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Dissenting Viewpoints Concerns, Criticisms & Outrage in Mainstream American Media Will a U.S. Victory Convert Millions to Osama's Terrorist Cause?
Critical commentaries about George W. Bush's attack on Iraq are likely to be muted during the current outbreak of hostilities. In the week prior to Wednesday evening's U.S. invasion, however, mainstream media, while mostly supportive of military aggression, also saw memorable instances of anti-war outrage in editorials and news reports nationwide.
TV news programming is now almost wholly occupied by troop movements and bombardments, no longer asking basic questions about the Bush agenda or the possibly disastrous effects it may have on America and the world. I have therefore compiled the following viewpoints. A few are from long ago journalists like H.L. Mencken, editor of the American Mercury, thinkers who are now mostly forgotten. But the greater number are from contemporary observers, including the editors of The New York Times. I have taken the liberty of providing explanatory titles for these quotations:
What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy? …Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire? Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia)-Speech on the Floor of the U.S. Senate, March 19 The General Failure of the Media There are managing editors in the United States, and scores of them, who have never heard of Kant or Johannes Muller and never read the Constitution of the United States; there are city editors who do not know what a symphony is, or a streptococcus, or the Statute of Frauds; there are reporters by the thousand who could not pass the entrance examination for Harvard or Tuskegee, or even Yale. It is this vast and militant ignorance, this wide-spread and fathomless prejudice against intelligence, that makes American journalism so pathetically feeble and vulgar, and so generally disreputable. H. L. Mencken-"Journalism in America" from Prejudices: Sixth Series, quoted by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a dinner speech, December, 1934, at the Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C. Colin Powell's Media Emissaries
The secretary's power points (in U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's U.N. speech) didn't add to the sum of convincing arguments, but then neither did the advertising copy for the Spanish-American War or the sales promotions for the war in Vietnam, and if the agitprop failed to persuade the French, Russian or Chinese representatives of the Security Council, it was more than good enough for the emissaries of the major American news media. Our television networks and large-circulation newspapers trade in the same commodity. They identify themselves as instruments of the American government rather than as witnesses
beholden to the American people, and they bring to their work the talents and the haircuts of expensive corporate lobbyists.
Lewis H. Lapham-"Cause for Dissent: Ten Questions for the Bush Regime"-Harper's Magazine--April
It is because the urge to war comes not from the masses of a nation but from certain classes within it. In every nation, since the dawn of history, there have been found, beside the toiling masses, three great main cliques or classes, the Religious, the Military and the Commercial. Edward Carpenter-The Healing of Nations, 1915 Who is a Dissenter? The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. Archibald MacLeish-A director of the American government's World War II propaganda apparatus and later the Librarian of Congress. Do Bushites Hope for War More than Health? A $93 billion Medicaid cut is blithely ordered by Republican lawmakers who do not have enough daring to ask the president about the missing budget costs for the looming Iraq war. Editorial--"How Tax Cuts Trickle Down"--The New York Times, March 16 
Attack While State and Local Governments Wallow in Deficits
While fudging about the price of conquering and occupying Iraq, the administration has asked for more massive tax cuts and shifted the burden of many security costs to state and local governments that already are wallowing in deficits. No national campaign has been launched to reduce reliance on foreign oil in the here and now. Samuel G. Freedman-Associate Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a member of USA Today's board of contributors-"U.S. enters era of privatized war"-USA Today, March 20 Lost Privacy and Freedom In an unusual twist on cost-benefit analysis, an economic tool that conservatives have often used to attack environmental regulation, top advisors to President Bush want to weigh the benefits of tighter domestic security against the "costs" of lost privacy and freedom. Edmund L. Andrews-"New Scale for Toting Up Lost Freedom vs. Security Would Measure in Dollars"- New York Times, March 11 
If This Is Armageddon, I'm Not Ready!
This world is far too beautiful to go up in fire and smoke. I am not given to doomsday thinking or apocalyptic fantasizing, but I cannot help myself - and I'm sure you can't either - from thinking of and visualizing the horror about to be unleashed. It is simply beyond my human capacity to imagine. If this is Armageddon, I'm not ready…And while I do not blame God for the suffering of the world, I cannot help but feel that there are forces in the universe that have gone out of control. Have we stepped into a sci fi movie? But in this movie, people do not get up from their seats when it's over and walk away. Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon-- Senior Pastor Metropolitan Community Church / San Francisco, March 19 Bush the Secretive True homeland security comes only from an informed public, not-like we see today-from a government that will hide as much as it can. John Podesta-President Clinton's last Chief of Staff-"Secrecy is a Real Enemy to Us All--Orlando Sentinel, March 16 Threatening the World Mr. Bush's inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on journalists and Democrats don't work on the rest of the world. They've made promises, oblivious to the fact that most countries don't trust their word. They've made threats. They've done the aura-of-inevitability thing-how many times now have administration officials claimed to have lined up the necessary votes in the Security Council? They've warned other countries that if they oppose America's will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet still the world balks. Paul Krugman-"George W. Queeg"-New York Times, March 14 Osama Says He Wants You to Invade Iraq Go ahead. Saddam will quickly fall, but that won't make the world safer or more secure. Your bombs will send me a new generation of recruits and fuel their hatred and desire for revenge. So go ahead. Squander your wealth on war and occupation-America will be weaker for it. Divide your people, divide the world, isolate yourselves! Perfect! I thrive on chaos. I need an enemy. You give me both. TomPaine.com Fight First In announcing tonight that he had chosen war, President Bush cut through the debate over who has the right to enforce United Nations resolutions or overthrow brutal regimes…His argument boiled down to one precept: In an age of unseen enemies who make no formal declaration of war, waiting to act after America's foes "have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide."…President Bush thus turned America's first new national security strategy in 50 years-the doctrine of pre-emptive military action against foes-into the rationale for America's latest war…It is a view of America's role that Mr. Bush never discussed when he ran for president, when he spoke of the need for a "humble" approach to the world. David E. Sanger-"A New Doctrine for War"-New York Times, March 18 Bush: 'Macho Macho Man-He Wants to Be a Macho Man'
Jack Nichols--Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin Books, 1975, 1980) |
What is Happening to the United States?
War Wisdom from the Great Grandfather of the GLBT Movement:
If defense is always conceived of as a state of readiness to do battle, then it may well lead to the destruction of the person or nation so conceiving it. "Living by the sword" means not only striking others with it but also swinging it around and continually suggesting that its use is possible…If men are going to construct meaningful defenses, these must include gentleness, sharing, generosity, and a host of other peaceful characteristics. They must be both active, like generosity or passive, like the willingness to listen. Our ideas of defense are primitive because they are based on tribal fortifications…We have carried the idiocies of the duel into the international arena. A public insult finds us ready to demand restitution of our honor. In a nuclear age, however, being trigger happy can mean universal death. The more ominous our supply of weapons, the more likely it seems to others we may be tempted to fight. If defense is our true motivation, we must give every sign that we are peaceful, restraining implanted aggressive impulses in any sphere where we have sublimated them, especially in our economic dealings.