Afghan activist and politician Malalai Joya has been in the U.S. to discuss her book A Woman Among Warlords. As noted by Eric Garris at Antiwar.com, Joya's was treated very differently by CNN than by CNN International. Specifically, Joya's mention of the military occupation of her country seemed to offend CNN host Heidi Collins (10/28/09):

Again, "occupation" would certainly be your word. A lot of people would take great issue with you calling the U.S. presence in Afghanistan in your country an" occupation."

It's not clear to whom Collins is referring when she speaks of people who would take "great issue" with Joya's characterization. As Juan Cole put it, "that the U.S. and NATO are militarily occupying Afghanistan is recognized by the U.N. Security Council and is a simple fact of international law."

Or ask the International Committee of the Red Cross:

Once a situation exists which factually amounts to an occupation the law of occupation applies--whether or not the occupation is considered lawful.

Therefore, for the applicability of the law of occupation, it makes no difference whether an occupation has received Security Council approval, what its aim is, or indeed whether it is called an "invasion", "liberation", "administration" or "occupation." As the law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian considerations, it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application.

Dick Morris was on the O'Reilly Factor the other night (10/28/09) advocating a troop escalation in Afghanistan--and his argument was characteristically peculiar:

Listen, terrorist gangs like Al-Qaeda are like HIV virus. They swim in your bloodstream. They don't make you sick. When they latch on to a cell, a nation state, and they use the DNA of that cell, they then become a threat. When they use the accoutrements of nationhood--secure boundaries, a diplomatic corps, an export and import trade, and air force and navy, a tax
system, a conscript population--then they can knockdown the World Trade Center. We have got to stop Al-Qaeda from taking over Afghanistan. And that means stopping the Taliban.

It's hard to say what exactly Afghanistan's diplomatic corps, let alone the landlocked nation's navy, had to do with the September 11 attacks, which were largely planned and executed by Saudi Arabian students based in Germany and the United States. But you have to give Morris credit for being loopy enough to make the case that occupying Afghanistan is necessary to prevent terrorism in the United States; generally corporate media pundits consider that assumption to be self-evident, and don't bother to explain it.

Mark Weisbrot had a good column in the London Guardian (10/23/09) about the highly circumscribed "debate" over the Afghanistan War (FAIR Action Alert, 8/25/09). He breaks down the lineup of a recent Meet the Press (10/11/09):

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former Army general and drug czar (under President Clinton) turned defense industry lobbyist. In a news article on McCaffrey entitled "One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex," the New York Times reported that McCaffrey had "earned at least $500,000 from his work for Veritas Capital, a private equity firm in New York that has grown into a defense industry powerhouse by buying contractors whose profits soared from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." McCaffrey has appeared on NBC more than 1,000 times since 9/11/2001.

Retired Gen. Richard Meyers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bush (2002-05). He is currently on the Board of Directors of Northrop Grumman Corporation, one of the largest military contractors in the world, and also of United Technologies Corporation, another large military contractor.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina, a pro-war spokesperson who is one of the most regular guests on the Sunday talkshows.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat, was apparently intended to represent the "other side" of the debate. Here is what he said: "Clearly we should keep the number of forces that we have.  No one's talking about removing forces."

"No one," in the above sentence refers to the American people, whom Levin understandably sees as nobody in the eyes of the U.S. media and political leaders. According to the latest (September 24) NYT/CBS News poll, 32 percent of those polled wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan within one year or right now. That was the largest group. Another 24 percent wants the troops "removed within one to two years." For comparison, the leadership of the Taliban is willing to grant foreign troops 18 months to get out of their country.

In other words, a majority of 56 percent of Americans wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan about as soon as is practically feasible or even sooner. Yet Meet the Press--a mainstream network news talkshow since 1947--does not see fit to find one person to represent that point of view. The other major TV and radio talkshows that the right also labels "liberal" in the United States make similar choices almost every day.

When asked whether the U.S. should set a timeline for withdrawal, Levin answered "no."

This phenomenon of the non-debate is not confined to broadcast journalism; see recent FAIR Blog posts on fake Afghanistan debates in Time magazine (10/2/09), USA Today (9/17/09) and the Washington Post (9/01/09, 8/17/09).

In today's New York Times article, "Experts Worry as Population and Hunger Grow," there's some Green Revolution mythology propagated about how the policies "staved off famines affecting millions." As has been pointed out, though food production did increase, hunger actually increased as well just about everywhere affected by the Green Revolution; the reason the overall numbers showed hunger down was because China, as part of its own revolution including land reform, managed to reduce hunger dramatically. But the overall framing of the article is what bothers me more--the idea that it's "scientists and development experts" who are responsible for "feeding the world's growing population."

