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November 2, 2005

The Good, the Bad, and the Published

Jeff Jacoby assesses coverage of the war in Iraq with characteristic clarity:

No question: If you think that defeating Islamofascism, extending liberty, and transforming the Middle East are important, it's safe to say you saw the ratification of the new constitution as the Iraqi news story of the week. ...

But that isn't a message Big Media cares to emphasize. Hostile to the war and to the administration conducting it, the nation's leading news outlets harp on the negative and pessimistic, consistently underplaying all that is going right in Iraq. Their fixation on the number of troops who have died outweighs their interest in the cause for which those fallen heroes fought -- a cause that advanced with the ratification of the new constitution.

Frankly, boredom at the anti-war crowd's gesticulations has played a (relatively small) role in my lack of blogging of late. But one instance has bothered me more than it should, recently, and Jacoby's piece provides a possibly fruitful context in which to mention it. From Rod Dreher's latest column:

Then there is the Iraq quagmire, which, even if initially a worthy cause, has become a rolling disaster.

A blogger could certainly spend some words wondering why a cause that was initially worthy would make a list of "unconservative things foisted upon America" by the President; at the very least, the foisting, so to speak, would appear to have been in accordance with conservatism in this case. With reference to Jacoby's column, though, my mind goes to other things. In a (coded) word: "quagmire."

Dreher, it seemed to me, began to drift not long after he made the leap from displaced red-stater-in-NY working for National Review to editorial writer and columnist for the mainstream media down in the Great Red Yonder. He's still to be counted among conservatives, without doubt, and fairness requires that I admit to not reading him much anymore.

Still, "rolling disaster" is a strong and unambiguous characterization of the war, and I wonder whether being steeped in media that "harp on the negative and pessimistic" explains the ease with which Dreher bowls it out. Or perhaps there are other considerations. A year-old blog comment of Dreher's comes to mind:

I am deeply concerned over the conduct of the war, and the prospect that family members of mine might die for the illusion that Iraq can be democratic. This is not an abstract threat. I'm looking at the possibility that my brother in law, a National Guard officer who never, ever imagined he'd be ordered to go fight in the Middle East (because who on earth could have invented such a prospect?), might have to leave his wife and three kids ... and never come home. If I still believed that this was a cause worth shedding American blood for, that'd be one thing. But now I'm thinking that our men are dying for an unwinnable war. You cannot force liberal democracy on people who don't want it.

Well, what about people who do want it — as evident in their ratification of a constitution? Perhaps the newspaper editors wouldn't allow space in his column for Dreher to discuss why something that appears to be a success is actually a disaster.

Posted by Justin Katz at November 2, 2005 8:00 PM
News Media
Comments

Justin,
This recent post on The Corner by Dreher is, to my mind, indicative of his perspective. Namely, he just doesn't think people who are Islamic can "do democracy.

Jonah, I got an e-mail today from a friend in Paris subject-lined, "It's started." He was referring to the Muslim riots in the Parisian suburbs. This is something that the French have anticipated for a long time, and planned for. I don't think the French authorities are going to put up with this for much longer, and I would guess that if things don't settle down in a couple of days, we will see the authorities move in with serious force. The rest of Europe has got to be watching all this amid shudders. We all should be. Your reader is quite right: elites in this country -- especially those of us who work in the MSM -- refuse to ask the hard questions about Islam and the West because we are afraid that the answers will shatter the icon of multiculturalism. As the Dutch learned one year ago today when Theo van Gogh was ritually slaughtered by a Muslim extremist on an Amsterdam street, reality eventually has a way of grabbing one by the scruff of one's neck and rubbing one's nose in it.
And later on:
I just watched a three-minute report on CNN about the Paris riots that never once mentioned the words "Islam" or "Muslims." It referred to the rioters merely as "ethnic immigrants." You cannot tell me this isn't on purpose.
I may be reading a lot into this, but it seems like he's of the Derbyshire, or Buchanan, school of conservatism. Just a guess.

Posted by: Marc Comtois at November 3, 2005 7:44 AM

Marc, those comments about the riots in France don't support your claim about Dreher's views. I think you may be right about his views on whether a stable democracy can be planted in Iraq, but those statements above are about the media not willing to face the obvious. I disagree with Derb et al. about the possibilities for Iraq, but I agree with the statements you quote from Dreher above - the two things are not mutually incompatible. It could be the case that democracy does have a real chance in Iraq (and subsequently in the greater Middle East), and that Europe has a severe problem with its Muslim immigrants which the media doesn't want to address head on because it violates the "multiculturalism" ideology. I read somewhere recently a comment that in a sense, it is precisely the immigrant populations of Muslims in the West that are more susceptible to radicalism, because they are transplanted from a culture where their identity is defined by traditions, to one where they are foreigners. The radical Islamists exploit this crisis of self-identity.

I didn't read much of Dreher before he left NR, so I can't speak to a change in his outlook, but I've definitely felt that he is frequently over-emotional in his responses, especially towards the Bush administration. He completely flipped out in the Corner during the Katrina episode, just like the rest of the MSM. He also said some ridiculous things in the lead up to the '04 election.

Posted by: Mike S. at November 4, 2005 11:21 AM

Mike,
I recall Dreher when he used to contribute to the ProJo and, thus, as a fairly typical pre-9/11 conservative. My above suppostitions are based only on the smattering of stuff I've seen since. I think you hit on something, though. I did a little googling and found this article from 2003 in which Dreger details life in the Muslim neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he was living at the time. It seems that from that the doubts he has concerning both the ability of Muslims to integrate successfully into western society and, perhaps, to form a democracy, are based upon his own personal experiences. I agree the two aren't mutually exclusively, but they can also be related in the minds of some, and I think Dreher is one. Anyway, truth be told, that's about all the time I'm going to spend trying to figure out what he thinks about it. Thanks for the good points.

Posted by: Marc Comtois at November 6, 2005 8:37 PM