Boston Globe doesn’t subscribe to the CJR
posted at 10:40 am on April 2, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Yesterday, the Columbia Journalism Review scolded the mainstream media for not reporting on Barack Obama’s deliberate distortion of John McCain’s remarks on Iraq. Today, the Boston Globe gives a great example of CJR’s complaint. Rather than point out the obvious — that McCain hasn’t called for a hundred-years war in Iraq but a security arrangement we still employ decades after World War II and the Korean War — Brian Mooney consults the ubiquitous “some … analysts” to double down on Obama’s distortion:
Almost daily, Democrats hammer John McCain for supporting a 100-year war in Iraq, putting their spin on McCain’s answer months ago to a voter in New Hampshire to draw the starkest distinction possible on one of the defining issues of this year’s presidential election.
The presumptive Republican nominee says that his Democratic rivals are distorting his views. He explains that he never favored such a long war, but rather envisioned an open-ended military presence of peacekeepers, similar to US military commitments in Korea and Bosnia and even Japan and Germany.
But some academic and political analysts say McCain’s argument fails to distinguish between other US occupations and an extended presence in a disputed, volatile flashpoint.
One historian who opposes the war said yesterday that the Arizona senator’s analogy has no true precedent in those earlier conflicts.
“Were the US to succeed militarily in Iraq, yes, US forces will remain in Iraq for decades to come,” said Andrew J. Bacevich, a Boston University professor of international relations and US history and retired Army colonel whose son, an Army soldier, was killed last year by a suicide bomb there. “My difference with McCain is I don’t think we will prevail militarily in Iraq.”
Of course, McCain addressed that issue in the same appearance from which Obama draws his hundred-years war distortion. McCain clearly said that staying in the region for an indefinite period where no Americans were killed or injured in combat, as with Germany and Japan, should give no one any concerns. He then said if the US did not prevail militarily, that would certainly change the calculations, and that he did not favor endless combat operations without hope of victory.
Mooney also allows Bacevich a bit of a historical fudge as well without challenge. Bacevich claims that the analogy between Iraq and Germany/Japan isn’t reliable because Germany and Japan were recognizable nation-states, while Iraq isn’t. That’s patently absurd. Germany didn’t survive WWII as a recognizable nation state; it split into two states, which didn’t unite for another 40 years. Japan had its centuries-old monarchy all but decapitated, and wound up adopting an American-written constitution and an American-constructed government that had far less popular origin than we’ve seen in Iraq.
Instead of pointing all of this out, Mooney uses the distortion as the basis of his reporting, and never bothers to show the original context until well after the jump. Even then, Mooney offers it only as the response of the RNC and McCain’s supporters. CJR took the media to the woodshed for this gutless approach to covering Barack Obama, wondering at what point journalists will start reporting the truth rather than just regurgitating dueling talking points and calling it news.
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That’s why you are where you are and he is where he is and I’m going with him.
mymanpotsandpans on April 2, 2008 at 10:51 AM
CJR has another piece on Obama that is very interesting.
knat on April 2, 2008 at 10:52 AM
Some analysts would say the Globe is full of it.
NeoconNews.com on April 2, 2008 at 10:52 AM
I find it encouraging, if infuriatingly halting, that some parts of the media are waking up to the reality that they NEED to do factual and fearless reporting and stop just regurgitating leftist propaganda.
I hope it continues.
techno_barbarian on April 2, 2008 at 10:53 AM
He opposes the war, his opinion is we won’t win, and yet he’s a trusted “analyst” on whether or not McCain is right?
****
Some analysts say the BG is a rag.
amerpundit on April 2, 2008 at 10:54 AM
Bacevich:
And glad I am that you won’t be in charge, Dr. Bacevich.
irishspy on April 2, 2008 at 11:09 AM
West Berlin wasn’t disputed? The Fulda gap wasn’t a flash point? The 49th Parallel isn’t volatile?
pmm on April 2, 2008 at 11:10 AM
The war will continue as long as U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq.
