reflectivepundit

Former “Public Servants” and their Multi-Million-Dollar Book Deals

By Brigitte L. Nacos
While administration officials deflected George Tenet’s criticism of their pre-Iraq war stance over the weekend and former CIA officials outright attacked him for his version of pertinent intelligence during the build-up to the war, the former CIA director’s book “At the Center of the Storm” was already in second place on Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s bestseller list this morning. However beleaguered Tenet appeared during his appearance on the “60 Minutes” program last night, he was stuck with this interview and subsequent media appearances to market his book. After all, this book made him into a multi-millionaire before he wrote the first pages. That’s what these former “public servants” all do: they cash in once they leave office. Indeed, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in response to Tenet’s revelations: “There were some things that went right and some things that went wrong. And you know what? We will have a chance to look at that in history. And I will have a chance to reflect on that when I have a chance to write my book." Just as her predecessor Colin Powell, Dr. Rice will rake in a very hefty sum of money for her insider version.

Producing Good News on Bad News Days and the Global War on Terror

By Brigitte L. Nacos
When the news in Iraq and Afghanistan and, of course, in Washington is grim, there seems always a piece of good news held back by the Bush administration for bad news days. Today was such a day: The Pentagon announced the arrest of one of al-Qaeda's most senior and most experienced operatives. As the Associated Press reported, “Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the captive is Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. He was received by the Pentagon this week from the CIA, Whitman said, but the spokesman would not say where or when al-Iraqi was captured or by whom. The Pentagon described Al-Iraqi as an associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and as someone who may have been targeting Westerners outside of Iraq.” At a time when the Congress wants a time table (and will get a presidential veto)to wind down military efforts in Iraq; when former CIA director George Tenet strikes back at Mr. Cheney’s war cabal;  and when Democratic presidential hopeful close ranks to attack the administration’s Iraq policies—just at this right moment the administration produces miraculously another of the allegedly most important associates of bin Laden (Note that the Pentagon did not say when and where this guy was captured). Just as important from the beleaguered White House perspective, this super terrorist supports what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and Mr. McCain and other hawks argue tirelessly: that the same guys who commit terrorism in
Iraq will come to our homeland unless we defeat them there. In other words, the announcement of another capture of another high Al Qaeda figure comes at a most convenient time. Judging from the many allegedly highest level bin Laden associates that were captured in the past, the inner circle of Al Qaeda leadership must have been of gigantic size. But nobody seems to question the timing and credibility of such announcements. Instead, the administration gets the headlines it prefers and that deflect from its many problems. 

John McCain and the “Most Experience” Claim

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Before officially declaring his candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party this Wednesday, Arizona Senator John McCain made another guest appearance on the Daily Show last night. Jon Stewart’s show was hardly the venue to win points as the reactions of the studio audience attested to. The most hawkish competitor for the Republican nomination continues to put his chips on the claim that he is the most experienced of all candidates. “I know what war is like,” McCain told Jon Stewart and the audience. This was an implicit reminder of his time as POW in North Vietnam. Dan Balz reports in the Washington Post that McCain’s chief campaign strategist John Weaver, too, emphasizes his candidates experience, saying, “"I think that without a doubt the American people, beginning [Wednesday], are going to see the most experienced candidate in either party and the only one who's willing to put principle above politics to get this country moving forward," Weaver said. I do not know what Weaver means with moving this country forward. But given McCain’s unwavering hawkish stance on Iraq—and obviously on Iran as well, moving forward seems to mean most of all winning in Iraq. Aside from the question what victory means after the military battle against Saddam Hussein’s army was won years ago, Jon Stewart put it well, when he asked McCain with respect to the failed Iraq strategy, “If the architects that built a house without doors or windows don't admit that that's the house they built and continue to say it's your fault for not being able to see into it, I don't see how we can move forward?"

But McCain does not ask or answer such questions. Instead, he repeats the White House line: Unless we defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, terrorists will follow us into our homeland. Of course, Al Qaeda was not in Iraq before we invaded the country nor is there any reason to believe that the organization’s terrorists wouldn’t strike us as long as we fight in Iraq, if they saw an opportunity to do so. Most of all, however, the most credible reports from Iraq reveal that the horrific violence there is committed by Iraqis some of whom embrace Osama bin Laden’s hateful ideology and others who do not. It is far from clear that they have more than domestic goals.

