On 12/15/18, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So Donald Trump believes the Press is Liberal?
Carl Jarvis
On 12/15/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The New York Times' Shameful Obituary of Historian William Blum
Jens Schott Knudsen / Flickr
You know you’ve lived well-well enough to rattle the establishment-when
the
New York Times smears you in the obituary it runs about you (FAIR.org,
6/20/13).
That distinction was achieved by William Blum, historian and critic of US
foreign policy. Once a State Department computer programmer who aspired
to
“take part in the great anti-Communist crusade,” he quit government in
1967 out of disgust with the Vietnam War and became a founding editor of
the
Washington Free Press, one of the first alternative papers of the New
Left.
In books like The CIA: A Forgotten History (re-released as Killing Hope:
US
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II) and Rogue State: A
Guide
to the World’s Only Superpower, Blum documented the violent and
anti-democratic record of the US empire; he was a reference that FAIR
frequently turned to when noting what was missing from the corporate
media’
s version of history.
How did the New York Times (12/11/18) frame this remarkable life? With
this
remarkable headline:
William Blum, US Policy Critic Cited by bin Laden, Dies at 85
Yes, to the Times, the most important thing about Bill Blum’s life is
that
Osama bin Laden once remarked to Americans, in a tape released from
hiding,
that Rogue State would be “useful for you to read.”
“Blum denounced the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington,” obituary writer Sam Roberts acknowledged, “and said he would
not want to live under an Islamic fundamentalist regime.” But, Roberts
scolded,
“
he did not disavow the recommendation or express regret that bin Laden,
the
orchestrator of those attacks, shared his disdain for the policies
carried
out by the department where he had once worked.
It’s unclear what formulation Roberts was looking for from Blum; should
he
have denied that his book would be “useful…to read,” or wished aloud that
bin Laden had been a supporter of the State Department policies? There
are
certainly some policies where you’d find the State Department, Al Qaeda
and
the New York Times on one side, and Blum on the other-such as the
invasion
of Afghanistan that bin Laden hoped to provoke with the 9/11 attacks, and
the protection of Idlib, Al Qaeda’s last stronghold in Syria, from Syrian
government attack. Should the Times “express regret” that it finds itself
on the same side as the 9/11 orchestrators? The editors would no doubt
protest that they backed the invasion of Afghanistan and the defense of
Idlib for very different reasons than Al Qaeda would, but that’s a
distinction that they don’t grant their ideological enemies.
If it wanted to give a better sense of the relationship between William
Blum, the US foreign policy establishment and Islamic extremism, it might
have noted that it was William Blum who spotted and translated (with
David
Gibbs) the interview Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s
national
security adviser, gave to the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur
(1/15/98). In the interview, Brzezinski boasted of launching a secret
program in 1979 to undermine the government of Afghanistan, a covert
operation that he correctly predicted “was going to induce a Soviet
military intervention.” Asked by the interviewer, “Do you regret having
supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to
future
terrorists?” Brzezinski responded:
“
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation
of
Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
When Brzezinksi died in 2017, his New York Times obituary did not bear
the
headline, “Brzezinski, Official Who Boasted of Promoting Al Qaeda, Dies
at
89″-though surely that is more relevant to Brzezinski’s legacy than bin
Laden’s book review is to Blum’s.
The Blum obit achieved what former FAIR staffer Peter Hart described as
“peak NY Times” with this petty put down:
“
He also reiterated his unpopular, but not unique, position that American
intervention abroad had been breeding enemies and inviting terrorism.
It’s not clear how “unpopular” Blum’s views were-in a 2013 YouGov poll,
61 percent agreed with the statement, “In the long run, the United States
will be safer from terrorism if it stays out of other countries’ affairs”
-but what is certainly “not unique” was the Times’ attempt to use an
obituary to settle ideological scores.
Jim Naureckas / FAIR
#al qaeda #cia #jimmy carter #killing hope #new york #new york times
#osama
bin laden #