There are hints at the real problem, as when reporter Neil MacFarquhar notes that "the conundrum is whether the food can be grown in the developing world where the hungry can actually get it, at prices they can afford." He also notes legitimate concerns like the effect of climate change, which is worsening droughts in some areas, and the growth of biofuels, which gobble up available farmland. But he quickly returns to the main angle, explaining, "The track record of failing to feed the hungry haunts the effort." He quotes one official who explains the current problem in terms of a lack of aid money from the West: "Nobody has 20 billion and spare change in their sock drawer."

As Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé pointed out in Extra! (11-12/08), the problem is extreme inequality and lack of power for poor farmers; the hungry don't need experts and the G-8 to "feed" them, they need the opportunity to feed themselves, whether that be in the form of more equitable land reform, the ability to adopt their own sustainable agricultural methods, or freedom from the market distortions created by those very G-8 countries and experts. Even the climate change and biofuel concerns are primarily the result of damaging first-world energy policies that remain unaddressed--by those countries as well as by MacFarquhar. But it's no surprise those root causes go missing in a hunger story whose hook is a meeting of "development experts" and every source but one is either a government or aid official.

"U.S. Deeply Split on Troop Increase for Afghan War" is the headline on the Washington Post's October 21 report about its latest polling on Afghanistan.  The paper reports that "Americans are evenly and deeply divided" over sending 40,000 extra troops: "47 percent of those polled favor the buildup, while 49 percent oppose it."

If you've followed polling on this question, these results are striking--most recent surveys show the public is deeply troubled by the war and opposed to sending more troops. The most recent CNN survey (10/16-18/09), to take one example, found 39 percent support for sending more troops, and 59 opposed to that idea.

So who did the Post get those results? They've been asking questions about troop buildup in their other polls, but for this one they changed the wording of the question to this:

U.S. military commanders have requested approximately 40,000 more U.S. troops for Afghanistan. Do you think Obama should or should not order these additional forces to Afghanistan?

It's very likely that including references to "military commanders" and Obama skew the responses to the question--as has been noted, Obama tends to poll better than his policies do. One of the Post's recent polls (8/13-17/09) on Afghanistan was more neutrally worded:

Do you think the number of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan should be increased, decreased or kept about the same?

The result then: 24 percent favored an increase, 45 percent favored a decrease, 27 percent supported keeping troop levels the same. This led the Post to report the results of that poll under the headline, "Public Opinion in U.S. Turns Against Afghan War."

So did the Post change the wording of the poll to get a different outcome? Or did public opinion just dramatically reverse course in two months? The latter seems implausible.

When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel recently returned from Afghanistan, he told MSNBC's Morning Joe, "I honestly think it's probably time to start leaving the country." Engel added, "I really don't see how this is going to end in anything but tears."

Engel's comments caused Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (10/12/09) to raise an eyebrow at a reporter stating an opinion: "That sounds awfully opinionated for a working reporter," wrote Kurtz.

But we had to wonder if what really attracted Kurtz's scrutiny was Engel's stating of an opinion, or the opinion itself?

After all, for years FAIR has documented the phenomenon of journalists stating opinions in support of hawkish U.S. policies with virtual impunity--even when their views were catastrophically in error.

And so we wondered if Kurtz would even have commented if a network news reporter had suggested that the U.S. needed to escalate its military efforts in Afghanistan. We needn't have wondered.

Lara Logan, who holds the same position at CBS News as Engel does at NBC--chief foreign affairs correspondent--may be a more vehement cheerleader for escalation than Engel is for withdrawal. In a recent interview with Bob Orr on CBS News' Political Hotsheet, Logan expressed a disturbing devotion to  Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and chief proponent of escalating the war there: "I don't understand why no one will listen to the man you put your faith in and said he is the guy who is going to do this for us...."

Since Logan too "sounds awfully opinionated for a working reporter," we wonder how it is she escaped Kurtz's scrutiny?

For us, it isn't so much that journalists have and express opinions--the public is better served when we know what reporters are thinking--but we are troubled when  disapproval and despair over the lost standards of journalistic objectivity are trotted out only for reporters whose opinions are at odds with official views.

So we are glad to know of Logan's hero worship, even if it is at odds with the worthwhile  journalistic ethic that says reporters should hold the feet of the powerful to the fire--not massage them.
Corrected version: The original version of this post gave Stanley McChrystal's first name incorrectly.

Isabel Kershner writes a piece in the New York Times (10/9/09) that starts out as a profile of an Israeli artist who makes flowers out of Qassam rocket pieces. The main point, though, is to discuss the changed reality in southern Israel, thanks to the invasion of the Gaza Strip late last year that killed over 1,000 Palestinians:

Israel said its three-week offensive was intended to change the reality in the south. Since January, when the military campaign ended, the rocket fire has significantly fallen off and residents here are trying to accustom themselves to a kind of normalcy amid the lingering uncertainty and fear.