Mass Media and the Exploitation of Public Grief

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Even before CNN prepared to devote several more programs to the Virginia Tech Massacre on Sunday night, the sad event was not simply over-covered by the news and infotainment media but turned into a deplorable non-stop grief fest during which most media organizations exploited the real grief of real people for their perceived self-serving over-emphasis on supposedly human interest matters. The senseless killing of 32 innocent students and professors of Virginia Tech is certainly a tragedy that deserves our attention. But the same attention is not even remotely devoted to the rising number of American servicemen and –women who die and are maimed in Iraq and certainly not to the large number of innocent Iraqis who are killed day-in and day-out as a consequence of the Iraq war. One reason for the media’s endless coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre is clear: Starting with President Bush, public officials of all colors and on all levels have paid a great deal of attention to the Virginia Tech tragedy—as they should have. But the question is how much is enough in such cases? The answer is that public mourning by public officials is done selectively. The best example is President Bush, who, as Frank Rich puts it in today’s New York Times, has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he’ll take six weeks to show his face--and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

Virginia Tech Shooter Got His Wish: The Whole World Watched His Video Messages

By Brigitte L. Nacos
A dozen years ago, when the so-called Unabomber Ted Kaczynski threatened to mail more lethal letter bombs unless the New York Times and Washington Post published his “manifesto” before a certain date, the newspapers’ managements understood their predicament: publish the lengthy tract and open the door for further demands by the Unabomber and others or refuse to publish and risk more killings via letter bombs. Only after lengthy discussions, consultations with FBI experts and the Attorney-General did the Washington Post (the New York Times shared the printing costs) publish a special section that contained the full text of the Unabomber’s declaration. This time around, it did not take NBC News long to put the Virginia Tech shooter’s do-it-yourself video production on the air and thereby fulfill his twisted last will: Just as terrorists are stunningly successful in exploiting the mass media to get attention and win a stage to explain their motives, Cho Seung Hui dominated for a long day television news in never-ending replays of the same images and messages. The phony explanations by anchor Brian Williams and others at NBC were self-serving and not convincing at all. Not surprisingly in the competitive television marketplace, the competitors followed NBC’s example by showing the disturbing images again and again—at times showing the NBC logo to perhaps protect themselves from growing criticism by the families of Virginia Tech victims.

The “Right to Bear Arms” Crowd and the Virginia Tech Massacre

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The Wall Street Journal goes once again to bat for the sacred right to own handguns arguing in the process that mass killings are rarer in societies in which guns are readily available and more likely in countries with gun controls. “You could more persuasively argue, as David Kopel does in The Wall Street Journal today,” the paper’s editorial states, “that the presence of more guns on [the Virginia Tech] campus might have stopped Cho sooner.” This is a favorite argument of the right-to-bear-arms crowd—if more people have guns, the bad guys will not dare to shoot and if they do, they will be targeted themselves. Obviously, the opponents of strict gun control have no problem with the prospect of Wild West style shoot-outs between people who have their finger on the trigger of their gun at all times. The Europeans obviously do not get it—along with liberals in the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Reading a summary of European editorials yesterday, we couldn't help but wonder if they all got the same New York Times memo, so uniform was their cultural disdain and their demand for new gun restrictions.” And in a strangely twisted logic, the paper makes a triumphant statement: “Any gun control crusade is doomed to fail anyway in a country like the U.S.with some 200 million weapons already in private hands.”

And how do politicians and especially presidential candidates react to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech? As the Washington Post reports today, some of the traditional (McCain) and opportunistic (Giuliani) opponents of gun control were quick to reaffirm their pro-gun positions whereas the advocates of certain gun control measures were less eager to get into the pro-and-con debate.

Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal may well be right in predicting that Democrats will not be at the forefront in a campaign for gun control. In the Journals words,“While New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg seems ready to stump for gun restrictions, we doubt many Democrats will join him. They did so after Columbine in 1999, only to lose the 2000 election in part because of the cultural backlash in America's rural and hunting counties.”

Although in the aftermath of Virginia Tech opinion surveys will once again show that a majority Americans prefer gun control, such polls will not prevail in an electoral system in which some of the smaller, rural states have disproportional influence on the outcome of presidential elections and in which the pro-gun lobby has disproportional influence on candidates and elected officials on all levels of government.

The Virginia Massacre and the Right to Bear Arms

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In no other comparable democracy and civilized society is it as easy to acquire guns and rifles legally €”and illegally--as it is in the United States This is not a new revelation but simply one of the facts of the American exceptionalism that is inconceivable to people in comparable democracies. The shooting spree by an obviously deranged young man should reopen the debate surrounding this country’s adherence to a more than 200-year old constitutional amendment that should have been abandoned a long time ago. Never mind that presidential candidate Senator John McCain reaffirmed his support for the right to bear arms in reaction to the massacre at Virginia Tech. According to the Associated Press, McCain said, “I do believe in the constitutional right that everyone has, in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, to carry a weapon. Obviously we have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens." He did not say how to keep guns out of the hands of non-law-abiding citizens like the troubled Virginia Tech student. He was able to by the lethal hand weapons--and go on killing sprees. How can we continue to let this happen?

In case you do not remember the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, here it is:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This seemed a reasonable constitutional provision at the time it was enacted. After all, at that time there were no sophisticated police departments, national guards, FBI-like agencies or military forces as they exist today. The common sense behind the amendment was, no doubt, the recognition of a need for citizen militias for defensive purposes and thus for armed citizens that were available for serving in militias in times of need.

