[Peace-discuss] The non-debate on the war

Sun Aug 28 21:14:26 CDT 2005

[A description -- printed, interestingly enough, in the
conservative Washinton Times -- of why a real debate on the
war is not taking place.  --CGE]

  The Washington Times
  www.washingtontimes.com
  The non-debate on the war
  By Terry Michael
  Published August 25, 2005

"Teach your interns the role of journalists is to question
power, not propagate it." That advice arrived recently from
retired New York Times columnist Tom Wicker. While Mr.
Wicker's words are important for my journalism students,
they're a timely reminder for the Baby Boom leaders of
America's newsrooms — who should have learned more than they
did in the '60s, when the best and the brightest gave us Vietnam.
    The most influential interpreters of our public affairs
are accepting, rather than expanding, a noose-tight frame the
Washington political culture is enforcing to limit permissible
discourse on the war in Iraq.
    "The worst, the most corrupting of lies, are problems
poorly stated," Georges Bernanos wrote decades ago — an
elegant way of saying, those who twist the terms of a debate
skew its outcome.
    Look at almost any major daily op-ed page, watch the
Sunday shows or listen to nightly cable-babble. See how seldom
you encounter voices against the war permitted to argue we
should just end it, not try to mend it.
    Sure, there is coverage of protests, like the mother
outside President Bush's ranch. There have been many pieces
about unfound weapons of mass destruction. Columns were filled
with findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks,
including the discovery of no operational link between Saddam
Hussein and al Qaeda. But those reports are the raw material
of discourse, not the debate itself. In fact, the Crawford
protest is the opposite of reasoned debate; it's a sideshow of
verbal combatants yelling past each other. For average
citizens to be presented with meaningful alternatives to the
current war policy, we must have legitimate, fully engaged
discourse, with intelligent voices coming to competing
conclusions.
    We're not getting that honest debate. Instead, those who
control access to mainstream media are telling a quiet,
corrupting lie when they allow the Bush administration and
"opposition" congressional Democrats to engage in Amish-style
shunning of those who advocate immediately ending the war. War
proponents attack them with the ultimate Beltway rhetorical
weapon: "not serious." In his wonderful new book, "Radical
Evolution," Joel Garreau writes about the "tribal town" of
Washington's definition of "serious," as in, "He is a serious
person," or "That is a serious idea." "Serious does not
necessarily have anything to do with whether the person or
idea is correct, important or valuable," Mr. Garreau explains.
"It implies that the idea or person is deemed ready for
admittance to the sacraments of authority — such as
congressional hearings... It basically means housebroken." The
housebroken big dogs of the press corps won't admit end-it-now
opponents of the war to the fraternity of The Serious.
     Arguably, in the run-up to the war, the press could be
given a pass for not allowing the case against attacking Iraq
to be vigorously presented. Timid congressional Democrats held
their fingers to the wind and engaged no real debate. It's
hard to cover a conversation not taking place.
     But how can mainstream journalism now be excused for
quarantining stop-it-now voices from outside official
Washington, after justification for the war has shifted from:
1) eliminating weapons of mass destruction, which didn't
exist; 2) getting rid of a brutal dictator, who was a
secularist thug, not an associate of Osama bin Laden; 3)
spreading democracy, in a Hatfield-McCoy style tribal culture,
heavily influenced by politicized religious fanatics whose
world view never made it past the 8th century, let alone the
Enlightenment, and who want theocracy, not liberty; 4)
fighting Islamic terrorists, who need the United States in
Iraq, not out, as their bete noir for recruiting more terrorists.
     Yes, all the arguments in the previous sentence have been
heard through opinion channels of mainstream media — but
almost never from anyone who suggests they add up to a case
for bringing our troops home now. Instead, some senior
senatorial windbag like Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware alludes to
them on "This Week" or "Meet the Press," but ends his
disingenuous criticism of administration policy with the
caveat: of course, we can't just leave.
    Mr. Biden and Sen. John Kerry are the quintessential
have-everything-every-way empty suits in my party, who
essentially allow the Republican party to have no
congressional opposition.
     To use the over-used Yogi Berra observation, it's deja vu
all over again. We can't cut-and-run, the world won't respect
us, Vietnam would be in chaos, the "serious" voices told us in
the '60s. So we stayed for years, spread more of the chaos we
created, and thousands more of my generation were sacrificed,
so "serious" men wouldn't have to admit they were wrong.
     Until major newspapers and networks permit proponents of
ending the war now to be taken seriously, Americans will hear
no meaningful debate about whether it is in our national
interest. The current non-debate is about tactics for muddling
on through, rather than purposeful discourse to decide whether
to stay or go.
     My bet is that most editors and producers will prefer to
remain properly housebroken. It's less messy to propagate
power than to question it.

    [Terry Michael founded and directs the Washington Center
for Politics & Journalism. He is a former Democratic National
Committee press secretary and has taught a journalism
ethics-and-practice course at the George Washington
University. terrymichael at wcpj.org.]