Courage And Treason
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Media, The War On TerrorismThese are two words that get thrown around quite a bit on the right. And given some recent news, I’d like to explore them.
See, the Pulitzer Prizes were awarded and guess what? The NY Times reporters who broke the warrantless wiretapping story won a Pulitzer. But apparently to some on the right, their mere reporting of the facts makes them traitors.
Glenn Greenwald has a great post about the right-wing noise machine and its calls to muzzle the press…
Yesterday, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau received well-deserved Pulitzer Prizes for “national reporting” based on their (year-long-delayed) disclosure of the President’s illegal NSA eavesdropping program. That award has set off a new slew of bitter commentary from Bush supporters, including Bennett, proclaiming that Risen and Lichtblau belong in prison. On his radio show this morning, the great free press crusader Bennett said: “I think what they did is worthy of jail.”Powerline, as always, helpfully expounds on this definitively American principle of throwing reporters in jail who publish stories which damage the political interests of the Commander-in-Chief during a Time of War. In an item entitled “Pulitzer Prize for Treason,” Scott “Big Trunk” Johnson says that Risen and Lichtblau won the Pulitzer “for their treasonous contribution to the undermining of the highly classified National Security Agency surveillance program of al Qaeda-related terrorists,” which — according to Johnson, “is a particularly serious crime insofar as it lends assistance to the enemy” — all together, now — “in a time of war.”
Yes, “in a time of war.” I’ve heard that one ad nauseum in the blogosphere, and I’m sick of it. We all know that this is an ill defined war without any discernible end. For the love of all that’s good and right, we’re fighting an “ism”, a tactic…what amounts to nothing more than an idea. Sure, the fight is really against radical Islam, but that’s not what we’ve said. And so, until terrorism is wiped off the face of this planet, we’re always at war. Yes, it’s most definitely an Orwellian scenario.
So to hear this type of intellectually dishonest hackery from people like Bennett and Johnson is what pisses me off the most. Treason? Really? For alerting Bush a year before this story was published? Treason? Really? For reporting that Bush was going around laws that were put into place specifically to prevent the things he was doing?
Yes, treason. But what about courage? We’re told that those who reprint the Mohammed cartoons are courageous journalists. Umm…forgive me, but I’m going to call serious bull$#!+ on that. Why on one hand is it courageous to reprint cartoons that are incredibly offensive to a large religious group, but it’s treasonous to do original reporting about dubious legal manuevering by our elected officials? Those two things simply don’t square up in my mind. But hey, maybe I’m just not right in the head…
Greenwald sums it up appropriately…
They published this story “against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president.” What journalists would dare defy the wishes of the president? And in America, no less. And now, The Terrorists know that we are trying to eavesdrop on them, because they never knew that before. And these reporters therefore belong in prison.
Indeed.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 and is filed under Media, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
I have no inclination to call this treason, and if the Pulitzer people want to award it, that’s their business. Wouldn’t have been my pick, but that’s probably why I’m never asked to help pick them. But I find your arguments curious to say the least.
Because it takes courage to use your freedom to publish in the face of people who vow to kill you for it. And unless you use free speech in the places where it offends, you haven’t really got it.
And those who chickened out did so not just in their own names, but in the name of all of us. They taught the Islamist killers that intimidation works, that we’re chickens at heart, and that violence is the path to take when it comes to making the West knuckle under.
Whereas for trampling on Bush, your consequences are a big fat cash prize, a lot of champagne, a speaking tour, and the only downside is the harmless carpings of Bill Bennett.
And if you’ve already set the pattern that you only publish condemnations of people you know won’t hit you back in a way that hurts, then you’ve branded yourself a mere coward and bully, and even when you’re right, you’ve lost the moral authority that makes the excesses of a free press tolerable.
Curious indeed. It takes real “courage” to truckle under to bullies, and to bully those who won’t hit you. There’s a word for that, but in my book it’s not “courage.”
Is there a James Risen or an Eric Lichtblau at work in Syria today? Is there a Glenn Greenwald in Iran or in the Hamas-run Gaza? If so, how would you know it?
Is it your suggestion that this is not really a war? That America currently has no specific, organized, determined enemies who have declared war on it? Or is it that you being sick of hearing we’re at war makes it not so?
“Jihad” may be a tiresome thing to fight, but it wasn’t one George W. Bush invented. You may be tired of jihad. But jihad doesn’t care. Just because George W. Bush can’t articulate the casus belli to your satisfaction doesn’t mean no war exists. Take your eyes of Shrubbie for a bit and pay attention to the other side.
Or are you trying to say some wars are different than others, and what is legally treason in war A is legally commendable behavior in war B. Would there be a war in which it was treason to publish as they did? That’s a legally interesting argument.
Is “mere reporting of facts” never treason? For instance, if you print the “mere facts” of the time, place, and manner of the impending D-Day invasion, a week beforehand, knowing it will be seen by the German high command, is that treason or not?
April 18th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Interesting to see what did win the Pulitzer for cartooning this year.
Ah, the courage of it!
April 18th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Yes, it’s not the illegal actions, its the reporting of the illegal actions that’s the real horror.
To say the least, your’s is an interesting characterization, Cal. To make the obvious parallel, were Wooward and Bernstein merely “trampling” on Nixon? Is it ‘good’ that the NSA story came out. From a starting point of zero, no. We could probably have done without the hysteria (on both sides) and partisan bickering and either shameless mendacity (from the right) or shameful Nazi and/or fascist comparisons (from the left).
