The New York Times defends its country’s innocence.
The New York Times, in its recent rebuff of comments President Donald Trump made about Russia, seems not to have evolved its understanding of US geopolitics past an 8th grade level. Trump had been asked by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly (2/5/17) why he wouldn’t condemn Vladimir Putin, whom O’Reilly called a “killer.”
“You got a lot of killers,” Trump told O’Reilly. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”
Naturally, this prompted a torrent of pearl-clutching from liberal patriots aghast that the president could equate the moral worth of the United States with that of the dastardly Russians. Most prominent among these was the New York Times, whose editorial board published a flag-waving scolding called “Blaming America First” (2/7/17):
Asserting the moral and political superiority of the United States over Russia has not traditionally been a difficult maneuver for American presidents. But rather than endorsing American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump seemed to appreciate Mr. Putin’s brutality—which includes bombing civilians in Syria and, his accusers allege, responsibility for a trail of dead political opponents and journalists at home—and suggested America acts the same way.
Oh my, the horror.
A rough look at the actions in question since Putin has been in office reveals this outrage to be, at best, misplaced. One tally by Airwars, a Western nonprofit, puts the total number of Syrian civilians killed by Russia since it entered the war in September 2015 at just over 4,000, or 0.8–0.4 percent of the 500,000 to 1 million civilians who died due to George W. Bush’s unilateral invasion of Iraq in 2003. Add to this the thousands of other civilians killed in other theaters of the “War on Terror” under the Bush and Obama administrations, including Afghanistan, Libya and Syria itself, and the idea of pointing to respect for civilian lives as something that elevates the United States above Russia seems a little absurd.
But the addition of stifling dissent and allegedly killing journalists takes Russia over the line into Bad Guy territory, the Times suggests—ignoring the US’s own harsh punishment for whistleblowers, infiltration of dissident groups and bombing of foreign journalists. Not to mention the US’s sprawling, unprecedented incarceration system, or its unmatched institutional racism–all human right abuses leveled at home.
The Times goes on to insist that “no American president has done what Mr. Putin has done,” including “invading Ukraine” and “interfering in the American election.” Of course, American presidents have invaded other countries and intervened in other elections, but for reasons unclear, the Times suggests that those two cases are the ones that indicate the US’s moral superiority over Russia.
The New York Times briefly mentions the Iraq War and torture, but whistles past these episodes by insisting they were “terrible mistakes.” The Times seems to be under the impression that Russia kills innocents for laughs, while the United States does so only with the best of intentions:
At least in recent decades, American presidents who took military action have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy, sometimes with extraordinary results, as when Germany and Japan evolved after World War II from vanquished enemies into trusted, prosperous allies.
That US invasions “have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy” is not argued, let alone proved; it’s presented as an article of faith. As the Times’ “recent decades” go back to World War II, the United States presumably killed an estimated 3.8 million in Vietnam “to promote freedom and democracy”—despite President Dwight Eisenhower admitting that given the chance, 80 percent of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, the leader whose government the US opposed. Implicitly, the US’s use of covert terror to try to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua, and US military support for death squad regimes elsewhere in Central America, were likewise motivated by a longing for freedom and democracy.
As FAIR (9/30/16) has noted, the most important function of major editorial boards is to be gatekeepers of national security orthodoxy. And there is no more axiomatic orthodoxy than American exceptionalism. One can handwring over “mistakes,” even occasionally do harsh reporting on American war crimes—so long as one arrives back at the position of American moral superiority. “Yes, America has made mistakes,” the good liberal insists, “but at least we don’t do this other bad thing that is, unaccountably, uniquely disqualifying.”
Clearly, Trump’s motives in questioning American innocence were anything but liberal or noble. He was evoking America’s own sins not to challenge them, but to apologize for those of the Russian president and, preemptively, his own. But the outrage over Trump’s comments from pundits and editorial boards did not seek to spotlight his cynicism and its dark implications, but rather to insist that the United States is, in fact, on a higher moral plane than Russia. This is a childish assertion that serves to flatter the ego of American readers while legitimizing their government’s crimes.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can find him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
A liberal dose of duplicity
Not only that but each wing of the major party is guilty of “interfering in the American election(sic).”
