From Iraq: Underscoring the Danger
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Bidding farewell to a man who was there for all the right reasons.
I met Dmitry Chebotayev while in the Green Zone in Baghdad. He was between embed assignments (having come from a component of the same unit I was about to embed with), and I was waiting to head out to the field. The group of us there at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) spent the whole day talking about journalism, Iraq, and journalism in Iraq - a fascinating, multinational conversation. I remember Dmitry very well; he was young (about my age), motivated, and exceptionally smart and talented, and in that one day we spent together he made an eternal impression on me.Like many of the foreign journalists I spoke with, he was impressed by the soldiers he met, and very much wanted to get the story right the first time, rather than wanting to make news or frame a narrative himself.
Along with being a great, personable, nice young man, he was very, very good at what he did, and it was literally gut-wrenching to me to hear of his death this past week. Though I could go on for some time about how highly I thought of Dmitry, though, the praise which deserves to be published here is that of the soldiers with whom he sweated and suffered - and, ultimately, died.
This is what Major Kirk Luedeke, the Public Affairs Officer for the 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) of the 1st Infantry Division (the parent Brigade of the 1-4 Cav, among others), wrote to me after Dmitry's death:
We...lost a dear friend - embedded photographer Dmitry Chebotaev of Russian Newsweek, who had spent a week with the 2-12 IN in Doura before going to Baqubah. He was the European journalist killed along with 6 U.S. heroes in a Stryker on Sunday. He was young, energetic, smart and fair. Like you, he wanted to be with the Soldiers and share in the hardships and dangers. And like you, the Soldiers respected him and were genuinely shaken upon hearing the news of his death.Emphasis added. The dangers in Iraq are very real, for journalists as well as for soldiers. 69 reporters were killed last year alone in Iraq, and nearly 200 have died overall since the war began in 2003.
It really underscores the dangers that we all face here in Iraq, no matter what our mission is.
However, to simply make Dmitry a statistic would be to do him a disservice. He, like the rest of us who volunteer to go to Iraq as journalists, knew exactly what the dangers were, and embraced them with a full awareness of the possible outcome of his actions. Dmitry was an example to all of us who aspire to something bigger than ourselves, and in demonstrating the risk which must be taken in order to do just service to that bigger ideal, he made the ultimate sacrifice, alongside the soldiers he loved, respected, and was there to report on.
I tip my cap to a man with such conviction that he would inject himself into such a politically charged and life-threatening situation simply to observe and relate the truth to his readers, and only hope that my modest endeavors in such a pursuit can reflect positively on his legacy, and live up even in part to the example and high bar he set.
Requiescat in Pace, Dmitry - you were taken from us far too soon, and you will be missed dearly.
Labels: Blog, Live from Iraq, Media
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American soldiers: Winning over Journalists, one Heart, Mind, and Life at a Time
Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the advent of a practice that revolutionized modern war reporting: the embedding of journalists with frontline combat units in war. This practice gave the media, the American public and the world unprecedented access to the soldiers on the front lines, as well as to the war itself, through the filing of stories, photographs and video from the battlefront in real time, by reporters who were right there with the soldiers doing the fighting. "We were offered an irresistible opportunity: free transportation to the front line of the war, dramatic pictures, dramatic sounds, great quotes," said Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio. "Who can pass that up?"While the military also benefited from having an eager outlet for its stories and successes, the biggest result of the embedding process was the shift it caused in the relationship between the military and the media, which laid the groundwork for a fundamental change in the dynamics of war reporting. As Maj. Gen. Buford Blount of the Army's Third Infantry Division explained, "A level of trust developed between the soldier and the media that offered nearly unlimited access."
Despite the obvious benefits of embedded reportage, though, the practice has met with its share of (expected) criticism from members of the Fourth Estate. Beginning even before Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off, media spokesmen and others--such as University of Texas professor Robert Jensen--expressed concern that "embedded reporters would inevitably become too sympathetic to the troops with whom they were traveling." Theories were put forth that this was a "primary motivation on the part of military planners in designing the embedded system in the first place," and that the U.S. government was simply taking the approach of "feed the media beast enough stories that cast U.S. troops in the best possible light and the job of managing the media message is all but taken care of."
The latter is, of course, an absurdly simplistic notion. Rather than simply sitting back and receiving dispatches and releases carefully crafted to "cast U.S. troops in the best possible light," embedded reporters, by the very nature of their task, see the troops with whom they are living, working, and experiencing danger at all times--the good, the bad, the heroic, the angry, the emotional and the rest of the entire human spectrum. The former, though, does ring true to a degree; the debate on that count, then, is whether or not that is actually a bad thing.
“Absolutely amazing,” said David Beriain, the reporter (and the only one who spoke English), of the young Cavalry troops. “In Spain, it’s embarrassing – our soldiers are ashamed to be in the army. These young men – and they seem so young! – are so proud of what they do, and do it so well, even though it is dangerous and they could very easily be killed.” Beriain explained that the company he had been embedded with had lost three men in the span of six days while he was there – one to a sniper and two to an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) which had blown an armored Humvee into the air and flipped it onto its roof. Despite this, he said, and despite some of the things which they might have said in the heat of the moment after seeing another comrade die, the soldiers’ resolve and morale was unshaken in the long term, and they remained committed to carrying out their mission to the best of their ability for the duration of their tour here.
