Cheap attacks on war opponents (3/13)

By Ben Fritz

In the face of a large and vociferous antiwar movement that has staged massive protests and generated significant media attention in recent weeks, some conservative commentators have responded not by refuting the claims of protestors, but by impugning their motives. Most often, these attacks have consisted of ad hominem labeling of antiwar advocates as supporters of Saddam Hussein.

In particular, one of the favorite attacks of those who impugn the motives of war opponents has been to label war opponents "pro-Saddam." This phrase has shown up more than any other used in this ugly campaign. Among those who have employed it are Christopher Hitchens in an appearance on CNN's "Connie Chung Tonight"; David Frum on CNN's "Reliable Sources" and in his column for National Review Online; and the editorial board of the New York Post.

The worst offender on this count, however, has been James Taranto, writer of the "Best of the Web Today" (BOTW) column on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, who has repeatedly accused liberals who oppose a potential war with Iraq of supporting Saddam Hussein. On numerous occasions, he has called them "pro-Saddam" or offered several other aggressive rhetorical attacks. On February 25, for instance, Taranto labeled "McLaughlin Group" panelist and Newsweek writer Eleanor Clift "one of Saddam's shrillest defenders." Writing on March 6 about a walkout by some students who oppose the war, Taranto claimed they were "ditching for Saddam." And in yesterday's BOTW, Taranto used the example of antiwar protestors who defaced a September 11 memorial in California to smear everyone who opposes the war, concluding that it was "all you need to know about the 'antiwar' movement" in a section entitled "'Antiwar' Is Anti-American."

All of these statements share the common and flawed assumption that opposing a war in Iraq at this time means that you support Hussein's regime. Boiling complex policy questions down to such an either/or proposition is not a fair assessment of the debate, however. While it's true some in the antiwar movement have supported Hussein, many protestors oppose his rule but believe the costs of a war in human life and global stability would be too high. Others believe that war is simply not an appropriate way to eliminate governments they strongly oppose, pointing out that the U.S. cooperates with many oppressive governments that violate human rights without endorsing them and their tactics. Supporters of the war may strongly disagree with these views, but by applying derisive labels to a whole movement, they're smearing millions of people and ignoring their arguments.

Of course, the ad hominem labels of these pundits and politicians are not always wrong -- thoughtful arguments can be made in their favor. Jeff Jacoby made a strong case in the Boston Globe on February 20, for instance, that those who oppose the war effectively support Saddam Hussein. But those who blithely state that war opponents necessarily support Hussein or appeasement aren't doing anything thoughtful -- they're taking cheap shots and avoiding the substantive issues in an important policy debate that will decide the fate of a nation and perhaps much more.

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3/12/2003 09:17:47 PM EST |

The spread of a phony "Bushism" (3/11)

By Brendan Nyhan

The cataloguing of the verbal gaffes of President Bush - the so-called "Bushisms" - has been popularized since the 2000 campaign by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg. But as UCLA law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh and the Weekly Standard have pointed out, a number of these alleged gaffes are taken out of context by Weisberg and others to exaggerate verbal tics and poor word choices.

A case in point is Bush's January 29 statement that "The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein and his willingness to terrorize himself," which was flagged by Weisberg the next day and has been used to ridicule Bush in the weeks since.

In context, however, the meaning of what Bush said is different than it first appears:

The war on terror is not confined strictly to the al Qaeda that we're chasing. The war on terror extends beyond just a shadowy terrorist network. The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein and his willingness to terrorize himself. Saddam Hussein has terrorized his own people. He's terrorized his own neighborhood. He is a danger not only to countries in the region, but as I explained last night, because of al Qaeda connections, because of his history, he's a danger to the American people. And we've got to deal with him. We've got to deal with him before it is too late.

As Volokh pointed out, it's clear that Bush meant that Saddam engages in terror himself, meaning through his own actions and those of his regime, and not just indirectly by allegedly supporting terrorists. This may be a poor choice of words, but Bush is obviously not saying that Saddam inflicts terror on himself.

Nonethelesss, that's exactly the impression left by Weisberg and others who have joined in mocking Bush by presenting the quote out of context. The list of offenders runs as follows: Weisberg on January 30; CNN "Crossfire" co-host Paul Begala and the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire column on January 31; San Francisco Chronicle Washington bureau chief Marc Sandalow in a February 3 op-ed; Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank, Village Voice columnist James Ridgeway and St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Laura Billings on February 11; and Post columnist Courtland Milloy on Sunday.

Examples of Bush misspeaking are not difficult to find. But those looking to capitalize on the trend should not overreach with quotes that are unfairly taken out of context. Unfortunately, once the media has a story it likes to tell, such as the President's tendency to engage in malapropisms, it is often too quick to try to fit the facts at hand into that framework.

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3/11/2003 07:10:51 AM EST |

Furnishing a bogus Hearst quote (3/11)

By Brendan Nyhan

In the debate over the confrontation with Iraq and the media's role in it, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst's legendary cable to his correspondent in Cuba before the Spanish-American War -- "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war" -- has been raised by both sides as an example of the media's power to propagandize and inflame public opinion on the subject of war. But the story, including Hearst's supposed quotation, is almost surely false, as W. Joseph Campbell of the American University School of Communication has demonstrated.

This story most recently cropped up in the March issue of The American Prospect, a liberal magazine:

In 1898, publisher William Randolph Hearst wanted the United States to go to war with Spain in order to annex Cuba. He had sent reporters, photographers and artists to Havana to document alleged Spanish atrocities and rumored preparations for war. One of his correspondents, the artist Frederic Remington, cabled Hearst, "There is no war. Request to be recalled." Hearst famously cabled back, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war."

Hearst was a pacifist compared with the editors of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, who are not only fomenting a war with Iraq but also helping to orchestrate it. The page managed to enlist eight European heads of government, no less, to write a Jan. 30 op-ed piece fawningly supporting President Bush's Iraq policy.

The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer first used this technique in the Iraq debate back in August of last year, claiming that the news reporting of the New York Times under editor Howell Raines has been marked by anti-war "editorializing" as blatant as the pro-war bias of Hearst's newspapers. Since then, the quote has been deployed from the left by both the Prospect and commentator Alexander Cockburn, who attacked The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg as a pro-war propagandist akin to Hearst correspondent Frederic Remington in his syndicated column last Thursday. Other recent citations in the Iraq debate have come from CNN reporter Bruce Morton as well as several commentators in the British and Canadian press.

However, as Campbell argues in a letter to the Post responding to Krauthammer as well as a longer academic article published on his website, the story is highly suspect. The cables have never been found; the whole episode, which was denied by Hearst, rests on the account of one person who was in Europe at the time and could only have heard of the alleged cables secondhand. The details of Remington's assignment do not square with the story, and the Spanish censors in Havana were reportedly much too strict to allow the message to be sent. Others agree - Campbell cites several historians who have cast doubt on the story, and Marvin Kalb of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, among others, called the story "probably apocryphal" in a January 9 National Public Radio commentary.

Ironically enough, it appears that commentators attempting to tell a cautionary tale about the media's power to mislead have ended up doing exactly that.

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3/11/2003 06:58:59 AM EST |

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