While I take issue with Adam’s apparent subscription to the Chomskyan narrative of America as a malevolent evildoer, I think the overall point of this article is a good one.
Dan, it’s not just a narrative, it’s the truth. Forget the “American exceptionalism” narrative you learned in school, and research the US’s *real* history. My guess is you won’t like what you discover, but at least it’ll open your eyes.
Your first sentence is some next-level Kool-Aid drinking, TeeJae. “Truth” in this case is completely illusory. There are ONLY competing narratives, and the only way to get close to something resembling the actual truth is to absorb and synthesize the most credible of these into something cogent. While I think the “true” course the US has charted along the moral landscape is probably slightly closer to the Chomsky/Zinn account than the American Exceptionalism version, I find the Chomskyan narrative no less dishonest and propagandist.
This is basically Chomsky’s narrative in a nutshell. Yeah, there is a ton of other stuff, articles, research, etc he’s/they’ve written over many decades, but it basically boils down to the following (as far as I can see, anyway) irrefutable logic (which is basically “Moral Universalism”)… because any other position, leaves one with the useless futility of arguing (more like cheerleading) for their “side”, usually amounting to something like “yeah, well we didn’t kill as many as they did”, or some other generally unprovable statement… imo… anyway, taken from this essay: http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Chomsky_TerrorandJustResponse.htm, and also, this Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism… It’s really difficult to read/view his position as “dishonest and propagandist”.
See Chomsky quote below (and see Wiki link)…
“”More generally, it would be hard to find anyone who accepts the doctrine that massive bombing is the appropriate response to terrorist crimes — whether those of Sept. 11, or even worse ones, which are, unfortunately, not hard to find. That follows if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others — more stringent ones, in fact — plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil.””
EZ fix for this that is quicker than reading Chomsky or any other word-dense “lefty” – go to Wikipedia and read about the history of U.S. involvement in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. All the references are there and maybe 85% of the dirt. You can notice that we started military involvement in the 1950s. That we were the ones against elections. That we propped up Diem and then helped plan his assassination. That the”Gulf of Tonkin” incident was a complete lie and we knew that at the time. You can read about how Nixon sabotaged Peace talks in ’68 to help him get elected. You can read about how more bomb tonnage was dropped on Laos and Vietnam than on all the countries WWII. Hundreds of people are still dying *every year* in Laos today, 50 years later, because of encountering unexploded bombs we dropped there. You can read about how we promised reparations to North Vietnam in the last peace treaty and then reneged because we felt like it. For extra credit, look up Operation Phoenix on the internet – that was a CIA program that murdered over 20,000 South Vietnamese civilians in cold blood because they were suspected of supporting the legitimate opposition to our puppet govt. there. The American people are not evil. Most are decent and charitable. But the U.S. government’s foreign policy has been the most powerful force for evil and terrorism in the World since WWII. Vietnam is only one example. But the point is that it’s an old famous example where the mainstream U.S. public is still willfully ignoring the well-established historical truth of what actually took place on a gigantic scale for 15 years. This is not the individual American’s fault for not understanding this. We grow up in a world of propaganda while being told we are the one’s with the free, honest press.
It’s interesting that you chose (appropriately) to use incidents from the Vietnam years, as I’ve often done the same for many years. One that always seems to blow most people’s minds when they’re shown it is “Operation Northwoods”, with most people just saying to me… “this is a joke, or a gag, right?”