It was in the process of performing that mission, of coping with the loss of loved ones, and of just being themselves as American soldiers, that these young men were able to win over the admiration and affection of more than one journalist who had arrived in their midst harboring a less-than-positive opinion of the Iraq war, and of those who were tasked with prosecuting it.
It was in the process of performing that mission, of coping with the loss of loved ones, and of just being themselves as American soldiers, that these young men were able to win over the admiration and affection of more than one journalist who had arrived in their midst harboring a less-than-positive opinion of the Iraq war, and of those who were tasked with prosecuting it.
“I love those guys,” Beriain said, looking wistfully out the window of our cloister here in the Green Zone. “From the first time you go kick a door with them, they accept you – you’re one of them. I’ve even got a “family photo” with them” to remember them by. “I really hated to leave.”
Such a radical transformation – and such a strong bond of affection – forged in so little time. “It’s those common experiences,” Beriain explained, “where you are all in danger, and you go through it together. It builds a relationship instantly.”
It doesn’t matter how skeptical of the war a journalist might be, according to an Army public affairs officer (PAO) who spoke with me about it on condition of anonymity. “So often, they come out of that experience and – even if their opinion of the war hasn’t changed – they’re completely won over by the troops.”
“I was one of those,” admitted Beriain, speaking broken English and blinking away tears. “No matter what you think of the war, or what has happened here, you cannot be around the soldiers and not be completely affected. They are amazing people, and they represent themselves and the Army better than anyone could ever imagine.” A retired Army officer concurred, telling me that “young troops are some of the best good will ambassadors we've ever produced. It would never occur to one to not tell you what he's really thinking, and they are so earnest” that it is almost impossible not to be won over by them if given enough time.
The biggest recent case of a journalist with an anti-war mindset being completely overwhelmed into a change of heart by American soldiers, according to the PAO, was a Greek reporter who had been embedded with a cavalry unit that became entrenched in a 45-minute firefight with insurgents. Taking cover and fearing for his life for the almost hour-long duration of the battle, the journalist had the best view possible of American soldiers in action against an armed and murderous enemy, and credits his having lived to tell the tale directly to those young troops.
“He had tears in his eyes as he talked about it,” said the PAO. “He just kept saying, “they saved my life, they saved my life...these are great men; they are heroes.” He couldn’t get through the story without choking up – and this was a man who had arrived here with all of the disdain for the Iraq mission and for the American soldiers who he saw as the bad guys in this fight.”
While it may be decried by some for causing journalists, who claim the utopian titles of “objective” and “neutral” for their reportage, to lose their cold detachment and actually begin to see the soldiers they live alongside as humans, it is that very fact that makes the practice of embedding reporters with military units so beneficial to both parties. Rather than observing events from a safely detached distance – and thus being able to remove the human element from the equation – embedded reporters are forced to face up to the humanity of their subjects, and to share common experiences – often of the life-and-death variety – with those who they are covering. Human nature being what it is, such close working conditions, and such common experiences, will have an effect on both parties involved – and it is a testament both to the soldiers themselves, and to the journalists who volunteer to live and work alongside them, that that effect has, in so many cases, been so positive.
Labels: Live from Iraq, Media, War
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Why we're going to Iraq
In our writings at RedState, Human Events, Townhall, and elsewhere, the two of us have spent a great deal of time, ink, and energy discussing the Iraq war and attempting to convey stories about the mission that can’t be found in the mainstream media. We've criticized the quality of the media’s own reportage on events in the Middle East. We've pointed out episodes of anti-war bias, ignorance, and outright fabrications ad nauseam, all the while seeking to “correct the record” with a better reflection of events and developments as they actually are, rather than as they appear through the mainstream media’s anti-war, anti-Bush prism.Why have we spent so much time and energy on this pursuit? Because the evidence we see suggests a very different picture of the situation on the ground in Iraq than the one which the media presents day in and day out.
The two of us share the view of this conflict as an historic enterprise with profound ramifications for Americans, for Iraqis, and for our world. However, while we see hard-won progress and noble sacrifice that can and should lead to victory, we also, unfortunately, see that progress being threatened by an inexplicable willingness among our political leaders, and citizens of this country, to despair and to capitulate – a willingness which is both fed and reflected by our media, which has embraced the promotion of a vicious and escalating cycle of defeatism.
Against the combined mainstream media and Congressional Democrat juggernaut, our voices can, at times, seem very small. Our writings are strictly about – and based on – the facts which are available to us, and we have no more shied away from calling out what we see as mistakes by the administration, the Congress, and the nation, than we have from praising those things which are being done right. The last thing we want to do is to “spin” events to meet our perceptions, hopes, or expectations; what we want is, like many others, to know and to convey the truth as it really is – not as we want it to be. Given the obvious limits on our access to up-to-the-minute, accurate, objective information, we cannot help but wonder every now and again if we are actually seeing the situation clearly – and what we can do to improve our grasp on these events, and on the situation on the ground in the Middle East.
