Well, there are two things to consider in relation to this. First, the guy who
wrote the obituary is not a Liberal. He's a Conservative. Second, if the New
York Times were ever a liberal paper, it changed quite a while ago, certainly
by the time it unquestioningly supported W. Bush's story about Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction. Actdually, I think perhaps there's a third point to make,
which is that probably The New York Times was never as liberal as everyone
thought it was.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2018 5:11 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The New York Times' Shameful Obituary of
Historian William Blum
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 #