I mean seriously, how sick was this that, in 1962, our own “Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government” was perfectly willing to do this to us… their own citizens! This wasn’t just one individual concocting a scheme like this… it was an entire group of what mainstream media would certainly classify as “”serious-thinking, flag-waving, patriots””. And the only reason it was never actually implemented (…against us!!) was because, in the final step of the approval process, it was rejected it (by Kennedy)… it required the final step!… if not for that, some/many U.S. citizens would’ve been toast. “The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other US government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba.”. Thinking about it always blows my mind… and then when I think about how far technology has come, and the insidiousness of all our secretive deep-state departments, I realize that it’s very likely that Northwoods is actually pretty tame thinking (if you can believe that).
Feel free to read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
…and verification of it here (amazingly, a mainstream media link): http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662
…should you feel so inclined, here’s some more light-hearted reading (Slate magazine article): http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html
The Slate article about gov’t poisoning during prohibition that I referenced above may not be displaying correctly. It makes for very interesting reading. Once again, totally sick thinking by the implementers, our gov’t… by some estimates, as many as 10,000 U.S. citizens may have been killed. Of course, now, because it was something that happened 80 years ago, mainstream/Wall_Street media (Slate magazine) feels comfortable enough to report on it.
Here’s the article: “The Chemist’s War: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences”… http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html
And below is a paragraph from the Wiki link about this gov’t prohibition operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States…
“”Furthermore, stronger liquor surged in popularity because its potency made it more profitable to smuggle. To prevent bootleggers from using industrial ethyl alcohol to produce illegal beverages, the federal government ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols. In response, bootleggers hired chemists who successfully renatured the alcohol to make it drinkable. As a response, the Treasury Department required manufacturers to add more deadly poisons, including the particularly deadly methyl alcohol. New York City medical examiners prominently opposed these policies because of the danger to human life. As many as 10,000 people died from drinking denatured alcohol before Prohibition ended. New York City medical examiner Charles Norris believed the government took responsibility for murder when they knew the poison was not deterring people and they continued to poison industrial alcohol (which would be used in drinking alcohol) anyway. Norris remarked: “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol… [Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.””
See Nick Turse, “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam,” Macmillan, Jan 15, 2013. An excerpt:
“Specific [U.S.] command policies instituted in Vietnam ensured widespread slaughter. Chief among these were search-and-destroy tactics, loophole-laced rules of engagement, and “free-fire” zones.”
“Another [U.S. army] general was even more explicit, telling the reporter R. W. Apple: ‘You’ve got to dry up the sea the guerrillas swim in—that’s the peasants—and the best way to do that is to blast the hell out of their villages so they’ll come into our refugee camps.’ ”
Then there was the CIA’s Phoenix Program, later exported to Latin America, which Counterspy described as “the most indiscriminate and massive program of political murder since the Nazi death camps of World War Two.”
This is what Times war critic Anthony Lewis referred to as “our blundering efforts to do good,” which is typically as far as criticism of U.S. policy can go in the mainstream.
Absolutely right. Mr. Kubrick did a lovely fictional take on this .
Absolutely right America instead of cleaning up its own act points to thr presumed failures of other, WHICH THEY CANNOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT.. America seeks to do as the early so-called explorers EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE/COLONIES around the globe. And are always puzzled when others like in the middle east do NOT WANT THEM.
The um, Chomsky narrative is the accurate one, as always: “The CIA also provided the Contras intelligence, funding, and training (including a sabotage manual for Contra soldiers and another for Contra leaders that recommended assassination of pro-Sandinista civilians)” (John A. Booth, Christine J. Wade, Thomas Walker, A Booth, “Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion, and Change,” Westview Press, 2014)
The criticisms of Deep State atrocities, ruling class wars against (anybody), in service to a handful of people are spot on.
But setting up “capitalists” (by which he means Western bankers and others) and the Soviet Union’s “state capitalists” as if they were the same screams out that this brilliant mind has a blind spot there. Certainly one could say that the Bolsheviks and their heirs were the result of a “capitalist investment”, but to pretend state ownership and private ownership are the same thing or even in a same category, or that state control and private control over property or resources is the same thing or equally dangerous to human rights, individual rights, this is a sign of cognitive dissonance.