So to that end, we decided to address such doubts by heading over to Iraq ourselves and getting the real story, straight from the source.
After months of emails, telephone calls, offers, and negotiations, the two of us have reached an agreement with the Department of Defense to take part in a trip to Kuwait and to Iraq in late April. This extraordinary opportunity, which stems from the DoD’s renewed emphasis on “new media” outreach, will enable us, and a few of our fellow web-based writers, to get some of the first-hand perspective generally reserved for the larger and more heavily financed “old media.”
The Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Public Affairs apparatus (OSD-PA) has been incredibly accommodating to us, and has shown itself willing to work with any who demonstrate a seriousness of purpose, a track record of thoughtful writing on the war, and a willingness to endure the rather lengthy process of preparing to embed with the military in a war zone. The DoD has no political litmus test; in fact, despite conspiracy theories from the online left that we are being included simply as a propaganda tool of the administration, the impression which we received during this process was that OSD-PA is actually disappointed that they get so few requests from left-leaning writers and websites, either to embed or to participate in the frequent blogger conference calls which the department sets up with commanders and high-level officers in the field. They believe that firsthand contact with the military, via telephone or, even better, face-to-face interaction is in the best interest of the DoD, which, rather than having something to “hide” from the public, is eager to tell its story.
We are looking forward with great anticipation to taking advantage of this opportunity to get a firsthand look at the actual situation in Iraq. Unlike the mainstream media representatives who have been reporting on the war, we make no claim of impartiality. We consider ourselves to be patriotic Americans – and, as such, we have a vested interest in our country’s success. However, “success” as we define it is not looking at a bad situation with rose-colored glasses; on the contrary, attempting to spin a bad situation into a good PR effort, in our opinion, serves more as a detriment to real success than as a benefit. Success, to us, is success; and, to this end, the overarching goal of our reportage from Iraq will be to accurately convey the real situation – what is going right, and what may be going wrong.
We will be financed entirely by our readers, and our live updates (audio, video, and written) will be featured at our weblog, RedState, and they will be published as often as we can post them. Needless to say, we are both looking forward to this opportunity to bring to our readers the real story of what is actually happening in Iraq, right now, straight from the source – and we hope that you will join us for the journey.
Mr. Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a leadership fellow with the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia, where he also studies Classics. In addition, he is a Director of conservative weblog RedState.com, and is a columnist for the Athens, GA Banner-Herald newspaper.
Dr. Coates is an art historian and conservative weblogger. She writes for RedState.com and Elephants in Academia.
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In search of Swiftboat revenge (still)
In the name of the troops, the LA Times smears most highly decorated living American serviceman
The Left loads up, takes careful aim...and hits themselves square in the collective foot (again)
It’s no secret that the Democrats and the rest of the anti-war Left are still upset over the “swiftboating” of their Presidential nominee in 2004. Heck, they’re not over the 500 votes and hanging chads in Florida yet, so it would be pretty foolish to expect them to get over a bigger loss four years later – especially when such a large part of it (in their minds) stemmed from some squeaky-wheel veterans who just wouldn’t shut up and let their Vietnam veteran candidate continue to portray himself as a military hero.
As the Iraq war (and the debate surrounding it) has raged on in the years since, the Left has been trying harder and harder to claim the moral high ground with regard to the treatment and use of US troops, both by championing the few it can find who oppose the War on Terror, and by attempting to marginalize those who dare speak out against them.
A major problem with this strategy, though, comes from the overall ignorance on the part of the anti-war, anti-military Left to nearly any aspect of military or veterans’ affairs. From championing the likes of John Murtha (D-PA) as a paragon of patriotism and as an idolized military hero, to ignoring those real heroes whose politics don’t quite line up with the Democratic party line, the Left suffers from a fundamental lack of subject matter understanding, which, combined with the employment of the usual ham-handed tactics, often cause the Left’s continuous attempts to re-frame the debate surrounding America’s national security, the War on Terror, and respect for US troops to result simply in further setbacks to their cause.
The L.A. Times recently provided an excellent example of the Leftist tendency to load up their assault rifle, take careful aim at the right, and then deposit round after round in their own foot.
Last week, Times columnist Rosa Brooks, in a fit of continued rage over the use of John Kerry’s own words and actions to sink his presidential bid (i.e., the right’s “swiftboating” of him and his candidacy), lashed out at a panel which had appeared at CPAC to discuss “The Left's Repeated Campaign Against the American Soldier.” Her invective included calling panel participants “key” members of “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the right-wing goon squad whose defamatory insinuations helped sink John Kerry's presidential campaign.”
Her column, entitled “The Lunatic Right Returns,” continued:
What's depressing about the reemergence of the Swifties, though, is that it's symbolic of the increasing takeover of the “conservative” movement by unprincipled, right-wing extremists.
Among these “extremists” Ms. Brooks so loathes (and lumps in as a "key discredited Swift boater") is retired Air Force Colonel George E. “Bud” Day. Who is that, you ask? Well, you might remember the name if you were alive during Vietnam, or if you pay any attention whatsoever to military history.