This recycles the myth that rocket fire was a constant barrage until the war changed all that-- a point Kershner makes more explicitly later:

According to the Israeli military, some 3,300 rockets and mortar shells were launched from Gaza at southern Israel in 2008, compared with fewer than 300 since the end of the war.

This is highly misleading; much of that rocket fire came at the end of the year-- after the invasion and bombing of Gaza was underway. In fact, a  negotiated peace prevailed for much of the middle of 2008--which is something that you would have learned if you were a careful reader of the New York Times. Right before the invasion, the paper (12/19/08) reported that much of 2008 was quiet:

Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.

Rocket fire increased significantly in November after Israel attacked a Hamas tunnel and killed six militants. For a graphic understanding of the rate of rocket/mortar fire, see this (which is based on Israeli figures).

The more natural lesson to draw is that negotiations work better than violence. This is apparently not what the New York Times wants you to believe,  though they did once report that reality. Perhaps it was an accident.

Kudos to the New York Times for publishing a front-page article (10/8/09) about the U.S. advisers and lobbyists who have been working (in one form or another) on behalf of the coup government in Honduras. But the piece glosses over the U.S. history in the region. Reporters Ginger Thompson and Ron Nixon write that the coup government "has also drawn support from several former high-ranking officials who were responsible for setting United States policy in Central America in the 1980s and '90s, when the region was struggling to break with the military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies that defined the cold war."

When "the region was struggling to break with the military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies"? A little more clarity is needed there. The U.S.--to take two examples--supported a thuggish military government in El Salvador and created a "guerrilla insurgency" to try and defeat a left-wing government in Nicaragua. In other words, while "the region" may have wanted one thing, U.S. foreign policy sought to bolster violent, anti-democratic force. Stating these facts clearly would give readers a better sense of of the context--and demonstrate that people like Otto Reich and Roger Noriega are still on the wrong side.

In most policy debates, the media preference is for a solution in the "center," whatever they define that to be.  A Los Angeles Times headline today on the Beltway debate on Afghanistan reads: "Obama mulls middle ground in Afghanistan war strategy." Like the healthcare debate, the media's version of "the middle" usually means something well to the right of actual public opinion.

In this case, it's even harder to follow than that; as the Times puts it, Obama "suggested he is looking at the middle range of the spectrum, somewhere between a major increase in forces and a large drawdown."

Well that's a rather wide spectrum, isn't it? If you look at polls of the public, there is very little support for sending more troops--and much more support for either keeping troop levels where they are, or decreasing the size of U.S. forces in the country. So the "middle" ground isn't so hard to locate--it's somewhere between decreasing U.S. forces or keeping them at current levels. The fact that the debate in Washington doesn't seem to reflect that is, of course, telling; perhaps a more open media debate would change that.

Huh?

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-afghan7-2009oct07,0,3693182.story

In the new issue of Time magazine, a debate on Afghanistan is listed in the table of contents this way:

What Should We Do Now? Two Views
Is it time for the U.S. military to turn Afghanistan over, or is time for our troops to stay the course?

The "stay the course" view is presented by Peter Bergen, who argues that critics of the war are all wrong about Afghan history and the Afghan public's view of foreign troops (they don't mind them much): "The objections to an increased U.S. military commitment in South Asia rest on a number of flawed assumptions."  Sending  as many as 40,000 more troops--as the White House seems to favor--is "sound policy."

The opposing view comes from Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He thinks that the hawks have twisted the argument--- as he puts it:

Hawks on Afghan policy--those who favor defeating Al-Qaeda through a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy involving up to 40,000 more U.S. troops--have divined a politically clever line of argument: Win or get out.

It's a phony choice. The hawks know there's no chance of our simply pulling out of Afghanistan. That option isn't even on the White House table, despite growing public desire to end the war. The true aim of the hawks, or all-outers, in this maneuver is to discredit the real policy alternative--the middle ground.

So he's for the "middle ground," which includes this:

Third, surge about 10,000 new combat forces on top of the 68,000 already authorized and create an additional 5,000 dedicated trainers. Such a surge should be sufficient to handle immediate troubles.

Fourth, start doing what the U.S. does well--deterrence and containment. To deter, we must maintain a small, residual capability in Afghanistan for a few years, as well as offshore air and missile capabilities to inflict harsh punishment when necessary.

So to simplify: The debate is between sending 40,000 more troops, or 10,000--with a "residual capability" in Afghanistan for "a few years." There's "no chance" for any other policy--even though public opinion is clearly against sending more troops. And we're hoping to create democracy in Afghanistan?

As negotiations begin in Geneva between Iran, Germany and the U.N. Security Council permanent members, Juan Cole debunks the prevailing myths about Iran. Myths that could not endure if U.S. news outlets took journalism seriously and challenged U.S. officialdom on Iran.

