Worse than Safire

Tbogg and Attaturk do some good work taking John Tierney’s latest apart, but I don’t think they go quite far enough.

Let’s forget, for a moment, that John Tierney is a complete fucking hack whose career is built around repeating Republican Party talking points. Instead of thinking about that, let’s take his argument seriously, as if he really believed what he was putting forward, and meant for others to consider it in a serious and thoughtful manner. Boiled down, this is his argument (and I’m really trying to be fair; if I’ve misconstrued, please let me know):

The media ought not to report suicide bombings in Iraq, because reporting of these bombing paints a grimmer picture of Iraq than actually exists, and thus damages American morale and feeds the hopes of insurgents.

Ok, great. This is an argument I can take seriously, even if I find it appalling. Tierney follows this up with a ridiculous cop-out:

I’m not advocating official censorship, but there’s no reason the news media can’t reconsider their own fondness for covering suicide bombings. A little restraint would give the public a more realistic view of the world’s dangers.

And now you’ve lost me. If we accept the first part of the argument, then why not censor? If news of suicide bombings strikes at the US “center of gravity” by reducing civilian morale, and similarly feeds the hopes of the enemy, thus leading to more suicide bombing, then why not censor? Better to pursue actual censorship than simply to try intimidating the media. Virtually everyone agrees that censorship in wartime is acceptable under certain circumstances; the enemy ought not be apprised of the positions of our ships and armies, as our soldiers will die and their missions will fail. According to Tierney, reporting on suicide bombers will have the same effect, as our soldiers will die from additional suicide bombings and their mission will fail because of a lack of public support.

The problem with Tierney’s argument is that, in a democracy, leaders are accountable for the failure of their policies. A free press, capable of reporting on evidence of those failures, is thus critical to the health of a democracy. You cannot have a democracy without a free media; voters must have access to information about the policies of their leaders. The converse is also true; dictatorships cannot endure a free media because evidence of policy failure leads to calls for accountability. Tierney would like, I suppose, to argue that suicide bombings do not constitute evidence of failure, but this doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Healthy states and communities do not have to deal with suicide bombers as a regular part of life. Healthy communities either a)eliminate the need for suicide bombing by creating alternative avenues of political protest, or b)capture or kill the suicide bombers before they cause damage. That suicide bombings happen regularly in Baghdad is an indication that something ain’t right. Moreover, it’s unclear from Tierney’s argument exactly what does constitute evidence that would be suitable for the American people to hear. Wouldn’t any report on enemy success hurt America and help the enemy? Thus, shouldn’t any report on American failure be suppressed? This leads to a further problem, because I would imagine that Tierney would have to agree that SOME war at SOME point waged by SOME administration will be a bad idea, and therefore serve as evidence of policy failure and justification for electoral defeat.

Tierney is unable to grapple with this because he won’t spell out all of his assumptions. He wants to argue that the heart of our failure in Iraq lies neither with the Bush administration nor the military, but instead with the news media. They are the ones responsible for sapping the strength of the American people and feeding the power of our enemies. This is not a new argument. Conservatives and military officials have pushed this line since the Vietnam War, as it was easier to blame the media that to assess actual political and military responsibility for defeat. The argument Tierney is making rests on this crucial assumption:

The American people are weak and stupid, and can neither understand the course of the war nor make informed value judgments as to its success.

They are weak because pictures of suicide bombers make them ill, and the notion that US policy plays some role in enabling the bombings makes them want to call the whole thing off. They are stupid because they cannot grasp the war in its entirety, and thus cannot be relied upon to make a reasonable assessment of its value. Tierney won’t spell this out because it leads to a contradiction. If the people are too weak and stupid to make reasonable assessments of the course of a war, which is arguably the most important decision that a government will make, then what precisely is the value of democracy in the first place? If the experts decide when to go to war, and how to end a war, then what role is the voter supposed to play? If media and government elites conspire to hide the evidence of a policy failure, then we don’t have a democracy. From what I understand of Tierney’s argument, this doesn’t bother him all that much.

So, lest we forget, John Tierney is a complete fucking hack whose career is built around repeating Republican Party talking points.