So it's on to Damascus, and let's win there. Offering an "analysis" of George Bush's speech Tuesday at the National Defense University, Todd Purdum leads by insisting that the President "has gone out of his way not to crow, or even to take direct credit" for the direction (more equivocal than not, as Purdum of course refuses to acknowledge) of events in Lebanon and elsewhere in the middle east. Then again, why should Dear Leader crow, when he's got sycophant Todd and the Times to do the job for him?

But not quite two years after he began the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and not quite two months after a second Inaugural Address in which he spoke of "ending tyranny," President Bush seems entitled to claim as he did on Tuesday that a "thaw has begun" in the broader Middle East.

At the very least, Mr. Bush is feeling the glow of the recent flurry of impulses toward democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where events have put him on a bit of a roll and some of his sharpest critics on the defensive. ... The failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq, his administration's shifting rationales for the war, the lingering insurgency and steady American casualties there were a drag on Mr. Bush's political fortunes for most of last year. But a wave of developments since the better-than-expected Iraqi elections in January - some perhaps related and others probably not - have brought Mr. Bush a measure of vindication, which may or may not be sustained by events and his own actions in the months to come.

"For Bush, a Taste of Vindication in Mideast"

As reported in the accompanying straight-news piece by Richard Stevenson—yes, the Times is giving this the full Presidential Moment treatment, even if on an inner page—the speech is the usual Bush foreign-policy melange of muscle-flexing, sweeping, contentless rhetoric, and cynical abstraction. (Shorter Dubya Doctrine: Democracy is on the march wherever foreigners do what I want them to do. Freedom's just another word for my enemies getting the shaft.) It appears, even in the saber-rattling toward Syria, to have no news value whatsoever: the Times would have done a kindness to all concerned simply to have ignored it.

But if you're going to go so far as to provide "analysis," would it not be a service to the subscribers to offer them some, any, informed perspective on the recent political developments in the region? Instead of just retailing the Administration's laundry-list of putative democratic "successes" there, ranging from the sham promise of openness in Egypt's forthcoming elections to the burgeoning narco-warlord-opoly being created in Afghanistan? (None of these things is very much like the other, except in their more or less equal inapplicability to the notion of a general, historic flowering of democracy. Hell, Egypt and Afghanistan aren't even in the same region. Sorry to all those who want this to be Eastern Europe circa 1989.) But critical thinking, obviously, is only (occasionally) for the op-ed pages: the news columns demand cheerleading. (It's more objective if you take everything Dear Leader says at face value.) I can't think of anything more revealing of the Times' contempt for its readers, or for the record, for that matter, than setting a stenographer of the Washington CW like Todd Purdum on to "analyze," and smother in the rhetoric of Importance, what at bottom is just one more disposable moment in the sad history of BushCo bunkum.

posted by michael  4:42:53 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

Liberal's liberal Jeff Jarvis offers a substantive, one-line critique this morning of Robert Fisk's piece on the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon under the heading "Eeyores":

Of course, Robert Fisk sees Syria's withdrawl from Lebanon as bad news.

That's some mighty fine analysis there: but since Hizbollah remains in place, as well as the political and demographic logic of Syrian dominance in Lebanon, Jeff might possibly be counting his chickens before they've hatched.

Then again, if we fail to express insane, groundless optimism about Middle Eastern politics whenever the Bush Administration cues us, the terrorists have already won. And worse, Jeff Jarvis will think we're politically immature ...

Update: Speaking of the premature counting of chickens, notice this in the Times:

Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Émile Lahoud, is set to call back Omar Karami as prime minister, nine days after he was forced to resign under pressure from opponents to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. ...

The nomination is certain to be a disappointment for those who had sought an end to the interference of Damascus in Lebanon; it threatens to lock the small Mediterranean country in a political impasse and calls into question the parliamentary elections scheduled in May.

Jad Mouawad, "Pro-Syrian Prime Minister Set to Return in Lebanon"

Must get old being wrong all the time, huh, Jeff?

posted by michael  8:19:46 AM  
tell me about it []