Page 183 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

A World of Orwellian Doublethink 173

sponsible empire?60 The New York Times has occasionally been quite clear about
the Bush administration's imperial plans for the Middle East, despite its editorial
and reporting biases in favor of "liberating" Iraq. In one report, the paper de-
scribed the importance of the "new influence" within the Middle East envisaged
by the Bush administration, as it quoted one senior official who claimed: "What
you are seeing is an impressive demonstration of American will and American
capability." Some of President Bush's closest aides remarked within the article
that the war "was about far more than just Iraq," in that it sought to demonstrate
to the world that "the United States would never allow American military su-
premacy to be challenged in the way it was during the Cold ~ar."~'
Editorial content sometimes reinforced the same brazen commitment to
power politics. In one example, Bill Keller, Executive Director of the New York
Times, announced his support of the invasion of Iraq, since Saddam Hussein had
"brazenly defied us and made us seem weak and vulnerable, an impression we
can ill aff~rd.'"~ While such comments effectively spelled out the American
formula for imperialism in the post-911 1 political atmosphere, widespread con-
demnation of such plans throughout the mainstream press were absent.
Throughout the Iraq war, the media's reaction has been one of jubilation in
terms of celebrating American democratic intentions. National newspapers fa-
vorably report the goals of occupation in terms of "promoting stability" and self-
determination, and local papers have largely adapted to the discourse set in the
national agenda-setting media. The U.S., then, is not considered a part of the
problem in Iraq, but part of the solution. American leadership is a virtue, which
must be nurtured, rather than attacked or ridiculed. In the wake of the invasion
of Iraq, the New York Times reported on this role in greater detail, explaining the
danger of developments in which "the [Middle East] region is testing American
leadership in ways that would tax any admini~tration.'"~ The story referred to
bombings in Saudi Arabia, in which A1 Qaeda took credit for, as well as the al-
leged threat of Iran to U.S. national security.
As Andrew Bacevich depicted the invasion of Iraq in the Los Angela
Times: "Force has emerged as [the] preferred instrument of American policy. By
initiating hostilities without explicit United Nations sanction and despite fierce
opposition abroad, it [the U.S.] has shown that when it comes to using force, the
world's sole superpower insists upon absolute freedom of a~tion.'"~ The under-
standing of American imperial ambitions was not relegated to "conspiracy theo-
rists" in the dissident press. Conservative commentators such as William Kristol
of the Weekly Standard bluntly announced that, "we need to err on the side of
being strong. And if people want to say we're an imperial power, fine.'"' The
"might makes right" philosophy of American military power had found a wel-
come home with a number of pundits and columnists in the mainstream press,
liberal, centrist, and conservative.