Page 99 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

The Media's War 89

speaks with contempt of Friedman's view, "commonplace among American
elites that the world should be grateful for the hellfire unleashed by the U.S.
military.. . Friedman postulates a fairytale world where American foreign policy
is always governed by principle and genuine humanitarian concern. His role as
establishment-scribe is to perpetuate the illusion that the American Goliath may
stumble, but the policy is always driven by good intenti~ns."~~

A Pattern of Reversals

The New York Times columnists who have been the most critical of the Bush
administration also fall within the mainstream liberal archetype in that they ei-
ther refuse to condemn, or inconsistently condemn American policy in Iraq.
These @-Ed writers concurrently argue that the U.S. is a repressive imperial
power, but also that the problem with the war is that the U.S. cannot find ways
to effectively fight and win it. These columnists reaffirm, to varying degrees, the
liberal propaganda model as illustrated by Thomas Friedman. The antagonism
between the two conflicting positions-between pragmatic pro-war criticisms on
the one hand, and radical condemnations of imperial war on the other-makes it
difficult to discern a consistent pattern of criticism on the part of these @-Ed
writers.
Bob Herbert, while sometimes presenting progressive condemnations of the
war-including condemnations of the loss of American and Iraqi life-has often
relied upon a very limited framework for critiquing the war. Herbert's frame-
work centers on what he feels is a major problem behind the war-that it has
been "mismanaged," "misguided," and "not ~ustainable."~~ one of his editori-
In
als, "How Many Deaths Will it Take," Herbert argues that that the problem with
the war is that it is "unwinnable," and that, "we've put our troops in Iraq in an
impossible situation. If you are not permitted to win a war, eventually you will
lose it."75 Herbert attacks the Bush administration for having "foolishly started"
a war that they "can't figure out how to win," as the main problem seems to be
that "Mr. Bush had no coherent strategy for defeating the insurgency."76 Her-
bert's criticisms are for the most part conventional: "we haven't given them [the
troops] a clear mission," "we can't identify the enemy," the war is costing
"staggering amounts of money," and the U.S. has failed "to send enough troops
to effectively wage the war that we started."77
As is the case with other pundits at the New York Times, "anti-war" criti-
cisms are limited to tactical critiques of the Bush administration based predomi-
nantly upon highlighting military errors that, if corrected, might contribute to a
more smoothly functioning occupation and war effort. Throughout the war,
though, Herbert began to change his tone a bit by offering anti-war claims with
more substance. By July of 2005, Herbert was condemning war planners for
their intent "to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure Ameri-
can domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves."78 Subsequent
columns ridiculed Waslungton for its reliance on the "toxic fog of fantasy,
propaganda, and deliberate misrepresentation that [have] been such a hallmark