If you’re going to criticize the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq for the editorial page of the Washington Times, it’s important to take care of due diligence first.
Before getting around to your protestations, for example, you need to establish for your readers that you’re no knee-jerk liberal, no Saddam apologist, no patchouli-wearing peacenik. In short: You need to spend a couple of paragraphs bashing Cindy Sheehan.
A fine example of said approach appears in a Times article today by the prolific writer Nat Hentoff. “Omitted from Cindy Sheehan’s diligent march to becoming a celebrity are some questions the press doesn’t ask her,” writes Hentoff. “If our troops leave before the Iraqi forces are fully able to protect their people, have you thought of asking George Soros and MoveOn.org to pay for TV commercials to gather funds for the additional funerals for those Iraqis targeted for having shown signs of wanting to be free? That is, if their bodies can be found intact, or at all, after what the beheaders whom your soul brother, Michael Moore, calls ‘Minutemen’ have done with them.”
After completing the Times‘ editorial checklist (Bash Cindy Sheehan … check. Bash George Soros … check. Bash Michael Moore … check), Hentoff moves on to the gist of his column — taking issue with the Bush Administration’s handling of enemy combatants. “There should be protests against how our treatment of our prisoners in this war is aiding the terrorists’ recruiting efforts and fracturing our moral grounds to enable freedom to take deeper roots elsewhere in the world,” he writes.
“If we are to avoid being further stained, along with all those troops who are not engaged in such conduct,” he concludes, “there should be protests in front of Congress if it does not act to clear our names.”
Hentoff’s argument — which comes on the heels of last week’s vote by the Senate to overwhelmingly pass John McCain’s amendment prohibiting degrading treatment of U.S. prisoners overseas — is timely.
Too timely, in fact, to be so deeply buried in the story. In fact, Hentoff’s requisite thrashing of protesters on the left takes up roughly the same amount of space as his actual call for protests.
Fortunately, when Hentoff writes about prisoner abuse elsewhere, he doesn’t bother to bury the lead. Only a few days ago, for instance, he published a story in the Village Voice that covers much the same territory as his piece in today’s Times — albeit without the side trips to bash Sheehan, Soros, Moore, et al.
“Since 9-11, I’ve been covering the steadily increasing dislocation of our system of government — most vividly demonstrated by the Bush administration’s systematic abuses of detainees (akaprisoners), including torture,” writes Hentoff in his lead for the Voice. “But despite the huge amount of documented evidence, only low-level soldiers have been disciplined.”
The piece goes on to cite many of the same sources Hentoff quotes deep down in his Washington Times essay, including National Public Radio’s Jackie Northram, Amnesty International and the New England Journal of Medicine.
The headline of Hentoff’s article in the Voice warning that U.S. treatment of prisoners in this war is actually aiding terrorist recruiting efforts?
The Broken Constitution: More Eyewitnesses to U.S. torture of detainees pierce the Bush administration’s cover-up.
The headline of Hentoff’s article in the Times, also warning that U.S. treatment of prisoners in this war is actually aiding terrorist recruiting efforts ?
Cindy Sheehan’s cynical propaganda.
–Felix Gillette
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.