American TV and Print Give Up Covering the War
Eric Boehlert, senior fellow at Media Matters for America and author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, discusses the American TV and print media’s abandonment of the Iraq war story despite the fact that it remains the topic Americans are most interested in.
MP3 here. (32:10)
A senior fellow at Media Matters for America, and a former senior writer for Salon, Boehlert’s first book, “Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush,” was published in May.
I was chatting with a neighbor this morning about the used birth control device some other neighbor tossed into my back yard. She remarked “and just when things were starting to look up…”
“They are!” I said. ” The gross nail salon next door is gone!”
“I saw! They should open a super-rad breakfast place. Who doesn’t like breakfast?”
“Terrorists,” I replied. “That’s who.”
This reminded her of a blog post she read where “some designer” critiqued the logos of terror organizations.
“This is no fair,” I said, upon realizing communist groups were included in the mix, “commies have the best propaganda art and they would totally beat any Islamic terror group in the design category.”
Reading a bit further, I realized that a good number of these organizations aren’t what I would term “terrorist.” Fatah, Hamas, and especially Hezbollah, for example. White racist organizations are repugnant, sure, but terrorist? Note the explicit disclaimer made for the Kosovo Liberation Army. Shameless.
The anniversary last month of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan once again raised the question of whether nuking Japan was necessary, not to mention sane or moral. We usually hear that it saved the lives of half a million or a million U.S. soldiers. Bush the First once said that the bombs “spared millions of American lives.” But not even Truman went into the millions. I recently came across an audio recording of Truman speaking after the first bomb was dropped. Note here that he says “thousands and thousands” not “millions and millions.”
For more on Truman and the atomic bombs, see Ralph Raico.
The War Party has been trying to organize a divestment campaign against Iran modeled on the long-running South Africa anti-divestment campaign.
AIPAC alerts us to the fact that the California Iran Divestment Bill will be voted on in the next couple days in the State Senate.
Antiwar.com opposes all government-mandated sanctions and other economic pre-war steps. We urge Californians to contact their state senators and urge them to oppose this bill.
Thanks to Jack Dean at Pension Watch.
Iraq and Vietnam
Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University and author of The New American Militarism, and The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II, discusses the president’s comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, and some realistic ones.
MP3 here. (16:35)
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph. D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Bacevich is the editor of The Long War: A New History of US National Security Policy since World War II (2007). His previous books include American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy (2002), The Imperial Tense: Problems and Prospects of American Empire (2003), and The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005). His essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of scholarly and general interest publications including The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The American Conservative, and The New Republic . His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, among other newspapers.
Jose Padilla and the Descent Into Tyranny
Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, discusses the Padilla case and the destruction of 800 years of Anglo-American legal tradition (and patiently listens as Scott goes on and on – sorry).
MP3 here. (41:38)
Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007).