With capitalism per se, the producers must convince the buyers in a voluntary exchange. This is not an involuntary exchange. “State capitalism” is not capitalism at all, by definition; there are rulers and their subjects, the victims of state force.
With crony capitalism, a subset of capitalists conspire with government functionaries to use the monopoly of force to either ban competitors, or to regulate smaller upstart competition out of a market, or to distort the market with subsidies or even preferential tax breaks.
Chomsky’s anarcho-syndalism properly rejects government force monopoly while counting on the collective hive mind and human selflessness to make syndicalism work for producing industrial-scale goods and services needed for today’s standards of living.
Good article, but I’d take it a bit further. If we want to talk about killing journalists, FAIR specifically avoided going there, but we do need to talk about the US killing journalists, not abroad, but here in the US.
Gary Webb, who exposed the connection between the drug epidemic and US state security apparatus (CIA), wound up “committing suicide” by strangely putting two bullets into the back of his own head. Michael Hastings exposed wrongdoing by a top Obama general. Incidentally, isn’t it weird to hear the US personified in the name of its ruler like US media does with Russia/Putin? Anyway, Hastings died when his car accelerated uncontrollably, which was blamed on a weird computer error. BTW… before he was killed, he had told friends he was working on a big story and needed to lay low for a while.
Is this proof that they were killed by the government? Of course not. Just like there’s no proof for any of the alleged journalists or political opponents Putin supposedly killed. Once in a while murders just go unsolved, or strange car wrecks just happen sometimes.
Just like Hastings and Webb. Or Michael Connell, a Rove operative who happen to have died in a small plane crash just two days before he was set to testify about his role in the theft of the 2004 election. Or Seth Rich, rumored to be the real source behind the Wikileaks DNC email release, killed in a strange unsolved “robbery” where the “robber” didn’t actually rob him of anything.
Somehow we accept that foreign governments kill political opponents with impunity. But when it’s suggested that the same thing might happen in America, suddenly all the conspiracy theorists turn into coincidence theorists real quick. The subject is so taboo that even FAIR, while skirting the subject in a peripheral way, doesn’t quite want to entertain the notion.
Excellent post, sir. How about Paul Wellstone or Walter Reuther. Reuther’s plane developed a serious mechinical problem but managed to land safely. The second time it did crash and due to the same mechanical problem that it had the first time. How long has this been going on? If you have any idea please let me know. Thank you.
I don’t know, but it certainly seems like small aircraft travel is exponentially more hazardous for opponents of the regime.
“Naturally, this prompted a torrent of pearl-clutching from liberal patriots…”
I literally laughed out loud. One wonders how it is possible that people can ignore our history of militarism. You don’t even have to read William Blum anymore. Even the NYT news articles have references to the Allende overthrow in Chile and Mossadegh in Iran. How do they do it?
Unspeakable Truth: DENIAL & PROJECTION (why the narcissistic US needs psychiatric help…)
Everything they accuse Russia of, they have been doing themselves (for decades) …
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
(Excerpts from the second half of Pinter’s Nobel address beginning with „political language”, emphasis mine)
Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, … What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
… The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with HOW THE UNITED STATES UNDERSTANDS ITS ROLE IN THE WORLD and how it chooses to embody it.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period [Cold War] have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all….
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed..
(Examples of US engineered atrocities in Latin America follow) … But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
… Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.
You have to hand it to America. IT HAS EXERCISED A QUITE CLINICAL MANIPULATION OF POWER WORLDWIDE WHILE MASQUERADING AS A FORCE FOR UNIVERSAL GOOD. IT’S A BRILLIANT, EVEN WITTY, HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL ACT OF HYPNOSIS.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. …
.
To maximize profit in a war based economy,.our Empire goes all-out to slaughter thousands upon thousands of civilians in Syria.
But, not so for Russia, as it has a very diversified market based economy and to maximize profit and good will it strives hard to reduce harm to civilians and I would be very surprised if Russia harmed more then 100 civilians in Syria.
