ROOTING FOR THE ENEMY
By JOHN PODHORETZ - NY POST
May 14, 2004 -- <font size=4>A MAN has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea - on its front page yesterday - that his death is somehow the fault of the United States.<font size=3>
"The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday," according to lead paragraph in the Times' story, "insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him."
<font size=4>
Whatever the circumstances of Nick Berg's detention in Iraq and his family's torment at his unspeakable murder, the Times' decision to offer this angle as its main story in the matter of his beheading is a very telling fact about that newspaper, the mainstream media and the politics of 2004.
No matter what happens in the war with Iraq, no matter
what the evildoers do, the Times wants to bring it back to
high-level American misconduct - misconduct so severe that
it supposedly calls the entire mission in Iraq into
question. To blame the United States for Berg's beheading
might be acceptable for Berg's own grief-deranged kin. But
it is not acceptable for The New York Times or anyone
else.
The Times is leading the mainstream media in turning the
United States into the bad guys in Iraq. But it is far
from alone.
Take a look at Time magazine's cover this week. It
features an artist's rendering of one of the photographs
from Abu Ghraib with the line: "Iraq: How Did It Come to
This?"
"It" didn't come to "this." "It" is a war to liberate 25
million people and rout Islamic extremists, terrorists and
those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans. "This"
was an aberrancy that was stopped almost five months ago,
when the revelations at Abu Ghraib led to investigations,
arrests and the wholesale reinvention of the Iraq prison
system.
Time's cover line is a vile and grotesque slander against
every American in uniform in Iraq. It remains the case,
more than two weeks after the public exposure of the Abu
Ghraib photographs, that not a single digital photo
showing mistreatment has emerged from another cellblock at
that self-same prison, or from any of the other 24 prisons
in Iraq.
Indeed, every photograph shown to U.S. senators yesterday
is part of the same set of pictures featuring the same
eight dirtbags.
The scandal isn't widening. If anything, it's contracting.
The focus continues to zoom in on the actual people in the
pictures and their disgusting conduct in them. And yet
Teddy Kennedy, a man who once let a woman die, feels free
to speak the following unspeakable words: "We now learn
that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new
management, U.S. management."
The United States is, according to the man in whose car
Mary Jo Kopechne drowned, no better than the regime of
Saddam Hussein.
Teddy Kennedy isn't just some outlier. Teddy Kennedy is
the chief surrogate of the Democratic candidate for
president of the United States and a lionized figure - so
lionized that a worshipful profile of him published in
Boston magazine won a major journalism award last year.
So let's be clear what's going on here. As we speak,
138,000 Americans are serving under dangerous conditions
in Iraq. And our forces in Karbala are fighting against
the goons and thugs of Muqtada al-Sadr with some success.
They're risking their lives for freedom and honor and duty
and love of country.
<font size=5>
And conventional liberal opinion wants them to lose.
Conventional liberal opinion believes that the Abu Ghraib
photos are the true meaning of the war, and that Nick Berg
is just another victim of callous U.S. policy.
Conventional liberal opinion is actively seeking the
humiliation and defeat of the United States in Iraq.
<font size=3>
E-mail:
Podhoretz@nypost.com
NEW YORK POST |
