Antiwar.com Blog

Antiwar Radio’s new YouTube channel, YouTube.com/AntiwarRadio, is doing great. Anders Knight put it together and has already made some great videos to go along with the interview archives of my show and that of the heroic Charles Goyette of KFNX 1100 AM in Phoenix, Arizona.

Check ’em out, subscribe and please help us spread them around. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Gareth Porter – John Cusack – Michael Scheuer – Ron Paul – Michael Schwartz – Vincent Bugliosi – Pat Buchanan – Victor Navasky – The Other Scott Horton – Gordon Prather – Christopher Ketcham – Gareth Porter

Clark Hoyt, the public editor, or ombudsman, of the New York Times, went after Edward Luttwak in his weekly column today for the military historian’s controversial May 12 op-ed on why Sen. Obama would be considered an “apostate” by many Muslims and thus particularly susceptible to assassination attempts if, as president, he were to go on a state visit to a Muslim nation. After consulting with five Islamic scholars at U.S. universities on whether Luttwak’s argument was consistent with Islamic law, Hoyt concluded that Luttwak’s assertions were essentially baseless and “extreme” and strongly implied that the op-ed should not have been published at all. (The headline of Hoyt’s essay was “Entitled to Their Opinions, Yes. But Their Facts?”) Hoyt also took to task the op-ed editor, David Shipley, for publishing only letters to the editor in response to the original op-ed and not providing space for a full rebuttal.

This is not the first time that Luttwak, who has long gloried in his role as an unconventional policy provocateur (usually, but not always, on behalf of hawkish, if not neo-conservative, forces in Washington), has written attention-grabbing op-eds that are based on no factual evidence of any kind. I haven’t compiled them in any systematic way, but one example some 20 years ago really stands out as a warning to all op-ed editors at elite newspapers that Luttwak was not the most careful of researchers.

On November 22, 1987, Luttwak published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “A Member of Moscow’s Exclusive Club” which argued that the fact that then-Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was seated next to East German leader Erich Honecker and Polish President Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski “in the section reserved for the leaders of Leninist governments in good standing” at the opening of the Communist Party Congress in Moscow conveyed a “very definite message: the Sandinista regime has been admitted to the very exclusive club of governments that the Soviet Union regards as permanent, organic allies.” [emphasis in original] The conclusion:

“If there were any suspicion that the Sandinistas might actually allow the democratization required by the Arias peace plan, creating the possibility of a peaceful change of government by free elections, Ortega would not have been seated where he was.”

Within the op-ed space, the Post reprinted the AP photo cropped in a way that only Ortega’s face was visible.

There was only one problem with both the photo and Luttwak’s analysis (aside from the fact that the Sandinistas did indeed accede to a peaceful change of government by free elections under the Arias plan): Ortega was not seated next to Honecker and Jaruzelski. What Luttwak had thought was one photo of the three leaders seated together that had appeared in the Times and other newspapers on November 3 was actually two distinct photos separated by a thin white line: one of Honecker and Jaruzelski seated next to each other, the other of Ortega and a man whom the Times later identified as Gus Hall. In fact, the latter two were seated in an entirely different section of the hall, as was indicated by the entirely different angles of Ortega’s face (presumably fixed on Gorbachev at the podium) and those of Honecker and Jaruzelski.

Luttwak, in other words, had based his entire analysis (and he was very close to senior Reagan administration officials, such as then-Undersecretary for Policy Fred Ikle and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams) at the time –that the Soviet Union now considered Nicaragua as as integral a part of its empire as Poland and East Germany — on a total visual misapprehension.

“Am I the only person who has seen the photographs published in all our newspapers,” he asked. “Americans are still furiously debating the nature of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and its intent in regard to the Arias peace plan, but surely that question has been settled conclusively by the photos that appeared on Nov. 3, the day after the opening of the Party Congress in Moscow.”