Seems there are no bounds to the hypocrisy, dishonesty and jingoistic nationalism diplayed at the NY Times.
Now that they are a mouthpiece of the CIA.
One infamous Times reporter did CIA-type dirty work in Honduras in the 1980s. In a letter to the Times, Ines Murillo, a Honduran victim of torture, responds to James LeMoyne’s reporting of the interview with her in his article, “Testifying to Torture,” noting a series of distortions and falsehoods, which “have caused great damage to me and my family” and “could be used to justify the kidnapping, disappearance and assassination of hundreds of people” (James LeMoyne, “Testifying to Torture,” New York Times, June 5; letters, 09/18/88).
It’s not so much that I disagree with his statements about America’s history – we have committed a lot of horrendous acts from Day 1, both here and abroad – it’s that a sitting president* should not be the one making them, especially in a left-handed defense of another country. Also, that Conservative hypocrisy rears its head again – no one seems all that perturbed on the Right, but if Hillary Clinton or President Obama had uttered something similar, they would have been crucified. Yes, America has done a lot of terrible things, and with this new Republican regime, we are doing even more of them now.
“a sitting president* should not be the one making [statements about America’s history]”
Why not?
Well. America isn’t so innocent. Is it that hard to accept a true statement? America has killed countless innocent individuals. Many countries have.
Stop promoting war, ALL war is bad. War is only good for money hungry beasts who give very little shit for the honest, loving people.
“Asserting the moral and political superiority of the United States over Russia has not traditionally been a difficult maneuver for American presidents. But rather than endorsing American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump seemed to appreciate Mr. Putin’s brutality—which includes bombing civilians in Syria and, his accusers allege, responsibility for a trail of dead political opponents and journalists at home—and suggested America acts the same way.”
The above is putting words in the Presidents mouth! And they (media or those in the power in Washington) do it, because they know its true, those in this nation can justify just about anything, including torture and murder!
Its about time someone said it like it really is!! Thank you President Trump!! And to be clear, he was stating that the “United States isn’t so innocent” We have been killing people, and interfering in other sovereign nations for a very long time. In that respect that makes us as culpable as any other nations who does this kind of thing!!
Get real for a change!!
Can one assume moral superiority to a thief in jail who stole many cars, when one stole a tomato a week ago from a grocery store?
On a moral scale 1-10 would Russia and US occupy the same place? Implying that US is just as bad as Russia is not a fact-based statement.
You’re right. A (factual!) comparative look at the histories of each country would clearly show the US is much worse.
Exactly right. Since Putin was first elected, Russia has been involved in 4 major conflicts:
-Chechnya, after Chechen militants decided to mount an attack on Dagestan (Russia), with the hopes of creating an Islamic caliphate on Russian territory.
-Georgia, after Saakashvili consulted with Bush and decided he had the green light to mount a full scale assault on Russian troops acting as peacekeepers under UN auspices.
-Ukraine, after an illegal overthrow of a democratically elected ally
-Syria, after the legitimate, secular, UN-recognized government asked for help to deal with jihadist terrorists.
During that same period, the US overthrew democracy in Venezuela (reversed by popular uprising), invaded and destroyed Afghanistan, invaded and destroyed Iraq killing well over 2 million people, overthrew democracy in Honduras, turned Libya from a stable and prosperous country into a playground for ISIS, repeatedly destabilized Ukraine until finally overthrowing the government and plunging the country into civil war, ravaged Yemen with bombs, and unleashed a worldwide refugee crisis of epic proportions in an effort to impose regime change in Syria.
Even if one were to argue with my characterizations of some of these conflicts, it’s plain to see that Russia has a long way to go before it reaches the level of evil, destructiveness, and sheer slaughter of human life that the US has achieved.