Virginia Tech Shootings and the Preponderance of Violence in Entertainment and News Media

By Brigitte L. Nacos
When I saw the first sketchy news dispatches about the unspeakable events at the Virginia Tech campus and what turned out to be the worst mass shooting incident in the United States, I was in the midst of selecting reading material for my new fall seminar on media, communication and violence. I reread some parts in Sissela Bok’s volume “Mayhem: violence as public entertainment” and her thoughtful examination of what she calls media violence: the preponderance of violence in entertainment and news media and its effects on heavy news consumers. To be sure, as the late George Gerbner found in his studies of television violence, increased aggression amongst heavy media consumers is far less common than greater insecurity and mistrust of society among heavy TV-consumers—and yet, the small number of those who act on the violence they witness hours after hours seems enough to question the violent content of entertainment and news media. Sissela Bok is right when she points out that among a certain group of people, particularly children, there is no distinction between reality and unreality.

I have spent many years in researching the connections between terrorism, the media, and how the public and decision-makers react to the mass-mediated coverage of terrorist deeds and I have come to the conclusion that the ability of terrorists to exploit the news media for their purposes figures prominently into the terrorist scheme. But it is equally true that governments of countries targeted by terrorists can and do exploit the news media for their counter-terrorist objectives as well. We have to face all of these connections between media and violence if we want to contribute to a more peaceful world.
At this point, there has not been public information about the person responsible for the shootings at Virginia Tech—except that the person has been described as a college-aged Asian. Whoever turns out to have killed so many innocent people, I am sure that we have to finally examine the mass-mediated culture of violence we live in.

Moreover, we have to ask other questions—most of all one indirectly raised by Larry Johnson today: Why is it that we and the news media put the shootings of more than 30 Americans high on our agenda without paying similar attention to the far higher day-in and day-out killing of far more Iraqis.

We all need to take some time to think and make a commitment to fight violence here at home but also abroad in areas in which we claim to have brought changes for the better. 

The Shocking Increase of Suicide Bombings

By Brigitte L. Nacos
When terrorist organizations claim to have waiting lists for eager young men and women who want to die in order to kill, they seem not to exaggerate. In the last several days alone, “human bombs” exploded in Afghanistan, Algeria, Morocco, and repeatedly in various parts of Iraq killing many dozens of civilians and a few combatants of different nationalities. Al Qaeda, groups inspired by Al Qaeda and the Taliban claimed the bulk of these so-called suicide attacks. While terrorists continue to utilize hostage-taking, improvised explosive devices, and missile attacks, they have embraced suicide strikes as their favorite method of attack. The reason is clear: From the perspective of terrorists suicide attacks are very successful and very difficult, if not impossible to defend against. As demonstrated this week in Iraq, suicide bombers were able to blow themselves up on two bridges in Baghdad, within the heavily fortified Green Zone, and in a number of other public places—in spite of the greater presence of American and Iraqi troops. Regardless of President Bush’s and Vice-President Cheney’s reasoning, more troops in Iraq for an unlimited time will not curb these homicide-suicide attacks but more likely increase them.

News Media Agenda and a Radio Host’s Racial/Sexist Slur

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Calling the members of the women’s basketball team of Rutgers University “nappy-headed hos,” the host of the “Imus in the Morning” radio show (simulcast on the MSNBC cable network) resorted to an ugly racial and sexist slur that was rightly and immediately followed by massive criticism from many corners and rightly and heavily covered by the prestige and tabloid media. I must admit that I had no idea about the meaning of those words until I asked around for explanations.  I have followed Rutgers women’s basketball and rooted for the team this season again as it moved from a disappointing start to a dream come true, when it reached the championship final last week. The loss against Tennessee did not diminish the marvelous accomplishment of the team. It took Don Imus’s stupid insult to draw massive media attention on these accomplished young ladies and their successful coach—media attention that the dream team should have received as a championship finalist right after its defeat. But shocking, sensational, conflict-oriented news is the stuff that today’s news media crave and over-cover. Thus, one week after the racial and sexist insult, the Imus/Rutgers story remains on top of the media agenda. Today, the New York Times published a front page story and photograph of the Rutgers team, 2 stories in the Sports section, one story in the Arts section, an editorial, and several letters-to-the-editor. The Washington Post, too, has at least five stories about the controversy—among them quite different takes by media columnist Howard Kurtz who has been a guest on the Imus Show and sports columnist Michael Wilbon. Yes, Wilbon is right, when he suggests that “what Imus has prompted is a necessary national conversation” and that the arranged “meeting with the Rutgers women is necessary...” But such a conversation should not just be triggered by a shocking slur and be forgotten when the media hype runs its course eventually—it should be part of the regular mass-mediated public debate.