{"id":38927,"date":"2013-06-04T14:46:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T13:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/double-think-on-china-at-the-washington-post\/38927\/"},"modified":"2013-06-04T14:46:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T13:46:11","slug":"double-think-on-china-at-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/double-think-on-china-at-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Double-Think on China at the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, as an observer of the news, one comes across a particular opinion column that is so brazen, so audacious, that one must stare at the headline for thirty seconds or so, simply to make sure it\u2019s not a hallucination. Such was my experience this morning when I saw that Fred Hiatt wrote a\u00a0column<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0titled \u201cWill Xi Jinping\u2019s \u2018Chinese dream\u2019 include the rule of law?\u201d Irony is officially dead.<\/p>\n

Hiatt, for those who don\u2019t know, is the editorial page editor at the\u00a0Post<\/i>, and someone who\u00a0lives and breathes for war<\/a>. Not in the sense that he has ever volunteered to go fight in one, of course. That\u2019s for Other People to do. Hiatt prefers to fight the good fight from his comfortable D.C. office. There\u2019s much more money and prestige in doing it that way.<\/p>\n

One must stipulate that, while he loves war with all of his heart, Hiatt, like all serious, sophisticated, reasonable Beltway intellectuals, has at times seemed fairly\u00a0torn<\/a>\u00a0on the far more perplexing issue of torture. Whether or not to flagrantly violate domestic and international law and disregard the most basic conceptions of human morality by torturing other people \u2014 this always represented a profound moral quandary for the intellectual class. Hiatt did eventually make his thoughts on this matter clear, though, by\u00a0hiring<\/a>\u00a0an absolute lunatic by the name of Marc Thiessen to grace the pages of his newspaper\u2019s prestigious opinion section; Thiessen mostly used his space to explain why torture is so awesome and underrated.<\/p>\n

We do know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Fred Hiatt does not believe in the rule of law. In enthusiastically supporting the attack on Iraq, which, as a war of aggression, constituted the \u201csupreme international crime<\/a>,\u201d Hiatt forever forfeited any right to even\u00a0talk<\/i>\u00a0about the rule of law. One doesn\u2019t get to cheerlead, fanatically, for the most colossal international crime in a generation, and maintain any credibility on \u201cthe rule of law.\u201d This cannot really be debated, unless one also wants to argue in favor of consulting Bill Clinton on marital fidelity, or O.J. Simpson on domestic tranquility.<\/p>\n

Hiatt, though, is evidently\u00a0very\u00a0<\/i>concerned about the future of the rule of law. Not in the United States, naturally, but, rather, in China. In his new column, Hiatt worries that China, under Xi, might continue its heinous \u201cbullying\u201d in the international arena and its regular flouting of international norms. Fred Hiatt just\u00a0hates<\/i>\u00a0when countries do this. He encourages President Obama \u2014 the man who\u00a0refuses<\/a>\u00a0to investigate and prosecute the torturers and killers of the Bush administration on the astonishing grounds that it\u2019s preferable to Look Forward, Not Backward \u2014 to lecture the Chinese on appreciating the rule of law and respecting human rights. Hiatt sternly warns the Chinese that they risk losing the \u201ctrust\u201d of the United States if they don\u2019t cease their unconscionable imprisonment of peaceful activists and their disregard for due process. He writes this as peaceful American activist Bradley Manning, after sitting in a cage for more than two years, is now going on trial for the offense of telling people about his country\u2019s war crimes, and as more than 100 prisoners of the United States continue to wage a hunger streak to protest their lack of due process. Hiatt has apparently, through some sort of mental process, airbrushed both stories from his brain, despite the fact that both are currently receiving an astounding amount of international attention.<\/p>\n

This column represents one of the most exquisite examples of Orwell\u2019s \u201cdoublethink\u201d in recent memory.<\/div>\n

Justin Doolittle<\/strong>\u00a0writes a political blog called\u00a0Crimethink<\/a>. He has\u00a0an M.A. in public policy from Stony Brook University and a B.A. in political science from Coastal Carolina University.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, as an observer of the news, one comes across a particular opinion column that is so brazen, so audacious, that one must stare at the headline for thirty seconds or so, simply to make sure it\u2019s not a hallucination. Such was my experience this morning when I saw that Fred Hiatt wrote a\u00a0column\u00a0for\u00a0The Washington […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38927","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}