... given that The Inquirer's publisher has been led to believe we can settle for wire copy when it comes to events outside the Delaware Valley, it is worth pondering what Jules Crittenden has to say about the Associated Press. I link to Glenn's post, rather than directly to Crittenden, because what Glenn says is worth noting, too: Shoddy Work.
Update: Blogging from Fallujah. Of course, he just happens to be there.
What consummate twaddle! The Bush-leaguers get the country into a godawful mess for no good reason at all, the mess keeps getting messier through their own incompetence, nearly the entire planet knows it was a mistake going in and hates us for our idiocy in pursuing it, Iraq has become an anarchy wrapped in chaos wrapped in bloodlust and will not get better whether we stay or whether we go -- all this is a matter of fact, and the only thing this Crittenden bird can think of is that it's all AP's fault. Oh my Allah, we're back once again to shooting the messenger! Does he know how lame this is, how utterly puerile? Does he know how it sounds like all those failed and corrupt regimes that, once they themselves and their running-dogs begin to smell the stink of their own corruption and failure, start blaming the press? "We'd have done all right if the traitorous press hadn't stabbed us in the back." "Stab in the back" -- hmm, where have we heard that before? Jeez Louise, find something else, Crittenden -- this one's got moss on it. The one sure thing is that 10 years or so from now, long after we have slunk away from a splintered Iraq, these same knuckleheads will be crying that something -- anything -- besides their own arrogant bumbling brought about what they brought about.
ReplyDeleteRead Roggio, Ardolino and Yon and compare their work to the AP's. I think their work is clearly superior. As for the future, I am old enough remember when the catchphrase of the day was "To err is Truman."
ReplyDeleteIf the intention is to make a comparison between Harry Truman and George W. Bush, then there is no comparison. Harry Truman was a machine politician who grew into an honorable chief executive. George W. Bush was a frat boy who grew into a frat boy with international connections. There is even less comparison between the Korean War and the Iraq War. Indeed, there is none at all. The Korean War began when Communist North Korea attacked the South June 25, 1950. The United States became involved after the United Nations authorized the use of force by its member nations to resist the Communist attack. This was a true "coalition of the willing." Three years and one month later, and at the cost of 33,000 American lives, we--that is to say, the U.N., though frankly mainly the U.S.--had won. There was no peace treaty, but in fact we had won the most important part of the war: deterring overt Communist aggression. More than three years and nearly 3,000 American lives later we have won nothing in a war that never should have been started, but, once it was started, deserved to be prosecuted much better than Bush had the capacity for. Those who said "To err is Truman" lived to eat their words. Those who said "Stay the course" will live to eat crow.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I posted this, not to make a point about the war, but about newspapers. So these comments are beside the point, actually. Irrespective of what one's position on the war may be, one ought to favor good reporting thereof.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, and this may come as a surprise, but not everyone agrees with you, Anonymous. Some of those who do not are even reasonably well informed. Michael Barone, for example:
What Does President Bush Have to Lose?
This too is pertinent:
Foner Baloney
You're the one who made the remark about Truman. What the point of that was is a mystery; the only reasonable inference to draw is that it somehow equates his war situation with Bush's. Perhaps you had something else in mind. In any case, Barone obviously is poorly informed about Korea, or he would not have dragged in an unsupportable comparison. Korea was a war worth fighting, not only to the U.S. but to the U.N., against a country that committed sudden and active aggression against another. Iraq is a war started for no good reason -- indeed, the reasons given seem to shift with the political winds. Simply because Truman was also down in the polls does not make his situation comparable to Bush's.
ReplyDeleteThe sole reason for my Truman reference was to make the banal point that contemporary judgments of presidents often prove to be way off mark. I could have cited Lincoln. I am suggesting only that the future may judge the incumbent better than many now do. As to how the future will judge him, I have no way of knowing and neither does anyone else. The essential note of the future is that it hasn't happened and nobody knows what it will be. The only time I try to predict the future is when I go to the track.
ReplyDeleteAnd the reason I made the comment about the war is that, far from being beside the point, it was precisely pertinent to Crittenden's absurd assertion that the hundreds -- thousands? -- of Associated Press employees are some sort of anti-Bush, anti-U.S., anti-capitalist cabal. This is right-wing paranoia at its most piquant, born of bitterness that this insane war has gone so badly so someone else must be found to blame it on other than its perpetrators. So fall back on the messenger. A messenger, by the way, who is delivering essentially the same message that scores of print and electronic news agencies, both American and foreign, have been delivering from reports by people on the ground: The war was a ghastly mistake and its awfulness has been compounded by decisions by incompetent political leadership. But perhaps they are ALL in this cabal -- AP, Reuters, NY Times news service, the news services of other large American newspapers, the foreign news agencies, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC. Everybody except Fox. I wonder where they meet to plan their anti-American agenda? Pyongyang?
ReplyDelete