Not much has changed since the beginning of the Cold War, in this regard. Consider the comparison of both superpower’s spheres of influence over the decades:
“Between 1960 and 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites” (John Coatsworth, “The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Volume 3, Endings,”Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Meanwhile, in 1988, as death squad terror was on the rise in El Salvador and Guatemala, Times bureau chief James LeMoyne concluded U.S. support for these “elected governments” has been “a relative success” (James LeMoyne, “CONTRA CUTOFF; In Central America, Trying To Deal With New Realities,” New York Times, 02/07/88). Elaine Sciolino reported in the Times that the terror state Guatemala “favors re-establishment of a democratic system” in Nicaragua, implying that it was a democracy under Somoza (Elaine Sciolino, “Guatemalan in plea over u.s. policy,” New York Times, 05/14/87).
Please, let’s leave the flag waving for the appropriate occasions.
Heeeey, that’s exactly what a Fifth Columnist would say..
another lie USA idyspreading. what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq Libya? do you think they have got democracy? Iraq Libya are on the verge of getting decided into two pieces each. what Democracy is USA talking about?
warmongering USA can only bring death and destruction, not any kind of democracy.
Freedom and democracy? Ha, Ha, Ha.
Shame on all American major news media. Worse than fake. America has a history of invading countless countries over 2 centuries. What was USA navy doing in the middle East early 1800s,bombing raiding ships? Here is something that is never discussed but bad is always reported after 1950s. Both WWI WWII would never happened if America got involved and worse funded them.
The Pentagon is killing us. They take 60% of the budget while Washington cut Social Security and Medicare. They are the #1 enemy of the man on the street.
Great point!
Get real it is hard to find a war that is not faught for simple self interest. Sometimes we think that it is in our self interest to support dictators and sometimes democracy. The further a war is from your borders the more likely that it is about resources. The closer to your border defense. The more wars you wage far from your shores the less likely it is about defence. After all all you have to do to keep a guy from a from attacking your home is not let him in or close to your shores.
Name ANY war the US engaged in that was TRULY about self-defense, and not just a guise to destabilize another country or overthrow a non-US-friendly leader.
“NYT: Unlike Russian Wars, US Wars ‘Promote Freedom and Democracy”
The above is a joke right?
In New York Times jargon, it is actually true that U.S. wars “promote freedom and democracy.” George Orwell wrote about “meaningless words” used in politics such as “democracy,” which “are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
Like during the shah’s rule in Iran, the Times praised his “long record of success in defeating subversion without suppressing democracy” The headline reads: “IRAN IS REPORTED SUBVERSION-FREE; Nation Found to Be Calmest in Troubled Mideast–U.S. Aid Viewed as a Factor,” New York Times, December 2, 1956.
What about Indonesia. “President Suharto was a reforming autocrat,” the New York Times gushed in 1998. “While Mr. Suharto’s recent record is mixed, his accomplishments were remarkable in the years after he took power after a failed coup attempt in 1965. He made the Indonesian economy one of the most open to foreign investment” – what really counts evidently (Steven Erlanger, “THE FALL OF SUHARTO: THE LEGACY; Suharto Fostered Rapid Economic Growth, and Staggering Graft,” New York Times, 05/22/98).
One of Suharto’s “remarkable” accomplishments was the Indonesian army’s so-called anti-Communist purge in the mid-1960s, aided with U.S. furnished weapons and CIA-supplied death lists of top party members of the PKI. In 1968, the CIA called the massacre it had supported “one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s” (Jonah Weiner, “The Weird Genius of ‘The Act of Killing,’ New Yorker, 07/15/13). Times columnist James Reston described it as “A Gleam of Light in Asia” (James Reston, “Washington: A Gleam of Light in Asia,” New York Times, 06/19/66).
Furthermore, “a panel on an international tribunal at the Hague found the U.S., along with Australia and the United Kingdom, had been complicit in Indonesia’s crimes against humanity in 1965” (Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney, “The U.S. Has Been Meddling In Other Countries’ Elections For A Century. It Doesn’t Feel Good,” Huffington Post, 07/27/16).