However, if you don’t know who he is, here’s a down-and-dirty on a real American hero. According to the USAF’s Air University website, Colonel Day earned “nearly 70 decorations and awards, of which more than 50 [were] for combat” (and one was the Medal of Honor). His logged 5,000 career flying hours, including combat duty in WWII, in Korea, and in Vietnam. After being shot down in 1967, Day suffered as a POW for 67 months (that's five and one-half years for the mathematically challenged), with a two week “respite” after escaping from the North Vietnamese, during which, despite serious injury, he evaded the enemy all the way back into South Vietnam, “earning the distinction of being the only prisoner to escape from North Vietnam” - only to be recaptured and imprisoned until March 1973.
Colonel Day embodies the true essence of the phrase “Return with Honor,” which is why, in 1997, the Air Force named its newest SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school building after him.
As “Jason” from the weblog Iraq Now says, “This is the man who LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks calls an ‘unprincipled, right-wing extremist’.”
But Ms. Brooks continues:
It's not hard to visualize the right-wing talking points that will emerge from this [panel]. The Swift boaters will be dusting off their 2004 scripts and reaching back still further to dredge up their Vietnam-era notes. Expect to see all the old myths revived: The antiwar left spits on returning troops and gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Oh, John Murtha, why do you hate our brave troops?
The antipathy and condescension for those troops who simply aren’t “enlightened” enough to renounce violence and become dyed-in-the-wool anti-war Liberals drips from Ms. Brooks’s words, as she forsakes facts for the sake of a good meme. The degradation of our troops as they returned home from Vietnam – a proud chapter in the history of America’s anti-war, anti-military lefties – has been treated by Democrats increasingly like a preposterous myth propagated by the chickenhawking Right of late, despite the fact that such instances of troops being assaulted, spit on, and otherwise defiled are a very real part of the historical record.
As to “brave John Murtha,” whom liberals hold up as their example of Democratic military heroism, “Jason” has this to say:
Oh, and I can't say that John Murtha hates our troops. He just wants them to lose, by stripping them of needed funding in the heat of battle - funding which translates to such minor items as equipment, ammunition, reinforcements, reserves, and food.
But facts, as always, get too much in the way of a good story – and of a good expression of hatred. Therefore, Ms. Brooks simply can’t be expected to abide by them.
Though she and her employers at the Times doubtless published this column with the belief that none would question their yeomen’s work on the part of the anti-war Left, they actually accomplished just the opposite. As “Jason” so aptly puts it:
“In the process of disparaging a panel entitled "The Left's Repeated Campaign Against the American Soldier" [Rosa Brooks] manages to serve up – drumroll, please – an ignorant smear campaign against America's most decorated living serviceman. (emphasis added)
If the Times has an ounce of conscience, they will disavow Ms. Brooks's comments immediately, if they do not go further (as they should) and remove her from the payroll. Furthermore, Senator Kerry and Representative Murtha need to repudiate this slander of a fellow Vietnam veteran – as does every other Democrat politician who claims to care about America and her troops (and for whom Ms. Brooks attempts to speak).
The clock is ticking. We are waiting. Surely the Left will defend a veteran and a real hero (who does not share their political views) as quickly, and with as much gusto, as they have a less-distinguished one of their own in the past.
Surely they will repudiate this hackish attempt to marginalize non-Liberal servicemen and to ridicule the idea that the Left would ever slander the troops, which consisted (in typical lefty fashion) of a slandering of the most highly-decorated living American serviceman.
Surely they will do the right thing in this situation.
Won't they?
Mr. Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a leadership fellow with the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia, where he also studies Classics. In addition, he is a contributing editor for conservative weblog RedState.com, and is a columnist for the Athens, GA Banner-Herald newspaper.
Labels: Heroism, Liberals, Media, Profiles in Courage, Scandals, War
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The NYT's latest big scoop
The Times breaks the story: we're detaining the enemy in Iraq!
The American military is holding at least four Iranians in custody in Iraq, including senior military officials, according to a New York Times reported released today.
According to senior Iraqi and American officials, the Iranians in question were seized in raids conducted last week against groups suspected of carrying out sttacks on Iraqi security forces and civilians. Two Iranian diplomats were also apprehended, but were subsequently "turned over to Iraqi authorities and released."
Much to the chagrin of the Times, the government did not immediately disclose the evidence against the Iranians, and declined to identify those being held. The paper quoted one official as saying that "a lot of material" was seized in the raid, but added that he "would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks."
According to the Times:
A senior Western official in Baghdad said the raids were conducted after American officials received information that the people detained had been involved in attacks on official security forces in Iraq. "We conduct operations against those who threaten Iraqi and coalition forces," the official said. "This was based on information."Let's take a time out to appreciate the end of that last sentence - you know, the part where the American newspaper, in the city primarily targeted on 9/11, refers to a suicide-bombing, civilian-targeting organization, and its ilk, as "groups that the Americans regard as terrorist organizations." I never cease to be amazed by the preposterous pretentiousness involved in such condescending, pseudo-"enlightened" statements, although clearly I should have long since become desensitized to such ridiculousness.
