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The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad "The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater." Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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November 14, 2005 Christopher
Reed November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gwyneth Leech Elmas Mallo Michael Neumann Saul Landau Sam Husseini Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Michael Donnelly Joe Allen Roland Sheppard Justin E.H.
Smith Ben Tripp St. Clair /
Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Eli Stephens David Swanson M. Junaid Alam Matt Reichel Naima Bouteldja Jeff Halper Website of the Day
November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Diana Johnstone Roosa / Nevins Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Ross Mike Whitney Mark Engler Juliano Mer-Khamis Ron Jacobs Jill S. Farrell Missy Comley
Beattie Mitchel Cohen Evelyn J. Pringle Reza Fiyouzat Charles Sullivan Zachary Richard Ben Tripp St. Clair / Vest
November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Lindorff Phillip Cryan Christopher Brauchli William S.
Lind Daryl G. Kimball George Beres Peter Montague
November 3, 2005 James Petras Saul Landau Rep. Cynthia McKinney Michael Dickinson Joshua Frank Remi Kanazi Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
November 2, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Robert Oscar Lopez John Walsh Brian J. Foley Ramzy Baroud M. Junaid Alam Todd Chretien Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs Gary Leupp John Ross Bill Quigley Joseph Nevins Dave Lindorff Linda S. Heard Heather Gray Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St. Clair
October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Mark Weisbrot Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Farooq Sulehria Nicole Colson Madis Senner Paul Craig
Roberts
Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Steven Higgs Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Joshua Frank Laura Santina Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs Dr. Susan Block Vanessa S. Jones Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
October 19, 2005 Christopher Reed Stephen Soldz Chet Richards Patrick Cockburn Scott Richard
Lyons Ralph Nader Website of
the Day
October 18, 2005 Chet Flippo Ron Jacobs Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor Dave Lindorff Virginia Rodino Thomas Healy Ralph Nader Stephen Lendman Patrick Cockburn
October 17, 2005 Peter Linebaugh Norman Solomon Cockburn /
Sengupta Mike Whitney Uri Avnery Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
October 15 / 16, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Neve Gordon Moshe Adler Christopher Brauchli Diane Farsetta Sam Husseini Monica Benderman Mickey Z. Douglas C.
Smyth Lee Sustar Fred Gardner Elizabeth Schulte Joshua Frank David Vest Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 14, 2005 Farrah Hassen Ron Jacobs Sasha Kramer Katrina Yeaw Nicole Colson Raúl Zibechi Nikolas Kozloff Website of the Day
Jeremy Scahill Jeff Birkenstein Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher Stan Cox Anis Memon Gary Leupp Dave Zirin Matthew Koehler Werther Website of
the Day
Omar Waraich William Cook Phil Gasper Dave Lindorff Matt Vidal John Gautreaux Diana Johnstone Mark Weisbrot Brian J. Foley Website of
the Day
October 11, 2005 Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt Lila Rajiva Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Mitchel Cohen Tariq Ali Website of
the Day
October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig
Corrie Joshua Frank Gideon Levy Alan Wallis Mickey Z. CounterPunch News Service Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Jennifer Van Bergen Saul Landau Jeff Halper Lenni Brenner Nikolas Kozloff Brian Cloughley Alice Slater John Gautreaux Fred Gardner Niranjan Ramakrishnan M.G. Piety Tom Gorman Mike Whitney Aseem Shrivastava Ben Tripp Poets' Basement
October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson Will Youmans Dave Lindorff Judith Scherr Russell D. Hoffman Jared Bernstein Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of
the Day
P. Sainath Scott Parkin Paul Craig
Roberts Andréa Schmidt Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank M. Junaid Alam Matthew Koehler Robert Pollin
October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Col. Dan Smith Dave Zirin Paul Craig Roberts Alan Maass
October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Mike Roselle Joshua Frank John Chuckman Alan Farago Mickey Z. Christine & Ethan Rose Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Seth Sandronsky Jeffrey St. Clair
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November 14, 2005 Kulturkrieg in Journalism: Using Emotion to Silence AnalysisThe Origins of the Guardian's Attack on ChomskyBy DIANA JOHNSTONE Last Halloween, The Guardian ran an attack on Noam Chomsky that amazed many readers who had considered The Guardian to be one of Britain's more serious newspapers. The attack took the form of what Alexander Cockburn described in his article on this CounterPunch website as a "showcase interview"--"a showcase for the interviewer's inquisitorial chutzpa". In this art form, the interviewee is simply the prey for the interviewer who plies him with trap questions and then rewrites the whole thing to make him look like an idiot compared to her clever self. The interviewer was a young Oxford graduate named Emma Brockes who is making a name for herself in the genre. Ms Brockes obviously had scant familiarity with Chomsky's work. For all one can tell, her sole background preparation for this assignment was an article written by her colleague Ed Vulliamy and published by the Balkan Crisis Report of International War and Peace Reporting (IWPR, an outfit heavily subsidized by NATO governments) on August 27, 2004. Vulliamy's article, "We Must Fight for Memory of Bosnia's Camps", calling for monuments to perpetuate the memory of the 1992 Bosnian Serb detention camps which he visited as a reporter (but not, of course, the Muslim and Croat camps which he did not visit), includes an attack on me which is echoed very precisely by Ms Brockes, even to misspelling my name in the same way. The entire background for her attack on Chomsky seems to be drawn from two paragraphs of Vulliamy's article:
In her write-up of the interview, Ms Brockes interprets Chomsky's defense of publication of my book as a "defense of those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated" and drags in the ITN-Living Marxism (LM) controversy, confusing the facts just as in Vulliamy's article. She lauds "my colleague, Ed Vulliamy", as one of the "serious, trustworthy people" who disagree with Chomsky. So it is not far-fetched to see Vulliamy's influence in the Brockes hatchet job. The above citation from the
Vulliamy article misrepresents the ITN-LM case, as does Ms Brockes.