The reasons were perfectly rational. The PKI “had won widespread support not as a revolutionary party but as an organization defending the interests of the poor within the existing system,” developing a “mass base among the peasantry” through its “vigor in defending the interests of the … poor” (Harold Crouch, “The Army and Politics in Indonesia,” Equinox Publishing, 2007).
As the greatest American foreign policy genius of all time once said: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
IsKissingerDeadYet.com
Anyone who believes this B.S. from the NYT should read General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket.”
Next to George C. Marshall, Smedley was the smartest guy our military ever produced
Thank you for this good expose. I just wish you had had time to include more heinous examples of U.S. covert wars.There’s Chile in 1973–30,000 dead, and the tortured still fill Canadian clinics seeking treatment for trauma. Uruguay 1969 before the 1973 coup–a nation paralyzed by fear of the torture techniques brought by the U.S.’s Dan Mitrione, who recommended torture as a widespread practice. Brazil 1964, a 21-year brutal dictatorship with 10,000 estimated tortured, again with U.S. training, all for U.S./multinational profit (not anticommunism), Guatemala 1954, 1982, 1983, the Dominican Republic 1963-5, Greece 1967, Bolivia 1964-75, Haiti 1971, Argentina 1976, Angola 1975, El Salvador 1961, 1979, 1980-1992, Grenada 1983, Panama 1989, Haiti 1990, Honduras 1980s and 2009 (thanks Hillary), Venezuela 2002, Paraguay 2012, Brazil 2016. The U.S. has the blood of millions on its hands. The NYT has just proved they could care less about the lives of people outside our borders, as long as the Establishment continues profiting.
Thank you for your efforts in researching and providing that information. Much appreciated.
You’re so welcome, TeeJae. I’m a librarian who’s been reading books about this for years, in two languages. It helps to have access to documented facts, but that seems to be a dying art in this era of “anything goes as along as it agrees with me” type web research.
Like any other corporation, the “mainstream” media in general doesn’t operate on any moral grounds. Many factors influence news reporting and commentary. Just ask yourself who reads the New York Times and the Washington Post every morning? The New York and Washington elite. That’s their peoples.
The media is also mainly in the business of “access journalism.” As Walter Karp explained in 1989: “It is a bitter irony of source journalism that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the ‘best’ sources.”
And there a number documented cases of the mainstream media collaborating with the CIA.
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
In the 1990s, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times destroyed the career of journalist Gary Webb on the CIA’s behalf. It was in retaliation for Webb’s reporting on the Contra-cocaine smuggling operation in the 1980s. A declassified CIA report, entitled “Managing a Nightmare,” shows the agency used “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists” to counter what it called “a genuine public relations crisis.”
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001372115.pdf
Another factor is the media’s dependency on advertising revenue. This naturally biases media coverage towards more wealthy audiences, which improves advertising rates. Moreover, the Economist noted that media “projects unsuitable for corporate sponsorship tend to die on the vine,” adding that “stations have learned to be sympathetic to the most delicate sympathies of corporations.”
Good points, Declassified Matrix. Thank you for the links and perspective about journalism. Very valuable.