[...]
Much about the raids and the identities of the Iranians remained unclear on Sunday. American officials offered few details. They said that an investigation was under way and that they wanted to give the Iraqi government time to figure out its position. A Bush administration official said the Iranian military officials held in custody were suspected of being members of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been involved in training members of Hezbollah and other groups that the Americans regard as terrorist organizations.
OK, back to the story at hand. From the Times:
American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this country’s internal affairs, but have rarely produced evidence. The administration presented last week’s arrests as a potential confirmation of the link. [National Security Council spokesman Gordon] Johndroe said, “We suspect this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the detained Iranians before characterizing their activities.”It is indeed an opportunity for the Iraqi government to decide, and demostrate, just what they are willing to tolerate. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is reportedly "unhappy with the arrests," and his displeasure is understandable if looked at from the point of view of many who have been displeased - at best - with his inability (and apparent unwillingness) to stem the Iranian insurgence and domestic sectarian violence within the nation. The publicization of this development - the detainment of Iranians suspected of active plotting and terroristic activity within Iraq - not only throws the spotlight on Iran, as they will have to answer for their own people having been caught in Iraq, but also puts the onus on the fledgling Iraqi government, forcing them into taking a public stance on Iranian insurgence and activity within their country.
[...]
The development was being viewed skeptically on Sunday by some Iraqis, who said that they suspected that the timing was intended to reinforce arguments by some in the administration that direct talks with Iran would be futile.
An administration official in Washington disputed that, saying, “When the military conducted the raids, they really didn’t know who they were going to find.”
The United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians who it suspects of planning attacks. One senior administration official said, “This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment.”
“It’s our position that the Iraqis have to seize this opportunity to sort out with the Iranians just what kind of behavior they are going to tolerate,” the official said, declining to speak on the record because the details of the raid and investigation were not yet public. “They are going to have to confront the evidence that the Iranians are deeply involved in some of the acts of violence.”
The Times's whistle-blowing effort, in this case, should play directly into America's hands in two ways, as Iran is shown to be actively - and potentially provably - working to further destabilize Iraq, and as the Iraqi government, whom we have been trying for some time now to stand up for itself, is forced to do just that, if it does not wish to aquiesce fully - and publicly - to Iran.
America is doing the right thing here: apprehending the enemy, regardless of origin, in a combat area. For their sake, and for ours, the leadership of Iraq needs to fully recognize that Iran is no friend of theirs in the region, and to finally take a public - and private - stand for their allies (us), and against their enemy, Iran. In the meantime, we can only watch, wait, and hope - and know that, should any sensitive or secret developments take place (especially those which would work against us, and to the advantage of our enemies), the New York Times will be there, doing its best to break the story and make it known to the world.
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A "Person of the Year" retrospective, and TIME's 2006 cop-out
For eight decades now, the final TIME Magazine cover of each year has featured the "individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news."The tradition began in 1927 with Charles Lindbergh, after he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and has continued to the present, with both positive and negative newsmakers earning the distinction of being TIME’s "Man of the Year," or "Person of the Year," as it was renamed in 1999 for the purpose of gender neutrality (although four women had been featured under the previous title).
Throughout that period of time, the list of honorees has been long, distinguished, and not without controversy. In 1930, in only the fourth year of the budding tradition, the first non-white, non-American was featured in Mahatma Gandhi. The first female, American divorcee Wallis Simpson, was named Man of the Year in 1936, when Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated his throne in order to marry her.
The World War II era saw each of the giants of the age featured, including Adolf Hitler (1938) and Josef Stalin (twice, in 1939 and in 1942), both controversial choices to say the least.
In 1949, Winston Churchill was named not only Man of the Year, but Man of the Half-Century by TIME, and in 1950, against the 
backdrop of the recently-ended Second World War, and in the face of the intensifying conflict in Korea, "The American Fighting-Man" was featured as the first abstract honoree.
A decade later, the distinction of Man of the Year went to "the most important occupational group of the world today," American Scientists. In 1966, TIME followed John F. Kennedy, Pope John XXIII, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon Johnson with the inclusive "man - and woman - of 25 and under," calling the Baby Boomers a "new kind of generation," one that was "cushioned by unprecedented affluence and the welfare state," was "granted an ever-lengthening adolescence and life-span," and that "no longer [felt] the cold pressures of hunger and mortality."
In 1969, the award was somewhat condescendingly bestowed upon "Middle Americans," who "cherish[ed], apprehensively, a system of values that they [saw] assaulted and mocked everywhere - everywhere except in Richard Nixon's Washington," and who "felt ignored while angry minorities dominated the headlines and the Government's domestic action."
While not necessarily choosing every year to name one or two individuals who, for better or worse, had "the biggest effect on the year's news," the choices made by TIME generally made sense, by and large, and were well explained and defended, even in the face of the possible controversy involved in featuring such people as Hitler, Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev (1957), and the Ayatollah Khomeini (1979). In 1975, American Women were named Man of the Year, and, in 1982, the computer became the first non-human abstract to be featured.