Despite several letters to the editor (including one from me sent the day of the op-ed’s publication) pointing out the obvious error, the Post never issued a correction or an explanation. (After all, in order to crop Ortega’s photo to incorporate it into Luttwak’s op-ed, the newspaper’s editors should have known that the factual premise on which his analysis was based was completely faulty.) So It fell to a Post columnist, the late and great Phil Geyelin, to write his own op-ed in rebuttal one week after Luttwak’s article came out. In reply to Luttwak’s question whether he was the only person who had seen the “telltale photographs,” Geyelin wrote:

“No, Edward, you are not the only one; but you may be the only one who failed to notice that the photographic display in The New York Times actually consisted of two photographs, one of Honecker and Jaruzelski seated side by side, and another of Ortega alone. There was white space between the two shots and nothing in the caption to suggest that the three men were even in the same room.

“Nor was there, according to authorities I’ve talked to, a special section ‘reserved’ for ‘Leninist governments.’ True, the communist countries of Eastern Europe were lumped together. But Ortega was no closer to them than he was to a mixed gaggle of Socialist leaders, including representatives of India’s ruling National Congress, the Italian Communist Party, and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat. So much for the ‘political precision’ of Soviet seating arrangements or the claim that ”the nature” of the Sandinistas, or their intentions, has been ’settled conclusively.’

So, the next time you see an analysis by Edward Luttwak, be sure to scrutinize the factual premises very carefully. That goes especially for editors and talk-show producers.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

The sad news just reached us that retired General William E. Odom has died of an apparent heart attack. He was 75.

Odom served as director of the National Security Agency during Ronald Reagan’s second term. He had a reputation as a military hard-liner who opposed any compromise with the Soviet Union. Earlier in his career, as an Army officer in Vietnam, Gen. Odom had privately come to oppose U.S. involvement in foreign wars that brought, in his view, little benefit to the United States. He drew parallels between Vietnam and Iraq and believed that the only sensible path for the United States was a complete and immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

When the Bush Administration prepared for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gen. Odom warned that military action in Iraq would be foolhardy and futile.

Odom was later known for his view that the US could withdraw from Iraq quickly and safely. He became a fixture on news programs and never altered his critical stance toward the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq and Iran.

Antiwar.com ran Odom’s “What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running?” in October 2005. Odom was interviewed last year by Antiwar Radio’s Charles Goyette.

Gen. Odom’s prudent and thoughtful variety of foreign policy conservatism will be missed.

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Here are some other great articles by Odom:

Stop Training Local Forces in Iraq with Lawrence Korb, 7/19/2007

‘Supporting the Troops’ Means Withdrawing Them, 7/6/2007

Exit From Iraq Should Be Through Iran, 5/29/2007

Victory Is Not an Option, 2/11/2007

Strategic Errors of Monumental Proportions, 1/26/2007

Six Brutal Truths About Iraq, 12/15/2006

The Case for Getting Out of Iraq, John McLaughlin interviews Gen. William Odom (ret.), 11/6/2006

How to Cut and Run, 10/31/2006

Cut and Run? You Bet, 5/2/2006

Iraq Through the Prism of Vietnam, 3/8/2006

What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running?, 10/3/2005

Speaking of Rupert Murdoch, the May edition of his Far Eastern Economic Review was banned in China, according to Friday’s Washington Times, which attributed the banning to the magazine’s publication of an essay by the American Enterprise Institute’s “Freedom Scholar,” Michael Ledeen, entitled “Beijing Embraces Classical Fascism.”

I find the ban absurd myself, but I have to say that I’ve very rarely read such nonsense as Ledeen’s essay, even by Ledeen whose writings I have monitored pretty closely since 9/11 for indications of what Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Victor Davis Hansen, Dick Cheney, and even Karl Rove may be talking about when they get together in various permutations and combinations.

He argues, among other things, that the China of today is what Italy would look like “50 years after the fascist revolution” if Mussolini’s corporatist state had somehow survived into the 1970’s, requiring of the reader an act based solely on his or her imagination and absolutely no empirical evidence of any kind. In Ledeen’s imagination, such a state would “no longer be a system based on charisma, but would instead rest almost entirely on political repression, the leaders would be businesslike and cynical, not idealistic, and they would constantly invoke formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the ‘great Italian people…’.” While Ledeen might think that description constitutes “classical fascism,” I don’t see the difference between that and a typical autocratic regime that bases its legitimacy on some form of nationalism. After about another 1,200 words of rampant speculation based on virtually nothing but (mostly questionable) cliches and stereotypes — “the Chinese, like the European fascists, are intensely xenophobic…;” “Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge her many historic wounds;” “…the short history of classical fascism suggests that it is only a matter of time before China will pursue confrontation with the West” — Ledeen concludes: “It follows that the West must prepare for war with China, hoping thereby to deter it.”

