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May 14, 2005
Why Read Broadly and Abroad?
Find your way to In the Light of Reason. Arthur Silber compares two articles on Iraq; one from the New York Times, ("The Mystery of the Insurgency" by James Bennet, May 15, 2005) and one from the London Review of Books ("Diary from Mosul" by Patrick Cockburn, May 19, 2005 edition). Yes, one is dated tomorrow and the other Thursday of next week.
I offer the following from Silber's post to whet your appetite.
While Bennet relies on history from everywhere else in the world—from Vietnam, from Greece, from Northern Ireland —Cockburn appreciates and understands the central importance of the history of Iraq itself. One might be pardoned for not having thought that this stunningly obvious point would require explanation and justification, but such is the nature of our disastrously failed foreign policy—a failure which is all too comprehensible, if one knows where to look for the reasons.So while Bennet is unable to put the pieces together and can only consult other "models" to explain the Iraqi insurgency—and fails miserably, by his own admission—Cockburn has no such problem. . .
[snip]
The contrast between these two perspectives is alarming, and damning. The most telling detail from Bennet’s article is the final one:
"[The insurgency] clearly makes sense to the people who are doing it," said Dr. Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute. "And that more than anything else tells us how little we understand the region."This statement—particularly when coupled with Bennet’s immediately preceding observation: "history itself fails to illuminate the conflict under way in Iraq"—pinpoints the problem. The U.S., and most of the American media, have been and remain resolutely determined to look at the wrong history. They act as if Iraq’s own history, including its long, bloody history of ethnic strife (pace Wolfowitz), is entirely irrelevant. It is hardly a mystery why they are then unable to grasp what is right before their eyes. They look at events in Iraq (to the extent they do look at them, which is far from comprehensive as Cockburn makes very clear) through the prism of ideas they have gleaned from other countries’ histories—and the reality of Iraq itself never assumes solid shape before them.
Although I tend to agree with Silber on this issue, I do not think our press is universally wrongheaded or misguided. I do know that our press often fails to report important facts on the ground and as well as the appropriate history of the situation. I reported on one example, from Pakistan, here. We need a press that does not worry about subtle censorship such as denial of access to sources or withdraw of advertising. While that is not currently possible, reading broadly, including the foreign press, and making informed syntheses is the best way to simulate the ideal state of affairs.
Posted by Duane Smith at May 14, 2005 3:05 PM | Read more on Current Events |
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