Ronald Reagan earned the distinction of being TIME's Man of the Year twice, in 1980 and 1983. Interestingly, though, the "Man of the Decade," awarded in 1989, went to Reagan’s Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev (who was also Man of the Year in 1987), whom TIME credited with "setting loose the forces" that brought about the end of the Soviet Union - while offering a backhanded slap at Ronald Reagan, who was not mentioned once in the 1989 Man of the Year issue, despite the fact that it was his policies and willingness to play hardball, both fiscally and diplomatically, with the Russian Bear that pushed the crumbling empire over the edge and into ruin.
The 1990s saw people both inside and outside the world of politics featured, from George Bush (1990) and Newt Gingrich (1995) to David Ho (1996), who advanced the treatment of HIV patients, Intel founder Andy Grove (1997), and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (1999). The Man from Hope, William Jefferson Clinton, was twice featured during that decade, once in 1992 after his improbable run to the presidency, and again in 1998, although his second appearance, in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, included the sharing of the award with Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
The events of this decade have led to some difficult decisions on the part of TIME Magazine as to who should be named Person of the Year. The post-election fiasco of 2000 made the choice of George W. Bush a natural one (although it would not have been wrong to have the President share the distinction with that year's electoral runner-up, Al Gore).
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, though, TIME was faced with the difficult question of whether to name a local hero the Person of the Year, or to go with the year's actual top newsmaker. In the end, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made the year's final cover, and news fixture Osama bin Laden was not even mentioned once in the issue.
The quick and efficient success in major combat operations in Iraq, combined with the previous driving out of Afghanistan of the Taliban, earned the American Soldier the Person of the Year distinction for the second time in 2003, and George W. Bush's reelection in 2004 - this time by a wide margin - put him on the cover for the second time in five years.
In 2006, TIME was faced with a challenge similar to that of 2001 - a year in which the majority of the top newsmakers, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kim Jong-Il, to Muqtada al-Sadr, to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had become so due to their overwhelmingly anti-Western words and (often brutal) actions. Other options, like Donald Rumsfeld, who this past week became the longest-serving Secretary of Defense in American History, were distasteful to the anti-war, anti-administration news magazine, whereas big electoral winners this year, like incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, are similarly distasteful to the American public as a whole.
In an age of increasing new media influences, and declining subscription numbers of newspapers and weekly news magazines, the specter of such an unpopular Person of the Year - and the justification required - proved to be too unwelcome an option for TIME to pull the figurative trigger on. So, rather than feature the actual person (or people) with the "biggest effect on the year's news," TIME decided to take the easiest road possible: they named everybody Person of the Year.
As managing editor Richard Stengel said, with a striking amount of honesty, "If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people...But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."
Stengel went on to say that, had an individual been chosen, that person would have been Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has made news all year with his viciously anti-American rhetoric, his repeated calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map," and, most recently, his hosting of a conference to debate the veracity of the Holocaust (and thus Israel’s justification for existence) - a conference which featured independent minds like former Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard David Duke.
"It just felt to me a little off selecting him," said Stengel.
So, with the new media influences on this year's news making so readily observable – from Ned Lamont's blogger-backed nomination for US Senate in Connecticut, to the whistle-blowing on photoshopped pictures from the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, to the free public access to video archives made possible by sites like YouTube, to the expansion of online communities like Facebook and MySpace - TIME decided to bestow the Person of the Year honor for 2006 on the "citizens of the new digital democracy" - namely, every one of us.
The choice makes sense on a superficial level. However, with real, individual newsmakers abounding, the decision to go with a Person of the Year for the primary reason that it "doesn’t have to be justified to anyone" is, at its heart, little more than a cop-out.
Of course, having an admitted cop-out Man of the Year isn't all bad. After all, it does offer a quippy riposte to any guff you may be taking from a boss, a teacher, or a colleague. So, as always, feel free to comment or to send emails to me regarding this piece, or anything else - but please make sure to address me as "TIME Magazine's Person of the Year 2006."
Thanks for that, at least, TIME.
Labels: Media
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The NYT on the Iraqi nuclear program: The Left wants to be able to have their yellowcake and eat it too
By Jeff Emanuel
Friday, November 3, 2006
The scoop was supposed to be another pre-election “outing” of administration blunders in the War on Terror by the mainstream media (a la the “missing Iraqi weapons” stories which happened to be held until right before the 2004 election). And the story was indeed a big one – but probably not in the way that the newspaper intended.
In recent years, US government established an online archive in an effort to enlist the public’s aid in the translation of, and reduction of data from, the vast store of Iraqi intelligence and governmental documents recovered since the March 2003 invasion. According to the Times, this effort led not to an increase in America’s understanding of that country’s supposedly nonexistent WMD programs or terrorist ties, but rather became a potential boon to Iran, who officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency fear may have gained knowledge of how to develop nuclear arms through the addition of Iraq’s published experience with the systems.
The documents in question reportedly contained extremely detailed information “on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs” – in other words, according to experts, “the documents…constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.”