Ousted President Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras, though not to office.  Unfortunately, press accounts still manage to mangle the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to explain what happened. In today's New York Times (9/22/09):

At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his opponents said would have been the first step toward allowing him to run for another term in office, which is forbidden under the Honduran constitution. Mr. Zelaya has denied any attempt to run for re-election.

An Associated Press report appearing in today's USA Today (9/22/09) was much worse:

The legislature ousted Zelaya after he formed an alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and tried to alter the nation's constitution. Zelaya was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum to extend his term. The Honduran Constitution forbids a president from trying to obtain another term in office.

This is inaccurate, not to mention strange (ousted for a Chavez "alliance"?).  As economist Mark Weisbrot put it shortly after the coup (7/8/09), these pro-coup arguments makes no sense--and the media should say so. By the way, the example he cites is also from the New York Times....

Unfortunately much of the major media's reporting has aided this effort by reporting such statements as "Critics feared he intended to extend his rule past January, when he would have been required to step down."

In fact, there was no way for Zelaya to "extend his rule" even if the referendum had been held and passed, and even if he had then gone on to win a binding referendum on the November ballot. The June 28 referendum was nothing more than a non-binding poll of the electorate, asking whether the voters wanted to place a binding referendum on the November ballot to approve a redrafting of the country's constitution. If it had passed, and if the November referendum had been held (which was not very likely) and also passed, the same ballot would have elected a new president and Zelaya would have stepped down in January. So, the belief that Zelaya was fighting to extend his term in office has no factual basis -- although most people who follow this story in the press seem to believe it. The most that could be said is that if a new constitution were eventually approved, Zelaya might have been able to run for a second term at some future date.

USA Today 's left/right op-ed feature today is a doozy-- a "debate" on escalating the Afghan War between regulars Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel. The headline gives it away:

Time to Dig In, Not Bail Out

Forget left or right. Forget politics. Think "war on terror." Bob and Cal agree that now is not the time to abandon the war in Afghanistan.

The back and forth between arch-conservative Thomas and TV leftist Beckel ends with this exchange:

Bob: As much as my liberal instincts want us out of this war, I have to agree with you that it's time to stay and fight. The more dangerous path would be to retreat.

Cal: Among the many things I admire about you, Bob, is that you are often able to overcome your instincts when facts get in the way. Your party was once a keeper of freedom's flame when it came to engaging and defeating Communism. Now we have a new enemy. Nothing would benefit America more than to see Democrats and Republicans unite to defeat this enemy.

The thing that Cal Thomas admires about his liberal sparring partner--his inability to be an actual advocate for the left--is exactly the same quality that the corporate media look for in liberal pundits. It earns you a pat on the head from Cal Thomas, and a regular gig as a TV leftist.

PBS's NewsHour's  Gwen Ifill (9/15/09), quizzing Richard Goldstone on his U.N. fact-finding mission that found that both Israel and Palestinian fighters had committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict:

The term "even-handed" is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?

CBS News (9/9/09), summarizing a report by Israel's leading human rights group:

Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel's Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel's claim that most of the dead were militants.... The Israeli rights group B'Tselem on Wednesday published figures it said were compiled in months of research, including visits to families of victims. It said 1,387 Gazans were killed, including 773 civilians and 330 combatants. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

So why would the U.N. be more interested in the war crimes that killed nearly 200 times as many people? Thanks to Ifill and the NewsHour for challenging this strange moral reasoning.

Of deteriorating governmental control in Afghanistan, Norman Solomon (Common Dreams, 9/8/09) says that "a stale witticism calls Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai 'the mayor of Kabul.' Now, not even." He points to the "corrupt, inept and--with massive election fraud--now illegitimate" administration as a "notable work product" of "those who believe in making war":

After 30 years, the results are in: a devastated city....

Meanwhile, a war-stoking mindset is replicating itself at the highest reaches of official Washington--even while polls tell us that the pro-war spin has been losing ground. For the U.S. public, dwindling support for the war in Afghanistan has reached a tipping point. But, as you've probably heard, the war must go on....

Visiting Kabul in late August, I met a lot of wonderful people, doing their best in the midst of grim and lethal realities. The city seemed thick with pessimism.

In comparison, the mainline political discourse about Afghanistan in the United States is blithe. A familiar duet has the news media and the White House asking the perennial question: "Can the war be won?"

The administration insists that the answer is yes. The press is mixed. But they’re both asking the wrong question.

According to Solomon, a question "more relevant, by far," though unlikely to come from corporate media, "would be to ask: Should the U.S. government keep destroying Afghanistan in order to 'save' it?" See FAIR's Action Alert: "Where Is the Afghanistan Debate?: When Public Support Slips, TV Packs in War Boosters" (8/25/09).