The issue raised by LM had to do with the way photographs taken
at Trnopolje camp, by focusing on a thin man on the other side
of a wire fence which in reality did not surround the Muslim
inmates, but rather the ITN crew itself, was used to create the
impression that what was happening in Bosnia was a repetition
of a Nazi-style Moreover, in reality, nobody denied the "existence" of the camps, which Vulliamy claims to have "discovered", although he was led there by Bosnian Serb guides. There are other misrepresentations in his article. For example, I have never made any claim as to the number of victims in Bosnia, but simply pointed to the fact that among various estimates, the media has preferred to accept and repeat the highest, which was offered without any evidence by the information ministry in Sarajevo. Since my book was published, a serious study by Norwegian experts for the Hague Tribunal has estimates the overall number of casualties of the Bosnian war at 102,622 persons, of which 55,261 were civilians and 47,360 militaries at the time of death (no ethnic breakdown). That is a lot, but it is not "over 200,000", as Vulliamy and others go right on repeating, usually with the implication that all were Muslims From this citation, it emerges that the Brockes interview was a continuation of the vicious attack on me and the managing editor of the Swedish magazine Ordfront, Björn Ecklund, following his long article in the July/August 2003 issue on "lies about Yugoslavia" which featured an interview with me and excerpts from my book, "Fools' Crusade". The first shots in that assault were fired by Maciej Zaremba, an ex-Maoist of Polish origin turned ideological watchdog, in a flailing article published by Sweden's leading mainstream daily, Dagens Nyeter. Zaremba's sloppy attack (he admittedly never read my book, and seems not even to have read the Ordfront piece carefully) was thereupon echoed by mainstream Swedish media, in a campaign absurdly called a "debate", although replies from those being attacked (myself and others) were excluded. Among the uncorrected lies was the statement that I was a "pillar of LM", a magazine with which I have never had the slightest contact. This shameful campaign was used to bring to heel Ordfront, which until then had been the most important left-oriented alternative to Sweden's mainstream press. It is an amazing story, excellently recounted by Al Burke, a (formerly U.S.) Swedish citizen who is well-acquainted with the Ordfront scandal and its broader political context. His document, "All Quieted on the Word Front", deserves to be read carefully by all who are concerned by the growing threats to freedom of political expression in the "democratic West". See www.nnn.se/n-model/foreign/ordfront.pdf. For starters, there is an introduction on Al Burke's web www.nnn.se/n-model/foreign/ordfront.htm Ms Brockes colleague Ed Vulliamy is a proud practitioner of what is called "advocacy journalism", a reporter who openly and passionately takes sides in conflicts he covers. I would prefer to describe it as sort of literary journalism, where phrase-making and emotional arousal take precedence over reason, or even, on occasion, facts. The striking feature is the unrestrained use of a florid style, reflected in his choice of adjectives. In the article cited above, for instance, he speaks of the "putrid afternoon" when he had "the accursed honor" of seeing "heinouswalls", etc. As to content, in the case of the Yugoslav disintegration wars, the emotional approach works best by reducing events to a certain number of notorious atrocities, proper to chill the blood and close the mind to contemplation of political complications. Beyond advocacy, he writes as a sort of professional mourner and literary avenger. Now, that is his right and suits his talent. I make no attempt to interfere with his mourning and his advocacy. But I do object when his style of journalism is used to condemn a quite different type of journalistic writing: one that attempts to be analytical and fair to all sides. I readily acknowledge that emotional commitment is probably the most powerful motor for even the most analytical writing. But the difference is the attempt to be dispassionate, to exercise a certain self-control over the emotional flow of words. The watchdogs condemn efforts to be fair to all sides in the Yugoslav conflicts as "inflicting new pain on the victims"; Vulliamy wrote that "Johnstone's book has inflicted new pain on those who matter the most: those who underwent endless days of mindless torture and survived; on the brave and almost forgotten women of Srebrenica who are still desperately searching for their loved ones; and dishonours the memory of the victims." In short, I am accused of being a sort of torturer, and Vulliamy is no doubt able to round up some poor Bosnian Muslim victims of his acquaintance, wave my book at them, and tell them that they have been dishonored and that he is busily defending them from the pain I am <nflicting.This> does not really do much for the victims, but it does serve to preserve the Bosnian conflict as a purely emotional issue, a issue of good versus evil, which keeps it firmly on the terrain commandeered by Vulliamy himself, and the likes of Zaremba. It enforces the notion of a cartoonbook world, in which all is either black or white, good or evil, and anyone who tries to understand all sides of an issue is condemned as an appeaser, a coward, and perhaps even a handmaiden of the Devil. In reality, trying to be fair and analytical does not at all preclude feeling sympathy for victims, and other human emotions. But for some writers, their emotional commitment seems to exclude all fairness and reasonable analysis. Whatever the political aims of such writers, a matter I cannot judge, their militant rejection of dispassionate analysis can only play into the hands of political powers who cloak their military interventions in the rhetoric of humanitarian imperatives. Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools'
Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions published
by Monthly Review Press. She can be reached at: dianajohnstone@compuserve.com
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair                       |