The “thrust of the story,” to quote a former anchor, was that the Bush administration, without a second thought about the possible consequences, had deposited all of this information on the internet for anybody to access who wished to.
Anxious to drive the point home, the article added that the government site, known as the “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” had also made public Iraqi documents “about chemical weapons,” including “information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure.”
Apparently lost on the New York Times in this gushing about how the dangerously incompetent Bush administration made WMD technology available to Iran (thus making America exponentially less safe – although nowhere in the article does it say that Iran has definitively accessed these documents) was the most obvious detail of their story: that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had the capability for – and was actively seeking – not only chemical and biological weapons, but nuclear weapons, as well.The staple of the Liberal platform for the past four-plus years has been almost uniform: Bush lied us into a war in Iraq. Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction, nor was he seeking any; Iraq was not a threat to America’s security in any way, shape, or form.
This report blows that entire argument, and its corresponding mindset, completely out of the water.
One cannot help but to almost feel sorry for the Left’s forced longsuffering at the hands of their own ineptitude. In a last-ditch attempt to discredit the GOP on national security, a viable accusation of failure in that area finally appeared to have been found: that President Bush endangered the nation, and enabled Iran, by publishing Iraqi documents on the internet that divulged how to make and use WMDs. While it probably will not hold up over time, the allegations alone should at least have been sufficient to get the Democrats through Tuesday’s election; after that, developments could have been dealt with as they came.
However, the Left’s biggest problem with accepting this accusation is that it means the complete and utter obliteration of their beloved mantra of the past four years –“Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.”
Perhaps the most damning statement in the Times’ article was the following:
“Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf War. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.”
(emphasis added)
The ineptitude of the media when so single-mindedly pursuing a predetermined target is almost staggering. Not only had the article already, in the name of showing the incompetence of the Bush administration (and, by extension in this election season, of the Republican Party as a whole) to maintain America’s national security, admitted that Saddam’s government had been actively pursuing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, but in that one brief paragraph they pulled the rest of the “Bush lied” and “Iraq was no threat” house of cards completely to the ground, with the contention that in 2002 – on the very eve of the Iraq invasion – Saddam was less than one year away from building an atomic bomb. America seems to have made it there just in time.
The contortion of logic necessary to believe both mantras – that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, but that, due to Republican incompetence, publication of Iraqi documents gave Iran the ability to create and employ WMDs of their own – requires an intellect more "dizzying" than Vizzini’s.
Lost in this single-minded pursuit of a noose with which to hang Republicans on an issue that is one of their greatest strengths – and at this time when strength on it is so desperately needed – is real news, from a different front in the War on Terror: the Western front.
The latest development in the August terror case from Britain, in which twenty-five would-be suicide bombers were arrested (thanks in large part to allied surveillance – likely warrantless – of their communications) before they could execute their plan to blow up multiple airliners bound for the United States, was largely ignored by the mainstream media.
Allowed to be lost in the shuffle – or, rather, in the scramble to bounce Republicans from office, and to condemn President Bush yet again – was the fact that further interrogation of the suspects revealed their actual goal, which was not, as had first been thought, to detonate the planes over the Atlantic Ocean.
The terrorists’ ultimate goal, according to Mark Mershon, head of the FBI's New York field office, was to wait until the airliners had reached North America – and then "to blow them up over U.S. cities to maximize casualties."
According to the Winston-Salem Journal, representatives of MI5, the British intelligence service, had briefed the FBI on the liquid-explosives case in recent weeks. “It would make your hair stand up to be in the room to hear that presentation,” said Mershon.
While neither honorable nor respectable, it is not surprising that the mainstream media – New York Times included – has chosen to ignore that story completely. However, at a time when threats to our very lives are so real, it is nothing short of a disgrace that facts (and the warnings they entail) would be swept under the rug, and instead replaced by stories which, whether accurate or not, hope to advance the election-year narrative.
Unfortunately for the Left, this attempt not only fell short, but managed to shoot them squarely in both feet – for, not only does their utter disregard of actual national security-related developments reinforce even further the public’s perception of the Left on that all-important issue (as well, on the side, as reinforcing opinion of the mainstream media’s objectivity), but the motto of the Liberal movement, the mantra which had all but given them reason to live for the past four-plus years – “Bush lied: there were no weapons of mass destruction” – was cast aside and flushed in a mere instant – all in favor of yet another, run-of-the-mill attempt at an election-year hit piece.
Jeff Emanuel, a Special Operations military veteran, studies Classics at the University of Georgia. He is also a contributing editor for conservative web log RedState.com, and is a columnist for the Athens, GA Banner-Herald newspaper.
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Emanuel: Positive news easy to find in Iraq; it just isn't reported enough| | Story updated at 9:58 PM on Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The specters of Haditha, Abu Ghraib, the Pendleton Seven and various other instances of alleged or actual misconduct by U.S. troops in Iraq have done great damage to the American people's faith in our military, its mission and its overall decency.Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 072706
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Claiming moral equivalence - or worse - between terrorist tactics, US policy is about as far from the truth as you can get
By Jeff Emanuel
Jun 29, 2006
Georgia's Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) has never been a major voice for conservatism, nor has it been a supporter of America in the War on Terror. Public Editor Angela Tuck has acknowledged the "newspaper's constant drumbeat against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration," which has long been wearing on readers, and which has likely been a contributor to its dwindling subscriber base. However, the editorial page response to the recent torture and murder of two American soldiers, led by cartoonist Mike Luckovich, crossed the line of decency in the opinion of many Atlantans and Americans.
