The World as WaPo Would Like It to Be
So much of our discussion of public policy consists of absurd accusations from the right matched with self-serving justifications from the somewhat-less-right. The most obvious example of this is the perennial think piece on Obama's foreign policy, which is invariably analyzed as being either foolishly pacifistic or prudently diplomatic. The reality that the Obama administration has used military force on a large scale in many countries is not acknowledged, because it's not something either major party likes to point out (FAIR Blog, 7/16/13, 8/30/13, 3/18/14, 8/12/14).
The latest installment in this genre comes from the Washington Post (8/22/14), where Zachary Goldfarb presents a classic false dichotomy:
Obama's detractors revived criticism that his foreign policy is based on retreat from the world, typified by the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq three years ago, a lack of direct action in Syria and an economics-first approach to driving Russia's military back from Ukraine.
His supporters argue that his approach has been consistent with his strategy of returning the United States-after post-September 11 wars-to a foreign policy built around economic engagement rather than military intervention.
How do you write a sentence like this one-"In place of the large military deployments, Obama has relied on smaller operations to manage, rather than resolve, many of the conflicts that have arisen during his time in office"-without mentioning that Obama sent nearly 70,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, tripling the deployment there? Since then, 1,700 US troops have died, and at least 13,000 Afghan civilians, along with an unknown number of Afghan combatants; surely this has a bearing on whether you can characterize Obama's presidency as a "retreat from the world"?
But the only mentions of Afghanistan, Obama's biggest single military engagement, in Goldfarb's piece are in a passage in which Obama adviser Ben Rhodes is allowed to claim that Obama policy there is the exact opposite of what it actually was:
At the same time, he said, Obama is not reconsidering his view that Iraq-and Afghanistan-must be primarily responsible for their own security.
"The basic premise still holds that we're transitioning from wars in which the United States was on the ground in big numbers fighting to secure Afghanistan and Iraq to Afghans and Iraqis fighting on the ground to secure their own countries," Rhodes said.
In Afghanistan, Obama has mostly been "transitioning" from the "big numbers" of troops that he sent there himself (FAIR Blog, 11/25/13)-but that's an inconvenient detail that interferes with the story Goldfarb is trying to tell.
To get another viewpoint that is essentially the same viewpoint, only with a frowny face, Goldfarb goes to Cheney-era State Department official David Kramer, who says things like, "The problem for Obama is he often sets up these false choices between essentially doing nothing and sending in the 82nd battalion."
This would have been a good time to mention that in numerous countries, rather than doing nothing or sending in the 82nd, Obama has chosen to use drones to assassinate some 2,400 people, including several hundred civilians and at least 168 children (Huffington Post, 1/23/14). But, remarkably, the word "drone" never appears in an article ostensibly about whether Obama has done a "retreat from the world" or not.
After setting up his fake dichotomy between Obama as namby-pamby pacifist and Obama as wise diplomat, Goldfarb writes:
The question, though, is whether he is contradicting the pledge embraced in his 2009 Nobel Prize lecture: "to face the world as it is," not as he would like it to be.
No one who writes an article like this one is any position to give lectures about facing the world as it is.
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just three days to go in our Spring Campaign, we're falling short of our make-or-break goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
So much of our discussion of public policy consists of absurd accusations from the right matched with self-serving justifications from the somewhat-less-right. The most obvious example of this is the perennial think piece on Obama's foreign policy, which is invariably analyzed as being either foolishly pacifistic or prudently diplomatic. The reality that the Obama administration has used military force on a large scale in many countries is not acknowledged, because it's not something either major party likes to point out (FAIR Blog, 7/16/13, 8/30/13, 3/18/14, 8/12/14).
The latest installment in this genre comes from the Washington Post (8/22/14), where Zachary Goldfarb presents a classic false dichotomy:
Obama's detractors revived criticism that his foreign policy is based on retreat from the world, typified by the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq three years ago, a lack of direct action in Syria and an economics-first approach to driving Russia's military back from Ukraine.
His supporters argue that his approach has been consistent with his strategy of returning the United States-after post-September 11 wars-to a foreign policy built around economic engagement rather than military intervention.
How do you write a sentence like this one-"In place of the large military deployments, Obama has relied on smaller operations to manage, rather than resolve, many of the conflicts that have arisen during his time in office"-without mentioning that Obama sent nearly 70,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, tripling the deployment there? Since then, 1,700 US troops have died, and at least 13,000 Afghan civilians, along with an unknown number of Afghan combatants; surely this has a bearing on whether you can characterize Obama's presidency as a "retreat from the world"?
