, I need an explanation of what I do not understand.
If one is “stupid” by nature, surely one cannot be held responsible, any more than one can be held responsible for being born blind? It is tragic.
There can be no moral culpability.
Surely you realize that the “stupid” would prefer to be intelligent, if only so that their lives could be easier. Do you know someone who enjoys being duped? If you do, I suggest that is a rare bird.
How do Americans “deserve” a government that intentionally ruins prosperity and destroys freedom and countless lives in the US and around the globe?
Are you foolish enough to think we “voted for” this?
Nevertheless, if we had done by virtue of native stupidity, that would be in itself our absolution. You are wrong to condemn us for a flaw inflicted by nature (and by social and psychological engineering devised and in place before we were born).
Your reasoning seems to be that if one lacks intelligence, one deserves to be hurt.
Those committing crimes against humanity reason identically. It’s “might makes right”. If they are smart enough to get away with tyranny, they believe that those who do not understand or cannot figure out a way to end the abuse and horror “deserve” it.
Can you enlighten me as to how this idea, however intelligent it may be, is not deluded thinking? I imagine that premises chosen, underlying values, affect the result of any logical case for it. I might not accept those values.
Might does not make right. Power is meaningless without good will toward all, except as a way of destruction and misery for all.
All this points to the fact that the USA see their imperialistic hold on the world shrinking, more and more… A few more good old wars to flex their muscles… The worst is that their mindless complexe of “american exceptionnalism” could bring us all down!
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waiting your reply
thanks