{"id":294081,"date":"2017-02-10T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/nyt-unlike-russian-wars-us-wars-promote-freedom-and-democracy\/"},"modified":"2017-02-10T01:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:30:00","slug":"nyt-unlike-russian-wars-us-wars-promote-freedom-and-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/nyt-unlike-russian-wars-us-wars-promote-freedom-and-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Unlike Russian Wars, US Wars \u2018Promote Freedom and Democracy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NYT:<\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/strong> defends its country’s innocence.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The New York Times<\/b>, in its recent rebuff of comments President Donald Trump made about Russia, seems not to have evolved its understanding of US geopolitics past an 8th grade level. Trump had been asked by Fox News<\/b>\u2019 Bill O\u2019Reilly (2\/5\/17<\/a>) why he wouldn\u2019t condemn Vladimir Putin, whom O\u2019Reilly called a \u201ckiller.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got a lot of killers,\u201d Trump told O\u2019Reilly. \u201cWhat, you think our country\u2019s so innocent?\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, this prompted a torrent of pearl-clutching from liberal patriots aghast that the president could equate the moral worth of the United States with that of the dastardly Russians. Most prominent among these was the New York Times<\/b>, whose editorial board published a flag-waving scolding called \u201cBlaming America First\u201d <\/b>(2\/7\/17<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Asserting the moral and political superiority of the United States over Russia has not traditionally been a difficult maneuver for American presidents. But rather than endorsing American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump seemed to appreciate Mr. Putin\u2019s brutality\u2014which includes bombing civilians in Syria and, his accusers allege, responsibility for a trail of dead political opponents and journalists at home\u2014and suggested America acts the same way.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh my, the horror.<\/p>\n

A rough look at the actions in question since Putin has been in office reveals this outrage to be, at best, misplaced. One tally by Airwars, a Western nonprofit, puts the total number of Syrian civilians killed<\/a> by Russia since it entered the war in September 2015 at just over 4,000, or 0.8\u20130.4 percent of the 500,000 to 1 million civilians who died<\/a> due to George W. Bush\u2019s unilateral invasion of Iraq in 2003. Add to this the thousands of other civilians killed in other theaters of the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d under the Bush and Obama administrations, including Afghanistan, Libya and Syria itself, and the idea of pointing to respect for civilian lives as something that elevates the United States above Russia seems a little absurd.<\/p>\n

But the addition of stifling dissent and allegedly killing journalists takes Russia over the line into Bad Guy territory, the Times<\/b> suggests\u2014ignoring the US\u2019s own harsh punishment for whistleblowers<\/a>, infiltration of dissident groups<\/a> and bombing of foreign journalists<\/a>. Not to mention the US\u2019s sprawling, unprecedented incarceration<\/a> system, or its unmatched institutional racism<\/a>\u2013all human right abuses leveled at home.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/b> goes on to insist that \u201cno American president has done what Mr. Putin has done,\u201d including \u201cinvading Ukraine\u201d and \u201cinterfering in the American election.\u201d Of course, American presidents have invaded other<\/i> countries<\/a> and intervened in other<\/i> elections<\/a>, but for reasons unclear, the Times<\/b> suggests that those two cases are the ones that indicate the US\u2019s moral superiority over Russia.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/b> briefly mentions the Iraq War and torture, but whistles past these episodes by insisting they were \u201cterrible mistakes.\u201d The Times<\/b> seems to be under the impression that Russia kills innocents for laughs, while the United States does so only with the best of intentions:<\/p>\n

\n

At least in recent decades, American presidents who took military action have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy, sometimes with extraordinary results, as when Germany and Japan evolved after World War II from vanquished enemies into trusted, prosperous allies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That US invasions \u201chave been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy\u201d is not argued, let alone proved; it\u2019s presented as an article of faith. As the Times<\/b>\u2019 \u201crecent decades\u201d go back to World War II, the United States presumably killed an estimated 3.8 million<\/a> in Vietnam \u201cto promote freedom and democracy\u201d\u2014despite President Dwight Eisenhower admitting<\/a> that given the chance, 80 percent of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, the leader whose government the US opposed. Implicitly, the US\u2019s use of covert terror<\/a> to try to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua, and US military support for death squad regimes<\/a> elsewhere in Central America, were likewise motivated by a longing for freedom and democracy.<\/p>\n

As FAIR (9\/30\/16<\/a>) has noted, the most important function of major editorial boards is to be gatekeepers of national security orthodoxy. And there is no more axiomatic orthodoxy than American exceptionalism<\/a>. One can handwring over \u201cmistakes,\u201d even occasionally do harsh reporting on American war crimes\u2014so long as one arrives back at the position of American moral superiority. \u201cYes, America has made mistakes<\/i>,\u201d the good liberal insists, \u201cbut at least we don\u2019t do this other bad thing that is, unaccountably, uniquely disqualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, Trump\u2019s motives in questioning American innocence were anything but liberal or noble. He was evoking America\u2019s own sins not to challenge them, but to apologize for those of the Russian president and, preemptively, his own. But the outrage over Trump\u2019s comments from pundits and editorial boards did not seek to spotlight his cynicism and its dark implications, but rather to insist that the United States is, in fact, on a higher moral plane than Russia. This is a childish assertion that serves to flatter the ego of American readers while legitimizing their government\u2019s crimes.<\/p>\n

\n

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org<\/strong>.<\/em> You can find him on Twitter<\/strong> at @AdamJohnsonNYC<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can send a message to the New York Times<\/strong> at letters@nytimes.com<\/a> (Twitter<\/strong>:@NYTimes<\/a>). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.<\/em><\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times defends its country’s innocence. The New York Times, in its recent rebuff of comments President Donald Trump made about Russia, seems not to have evolved its understanding of US geopolitics past an 8th grade level. Trump had been asked by Fox News\u2019 Bill O\u2019Reilly (2\/5\/17) why he wouldn\u2019t condemn Vladimir Putin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-294081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}