Based on my own modest experience in China, I have no doubt that the country (not unlike the U.S.) is nationalistic, that its ambitions as an emerging global power are significant, and that (again, like the U.S.) it considers military power an essential component of great-power status. But “fascist?” That’s quite a leap.

From his own post-graduate study of Italian fascism, as well as his work under the great George Mosse at the University of Wisconsin, surely Ledeen knows that a cult of violence (to which Ledeen and other hard-line neo-cons like Charles Krauthammer have themselves shown a perverse attraction) and the so-called Fuehrerprinzip — the notion that a charismatic leader who thoroughly embodies the virtues of a nation should be revered and his orders followed without question — are central to the “classical” fascist ideologies that grew up in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. And while one can argue that both characteristics were on display during the Cultural Revolution, it would be very difficult to find any trace of them in the Chinese leadership today. That a once-respected and influential journal should publish this kind of agitprop is truly disgraceful.

Antiwar.com Radio yesterday posted a very informative interview between Charles Goyette and Ron Paul. At about 10 minutes into the interview, Goyette asked Congressman Paul about my comment on the blog regarding negotiations with the Republican party for a speaking slot at the Republican Convention in September convention.

Congressman Paul replied: “I don’t know where he got that information because there will be no negotiations. And if they [the Republican Party] would call me up and ask – ‘do you want to speak at the convention,’ I would probably say yes.” Paul added that “there is zero chance of that happening – so there are no negotiations going on.”

I’m glad to hear that the Paul campaign is not currently negotiating for a speaking slot. It’s good that seeking the podium at the convention will not impede Paul’s criticism of Bush’s foreign aggression.

As I have said before, Ron Paul is America’s best congressman. It is great that Paul’s campaign has awakened many Americans to the perils of government and the value of liberty.

Paul’s comments in the Antiwar.com Radio interview are especially helpful in resolving the different signals from his campaign staff and other officials in recent months on this issue:

The Washington Post reported on May 6 that “Paul’s campaign hopes to turn such support into upward of 50 delegates for the party’s national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September, where he is gunning for a speaking slot.”

On May 9, the Boston Globe reported that Paul’s Maine coordinator, Ken Lindell, declared, “The goal at the national convention is to get a speaking slot for Dr. Paul to deliver that message.”

The Los Angeles Times blog on May 12 reported that Ron Paul supporters “hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot.”

Fox News reported the same day that according to Jesse Benton’s comments, “Paul is planning on having as big a delegation as possible at the convention, and he continues to seek a speaking opportunity there, something the party has not offered to him yet.”

The focus on a speaking slot has been mentioned by the campaign off and on going since early February. On February 12, MSNBC reported that after the Super Tuesday showings, “Paul’s goal, according to spokesman Benton, is to get a substantial delegation to convention (they estimate they’ll have about 42 delegates) get a good speaking spot, and ‘spread the conservative message.’”

These comments confirm what top operatives said at a meeting of a few dozen of Ron Paul’s key supporters in Washington in late April, according to one attendee.
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I hope Ron Paul gets a great speaking slot at the GOP convention. Giving the delegates and the television audience a double-barrel dose of truth could be the best tonic the nation receives this Fall.

Another big victory for Michelle Malkin over the forces of terrorism!

Dunkin’ Donuts recently released an ad featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray. Innocent enough, right?

Terror sleuth and columnist Michelle Malkin discovered the hidden message in the ad – a message meant to offer support for the “murderous Palestinian jihad.”

In the ad, Ray wears a scarf around her neck and holds an iced coffee. Malkin, complained that the scarf looked similar to the black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf. Malkin explained:

The kaffiyeh “has come to symbolise murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.”

Dunkin’ Donuts told AP the scarf had a paisley design, and was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot. “Absolutely no symbolism was intended,” the company said.

But the Dunkin’ Donuts ad was pulled because “the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee,” the Associated Press reported.

Malkin savored her victory with a cup of 7-11 coffee, since she had earlier given the axe to Starbuck’s.

In her victory statement, Malkin declared: “It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.”