On Tuesday, June 20, Americans received the horrible news that missing Army Privates First Class Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker had been recovered—but also that they had been tortured, murdered, and mutilated so far beyond recognition that DNA tests were required for positive identification of the soldiers. Any American with a heart grieved for these young men who gave their lives for their country, and thoughts and prayers went out to their families from across the nation.
Two days later - Thursday, June 22 - the AJC dedicated a large portion of the two-page spread in its three-page editorial section to relatively evenhanded focus on the situation in Iraq. At the bottom of the right-hand page were two columns with fairly positive stances on the situation in Iraq (full disclosure: one of these was authored by me). Prominently displayed in the middle of the left-hand page, co-located with a balanced selection of letters to the editor (one opposing the war, one supporting the troops, and one decrying the terrorists' actions), were three-by-two inch portraits of the two murdered ("slaughtered," in the words of the terrorists) soldiers.
Directly above these photographs of the tortured and slain soldiers, though, was the paper's big mistake: the choice of editorial cartoons. The caricature, composed as always by AJC staff cartoonist Mike Luckovich and entitled "Pot to the Kettle" (it has since been archived under the title "The Book on Torture"), featured two characters wearing hoods. One of these figures was labeled "Al-Qaeda," and wielded a machete. The other, whose shirt featured an American flag, was reading aloud to the terrorist from a book labeled "Torture Etiquette."
The hinting at moral equivalence between the US and bloodthirsty terrorists inherent in this cartoon is revolting enough on the surface. However, conservative blog RedState.com points out that what the AJC is actually communicating through this is that "the United States is the instructor, teaching the terrorist how to torture."
Regardless of the intended message, Luckovich is guilty of a gross lack of judgment. While he may not have known that his creation would be appearing directly above pictures of the slain soldiers, he did make the decision to publish the cartoon - two days after they were recovered, after having been mutilated while alive, beheaded, and then desecrated. This is, of course, a literal depiction of what happened to them; it is not the all-too-common, incredibly dysphemistic "torture" via solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, et cetera which the Left is wont use as an example when likening America to her enemy. With this full knowledge, and with real American boys having suffered real torture at the hands of our enemies, Luckovich chose to create and publish a cartoon showing the US instructing a machete-wielding terrorist on the best use of torture. That much, at least, is entirely his fault.
The response to this was both immediate and overwhelming. The AJC received hundreds of letters decrying the cartoon and its placement (although, to be fair, they also received their share praising Luckovich for his candor, and thanking him for being "our conscience"). Angela Tuck, the Public Editor, was forced to write a Saturday column entitled "Luckovich's torture cartoon prompts a backlash," in which she addressed the issue by saying that the "symbolism clearly overshadowed the intent" of the cartoon, calling it "ill-timed," and saying that it was "meant to criticize U.S. military leaders for allowing torture tactics, such as waterboarding...at Guantanamo Bay."
An automobile dealership that advertises in the AJC took out a full-page advertisement immediately in front of the editorial page, which it used to condemn the cartoon (and its placement) as "offensive" and "unacceptable."
The advertisement went on to say:
We have signed an agreement, which we intend to honor, to advertise with them into the future. However, this event has changed the way we view the relationship. For now, we have chosen to spend our ad dollars to let you know that we do not agree with the editorial cartoonist of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and that we are proud of our country along with the men and women who serve us all.The ad closed, "We wish to extend our heartfelt sympathy to the families of Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca. [This company] and our country owe you a deep debt of gratitude for your sacrifice."
Regardless of intent, Atlanta's major newspaper has been interpreted by many as having fired another shot in the mainstream media's seemingly unending battle to blur the moral line between America and the brutal, barbaric enemy we are facing. Fortunately, the majority of Americans know the truth, regardless of real or perceived attempts at obfuscation: America DOES NOT torture prisoners, and America DOES NOT target civilians; no nation in history has been more of a global force for good than America, and most of her citizens both recognize that fact and take great pride in it.
As July 4, our Independence Day, approaches, it is absolutely vital that this be recognized: As long as Americans remain patriotic and committed to this greatest, most free, and most benevolent nation; as long as Americans avoid the siren call of the lionizing they would receive from media in exchange for the easy act of falsely condemning their nation; as long as Americans continue to believe in the ideals which our country represents and which our soldiers fight and die for; as long Americans continue to follow their principles and to hold fast to the truth, we will be able to continue fighting the good fight for the protection of our nation and for the freedom of peoples elsewhere and, God willing, we shall prevail.
Jeff Emanuel, a Special Operations military veteran, studies Classics at the University of Georgia. He is also a contributing editor for conservative web log RedState.com, and is a columnist for the Athens, GA Banner-Herald newspaper.
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