Newsweek "Fake But Accurate" Watch
Little Green Footballs
UCLA professor Tom Plate is pushing the “fake but accurate” line, in The Seattle Times:
(Hat tip: Bryan.)
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Story that might not be true paints a sadly accurate picture
This is not to exculpate Newsweek, to be sure. It is to suggest that the administration, which is now calling on News-week to apologize to everyone and their mothers, must be viewed as something like an unindicted co-conspirator.
For had this war, notably in the U.S. treatment and interrogation of war criminals or enemy combatants (whatever we call them, they are still people), been waged by the United States on a higher humanitarian level, Newsweek would have had a stunning mega-scoop.
As it was, the weekly magazine turned the story into a very short piece in its Periscope section. In other words, the item was deemed as simply another example of bad things happening to “them” (Arabs, Muslims) at the hands of “us.” Had the Quran-toilet story been the first of its kind, the magazine would have given it much more space, perhaps even elevating it to a cover story.
The fact is that much of the Muslim and Arabic world has already been traumatized by the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, been repulsed and angered by pictures of prisoner abuse, and had its suspicions of American cultural disrespect confirmed by the likes of Gen. William Boykin.
Gen. Boykin, a top Pentagon official and a key figure in the U.S. war on terror, in public speeches has unfavorably compared Islam with Christianity — and he still has his job. That certainly says something to many in the Muslim world.
Newsweek’s little sin is thus nothing compared to this administration’s much greater sins. By launching a war against terror in a way that is probably working to infuriate a good part of the Muslim world, the administration has pretty much succeeded in spreading anti-Americanism even without Osama bin Laden’s help.
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