But the only mentions of Afghanistan, Obama's biggest single military engagement, in Goldfarb's piece are in a passage in which Obama adviser Ben Rhodes is allowed to claim that Obama policy there is the exact opposite of what it actually was:
At the same time, he said, Obama is not reconsidering his view that Iraq-and Afghanistan-must be primarily responsible for their own security.
"The basic premise still holds that we're transitioning from wars in which the United States was on the ground in big numbers fighting to secure Afghanistan and Iraq to Afghans and Iraqis fighting on the ground to secure their own countries," Rhodes said.
In Afghanistan, Obama has mostly been "transitioning" from the "big numbers" of troops that he sent there himself (FAIR Blog, 11/25/13)-but that's an inconvenient detail that interferes with the story Goldfarb is trying to tell.
To get another viewpoint that is essentially the same viewpoint, only with a frowny face, Goldfarb goes to Cheney-era State Department official David Kramer, who says things like, "The problem for Obama is he often sets up these false choices between essentially doing nothing and sending in the 82nd battalion."
This would have been a good time to mention that in numerous countries, rather than doing nothing or sending in the 82nd, Obama has chosen to use drones to assassinate some 2,400 people, including several hundred civilians and at least 168 children (Huffington Post, 1/23/14). But, remarkably, the word "drone" never appears in an article ostensibly about whether Obama has done a "retreat from the world" or not.
After setting up his fake dichotomy between Obama as namby-pamby pacifist and Obama as wise diplomat, Goldfarb writes:
The question, though, is whether he is contradicting the pledge embraced in his 2009 Nobel Prize lecture: "to face the world as it is," not as he would like it to be.
No one who writes an article like this one is any position to give lectures about facing the world as it is.
So much of our discussion of public policy consists of absurd accusations from the right matched with self-serving justifications from the somewhat-less-right. The most obvious example of this is the perennial think piece on Obama's foreign policy, which is invariably analyzed as being either foolishly pacifistic or prudently diplomatic. The reality that the Obama administration has used military force on a large scale in many countries is not acknowledged, because it's not something either major party likes to point out (FAIR Blog, 7/16/13, 8/30/13, 3/18/14, 8/12/14).
The latest installment in this genre comes from the Washington Post (8/22/14), where Zachary Goldfarb presents a classic false dichotomy:
Obama's detractors revived criticism that his foreign policy is based on retreat from the world, typified by the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq three years ago, a lack of direct action in Syria and an economics-first approach to driving Russia's military back from Ukraine.
His supporters argue that his approach has been consistent with his strategy of returning the United States-after post-September 11 wars-to a foreign policy built around economic engagement rather than military intervention.
How do you write a sentence like this one-"In place of the large military deployments, Obama has relied on smaller operations to manage, rather than resolve, many of the conflicts that have arisen during his time in office"-without mentioning that Obama sent nearly 70,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, tripling the deployment there? Since then, 1,700 US troops have died, and at least 13,000 Afghan civilians, along with an unknown number of Afghan combatants; surely this has a bearing on whether you can characterize Obama's presidency as a "retreat from the world"?
But the only mentions of Afghanistan, Obama's biggest single military engagement, in Goldfarb's piece are in a passage in which Obama adviser Ben Rhodes is allowed to claim that Obama policy there is the exact opposite of what it actually was:
At the same time, he said, Obama is not reconsidering his view that Iraq-and Afghanistan-must be primarily responsible for their own security.
"The basic premise still holds that we're transitioning from wars in which the United States was on the ground in big numbers fighting to secure Afghanistan and Iraq to Afghans and Iraqis fighting on the ground to secure their own countries," Rhodes said.
In Afghanistan, Obama has mostly been "transitioning" from the "big numbers" of troops that he sent there himself (FAIR Blog, 11/25/13)-but that's an inconvenient detail that interferes with the story Goldfarb is trying to tell.
To get another viewpoint that is essentially the same viewpoint, only with a frowny face, Goldfarb goes to Cheney-era State Department official David Kramer, who says things like, "The problem for Obama is he often sets up these false choices between essentially doing nothing and sending in the 82nd battalion."
This would have been a good time to mention that in numerous countries, rather than doing nothing or sending in the 82nd, Obama has chosen to use drones to assassinate some 2,400 people, including several hundred civilians and at least 168 children (Huffington Post, 1/23/14). But, remarkably, the word "drone" never appears in an article ostensibly about whether Obama has done a "retreat from the world" or not.
After setting up his fake dichotomy between Obama as namby-pamby pacifist and Obama as wise diplomat, Goldfarb writes:
The question, though, is whether he is contradicting the pledge embraced in his 2009 Nobel Prize lecture: "to face the world as it is," not as he would like it to be.
No one who writes an article like this one is any position to give lectures about facing the world as it is.