So when you say that US Wars are all about democracy and freedom, please explain HOW funding the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the Reagan Administration America called them the Mujahideen back then they even made a Rambo movie about them, of course I look at them with Hindsight HOW did America know, but we come to Present day well actually about six years ago and America goes and Funds Al Nusra front for regime change in Syria and Libya , hey what could go wrong here, we are only using out Moderate Insurgents! But hang on Who is this Al Nusra Front, well they were formerly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq the same Al Qaeda in Iraq the used to kill US Soldiers Sailors and Marines, what did these Al Qaeda in Iraq Terrorists get up to they started blowing up churches Mosques if they were not Sunni Mosques ancient Temples, they started beheading NON Sunni people as well! It however got worse because the so called Moderate Al Qaeda subsidiary had a SPLIT a Schism and suddenly they were ISIS as well all those Al Nusra front US trained Moderate insurgents oops Terrorists became ISIS Terrorists,they did all those things that Al Nusra Front did but added another Atrocity they kidnapped little girls and used them as SEX slaves, sold and bought in theior own little sex slave market places! Now the Syrians well they decided that staying in Syria was not good for ones health so they fled en mass seeking Refuge as far away as they could. The Syrians I might add were NOT fleeing from Syria BEFORE the US started their regime change actions however they started fleeing in the millions as soon as the US funded Terrorists came onto the scene. So this argument that the US only funds and runs good wars is far from the truth and here I have only picked out two or three and yet we see that the citizens of the countries that they have helped like Afghanistan went from a society where a woman could walk down the street in denim Jeans have long flowing hair and wear sunglasses to a country where Women have to wear a Burka to even walk the street, also little Girls could go to school and learn to be Doctors now they are shot for going to school! I could go on with comparissons for a while here fact though the US DOESN’T bring Democracy they funded a group who would have demanded a Theocracy! Both then and NOW!
Wa ris Peace
The Truth is a Lie
Freedom is Slavery
George Orwell
This is typical of the Opinion section of NYT. It will benefit readers to disregard the section entirely.
Russian regime apologist/false equivalence advocate Adam Johnson follows up with more support for the Putin regime, using the classic Soviet/Russian “whataboutism” technique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
The goal is for all of us to become cynical hypocrites, then the authoritarians can just roll over us.
Why is the great FAIR trolling for Russia now ?
IMO, US citizens as a group have been trolled by anti-Russia rhetoric since WWII and hurt by that. These are the key elements of the trolling: 1) a completely false picture of the US foreign policy, military aggression and covert/clandestine ops aggression in comparison to Russia – the US has been the clear aggressor in every decade, while the US public hears the opposite story; 2) a false comparison between domestic and foreign policy – Russia has usually had fewer domestic rights, more abuses, and been more totalitarian overall – so the argument goes “Do you want to live in the U.S. or Russia? If you’d rather live in the U.S., like most people, then you should support U.S. foreign policy aggression (and lying about that).” Huh? Put that way, it’s an absurd argument, but that fans of military activism have made over and over again; 3) the claim that there is a worldwide struggle – Democracy vs. Communism/Totalitarianism/Socialism and that the U.S. takes the side of Democracy in its foreign policy to defend US from the other side. Again, a lie. US, CIA-backed foreign policy consistently prefers totalitarian allies that are submissive to a US agenda and opposes Democracies that would peacefully pursue the economic interests and rights of their own citizens; 4) The claim that the US has a free press which is free from propaganda and tells truth while other parts of the world listen to more biased media, sometimes driven by Russian propaganda. Again a lie. The US is a leading international sponsor of propaganda, at home and abroad. Covert US programs consistently outspend rivals and have been observed on many, many occasions to deliberately create false propaganda. Domestically, US. newspapers and television stations have typically hidden important truths from the public when it didn’t fit the current DC agenda – examples Cold War aggression, diplomacy and arms race, Cuba policy, Latin America policy, Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, domestic spying, JFK assassination, MLK assassination, Malcom X assassination, RFK assassination, Vietnam peace talks, Jonestown massacre, Reagan’s October Surprise, Iran/Contra, Lockerbie bombing, Operation Condor, School of the America’s terrorist training, origins of alQaeda, 9/11, WMD, War on Terror, ISIS, etc. All of these major events have been covered up & dramatically distorted for propaganda. Many were false flag attacks.
Thank you for schooling Mr. Francis, who still seems to believe the MSM’s lies. SMH.
Tee Jae and Josh,
Happy Valentine’s Day.
How is the weather in Macedonia today ? Как погода в Македонии?
I wish there was a way to flag stuff. This forum has generally avoided the kind of trolling seen elsewhere on line. There are people here who advocate the regime point of view, which is fine, but this crosses the line into trolling.
Yep. Nailed it.
LOL. IMO Mr. Putin is laughing as well…