We just can’t afford to bribe everyone in Iraq for 100 years.
alphie on April 2, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Of course, the Boston Globe is owned by the NY Times.
rbj on April 2, 2008 at 11:17 AM
The Globe is owned by the New York Times, and if anything is more shrilly left-wing than the Times is. The Mooney article that Ed cites is not even billed as an opinion piece, but it is nothing but a hit piece on McCain; that is typical of the Globe’s blatantly biased ‘reporting’.
Nothing wrong with advocacy journalism, so long as it’s properly billed as such. Michael Graham on WTKK in Boston calls it “The Boston Globe-Democrat,” and that’s what it is; any pretense of objectivity is a complete sham.
MrLynn on April 2, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Maybe it’s time to stop getting so annoyed at the MSM for their overwhelmingly liberal/democrat bias. If there’s a problem, it’s that we still somehow consider and expect the media to be objective, and then get angry when it isn’t. Maybe it was once like that, but things have changed. I think people have essentially awoken to that. I find it odd that it’s referenced so much in Republican/Conservative blogs. It seems like it’s more than just to tell us what the nutjobs are up to over there (as we hear with Kos from time to time). It’s still as if they’re the big important boys and what they say counts. It does, and it doesn’t.
I’m just a regular guy, but I don’t buy any newspapers or magazines anymore, or watch network or cable news, other than very occasionally FOX. I’ve never seen the Olberman guy, haven’t seen the late-night hosts/pundits since Carson, and don’t think I’m alone in neither consuming nor believing what they say. The 10% number some say Dem’s get in the polls from the media being on their side has got to be shrinking– hell, the whole MSM is shrinking.
JiangxiDad on April 2, 2008 at 11:53 AM
38th…forget it, he’s rolling.
James on April 2, 2008 at 12:18 PM
For several years after WW2, there were bombings protesting the occupation of Germany by foreign troops. It stopped eventually.
What you’re essentially saying is that we should pull out all troops from Iraq and leave the Iraqi people to their doom. And maybe, while we’re at it, American troops should be pulled out of South Korea because we all know that Shorty McShortpants is totally peaceful in the North. And maybe we should just ignore genocides and the like in other countries. Because as long as American troops are in there, there will be war.
What you’re saying is that the Iraqi people are nothing but a bunch of Ignorant savages who deserve to be brutally oppressed and massacred by a dictator in the style of ol’ Saddam. That they don’t deserve a better life than that. Nice.
mjk on April 2, 2008 at 12:48 PM
With all due respect to Bacevich and the loss he’s suffered, he’s member of the “true conservaive”-Buchanan-anti-war wing. He writes regularly for Buchanan’s mag, American Conservative, and he’s in favor of an Obama presidency.
Although I disagree with him, there’s nothing wrong with his having that opinion, but I think it’s useful to see where he’s coming from on the issues.
juliesa on April 2, 2008 at 1:25 PM
Sorry about all my stupid typos.
mjk, you’re right about Germany. It was NOT a given that they would turn the corner and become peaceful and democratic after the war. In fact, for years things were sliding downhill, and the people were starting to turn back to Nazism. It took a massive effort (Berlin airlift,etc) to save them from chaos.
juliesa on April 2, 2008 at 1:31 PM
Hows the current war in Germany going?
It’s easy to think this way if you’re poor.
deesine on April 2, 2008 at 1:46 PM
The Democrats, the media, and the muslim fanatics all fear exactly the same thing: an Iraq that succeeds, because that would destroy their credibility and ultimately their power. Nice company you keep there Olby and Obama.
drunyan8315 on April 2, 2008 at 2:47 PM
“putting their spin on McCain’s answer months ago to a voter in New Hampshire….”
It’s OK to lie about what McCain said because the “spin” comports with the alternate reality of “endless war” — which it’s the Liberal mission to confront, of course. McCain’s “100 years” gave that faltering meme a new lease on life.
It’s all part of the larger effort to frame McCain as a Bush clone — so that Dems can keep on deploying the same old arguments they’ve been polishing for years, without having to adjust their sights. Frankly, I suspect Democrats don’t really want to attack McCain — they really want to keep on attacking Bush, which is infinitely more gratifying psychologically. With Bush out of the picture, it’s like there’s a hole in the Liberal universe.
JM Hanes on April 2, 2008 at 3:51 PM