November 21, 2004

NYTimes vs. London Times

From IraqPundit:

America's agenda-setting press has been quite impressed by the thugs who have been targeting, kidnapping, and murdering defenseless Iraqi civilians. A front-page headline out of Iraq in Friday's New York Times, for example, reads, "Showing Their Resolve, Rebels Mount Attacks in Northern and Central Iraq."

Got that? These murderers have been demonstrating "resolve." Indeed, throughout the battle of Fallujah and in the battles that have followed, American journalists have discovered many impressive attributes in these criminals. According to a week of major-press stories, the "insurgents" are a cunning and courageous band who have been putting up a tenacious struggle.


Mirabile dictu, it's the UK press that provides a more realistic assessment:
Anyway, the Times of London has given us a reality check, a glimpse of Fallujah under the rule of these cunning and resolute heroes: "Mutilated bodies dumped on Fallujah's bombed out streets today painted a harrowing picture of eight months of rebel rule." The paper notes that Islamist thugs warned "women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets."

Shameful but unsurprising reporting from the NYTimes. They will settle for nothing less than humiliating defeat for the Coalition forces. Then, the Taliban-style utopia that was Fallujah can return. Stephen Schwartz in TCS:
With the liberation of Fallujah and the fall of the jihadist regime in the town, it is apparent that American media intend to keep their story on message: the message being that the U.S. military operation there has failed and that Fallujans, and Iraqis in general, still hate the intervention forces.

At the same time, other reports tell a more significant and eloquent story: the jihadists had set up a Taliban-style dictatorship, in which women who did not cover their entire bodies, people listening to music, and members of spiritual Sufi orders -- that is, ordinary Fallujans -- were subject to torture and execution.


Schwartz continues to deride media for having picked the wrong side in VietNam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Kosovo.

It's an angry piece but I defy anybody to show me one sentence that is wrong.

There are, perhaps, some Western Islamophobic ideologues who, from the safety of their suburban homes, would love to tell these Muslim victims of terrorism that their torment was their own fault for not changing or altering their traditional Islamic faith. Some people have no shame. But sooner or later Americans will understand what Iraqis are learning: that our troops went there to free Islam, not to destroy it; that in a choice between American supervision and Taliban atrocities, the ordinary Sunnis and the mystical Sufis and the majority Shias will opt for our help.

Hat-tips: Glenn for the Times vs. Times, GalleySlaves for the TCS piece.

Posted by jk at November 21, 2004 09:23 AM
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