From the starting point of the NSA program actually exisiting despite what is a more than colorable case for the illegality of said program, then yes, it is good that it came out - unless you subscribe to the viewpoint that the law is optional for elected officials as long as their hearts are pure and their intentions good.
I find it sardonically amusing that you are so quick to praise those who knowingly give offense by printing cartoons and yet are so quick to impugn the integrity of those who’ve offended you by revealing that the President may have knowingly committed felonies. But since you won’t riot over it, and merely offer inflamed rhetoric over the internet, they are somehow cowards. Real Men would have printed the cartoons while running with the bulls in Pamplona apparently, as courage is simply knowingly exposing yourself to danger.
Is it ridiculous to suggest that Lichtblau and Risen won an award for, I dunno, doing investigative journalism? You may not like the story, but I dare you to make an honest case that it is not newsworthy. Further, I anxiously await your explanantion as to why the public should not know this information.
And as to your lowest common denominator argument that there are no Risens or Greenwalds in Syria, well, great we aren’t as bad as a lot of other places. Strangely, I hope for slightly more than “not last place.”
And we’ve slid all the way down the slope. Because our vast and dangerous network of fiendishly clever enemies…never even considered that their communications were monitored before the NYT ran a story on it. Reporting on car bombs gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Retired generals are only interested in selling books. We’d be winning if only I wasn’t so negative, etc., etc., etc.
Frankly, I’ve come to expect a little bit better than once-warmed over talking points from you, Cal.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Oh Snap!
April 18th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Pooh, you’re not reading very well today. I make no argument against the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize to these reporters — much less a defense of Bush’s spying program. Nor do I announce (or have) any agreement with those who cry “treason” at them.
If you wish to shift the topic back to the spying itself, or the awarding of prizes, or the definition of “treason,” then we can have a different argument. But it was Justin who introduced the parallel of the Muhammad cartoons, for what reason I’m still not sure.
Surely I can object to the logic, or thought, or assumptions of that post without being held up as defending everything Bush says and does? Or is it going to be That Kind of Blog?
Seems we have, since you’re reading something I wrote and yet processing it as something vastly different. Normally I wouldn’t bother with that, but usually you read better.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
Cal
I was assuming that when you wrote this
you were talking about the NYT NSA story. Your did not appear to view it in a popular light. And perhaps I viewed your argument as a proxy of the very ‘dissent-squashing’ we recently discussed. (Which I hope explains, if not justifies any overzealousness on my part. No I do not wish there to be another of That Kind of Blog.)
However, read in the intended light that you felt that publishing the cartoons was a more courageous act than breaking the NSA story, I see your point though I still disagree to an extent, but certainly not with the heat of my previous post.
Not to put words in Justin’s mouth, but I saw the NSA as story more newsworthy than the cartoons themselves. In the minds of an publisher, the images may have created rather more heat than light. Yes there is a fair point to be made about not being intimidated, but there is also value in not being unnecesarily provocative. I’m guessing we differ over the ‘neccesity’ of that provocation, and that’s fine.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
You post many questions, and I’ll try to answer them all.
My guess is there might be, but they’re doing it under a cover of anonymity. However, I have no way of knowing this so my answer will ultimately have to be no.
No, I don’t think this is truly a war because these organizations have been fighting us for many years before 9/11. This is, and has always been, a continued struggle against Islamic terrorists, and I think the distinction is incredibly important. One distinction grants our leaders wartime powers in perpetuity and the other acknowledges that limits must be put in place so our civil liberties don’t get trampled on. And I’ve been sick of the terminology since day one, but I’ve lived with it and tried to embrace it as best I can. Still, it will always serve as a reminder of hyperbole masquerading as policy.
I focus on both and you know that I do. Of course “jihad” doesn’t care, much like “patriotism” doesn’t care, nor “courage.” These are just words meant to incite emotion. “Terrorism” is another one. We need to refocus this struggle on real goals, instead of focusing on the unattainable goals set forth by this administration. And my guess is that many more here in the US and around the world are waking up to that point of view as well.
Treason is serious stuff, and it’s being thrown around by some on the right in what I feel is an extremely inappropriate manner. This story by the NY Times reporters? It’s not treason. Not by a long shot. A year’s notice for them to talk about this information themselves? And it certainly hasn’t stopped them from doing it. Now, declaring time, place and manner of invasion? Well, didn’t the media do that this time around too? In other times this would be considered treasonous, but we live in a much more transparent world where pys-ops chooses to use the media to scare their enemy into submission with threats before even a single smart bomb is launched. But back in WW II? Yes, of course that’s treasonous. However, I really think that the two time and places are just not comparable.
Now, on the subject of the Mohammed cartoons, you say something extremely important when you say this:
I completely disagree. Freedom of speech gives you the choice. Nothing more and nothing less. The majority of the newspapers decided to not run them, and for this they were labelled cowards. Well, so be it, but their decision was just as valid and vital to freedom of speech as running them was. Either way they were contributing to the story by running them, especially since the cartoons were all over the internet by then for anybody to see.
To sum up, I suppose I find it acutely frustrating to hear hacks talk about treason and courage, when they oftentimes show a decided lack of courage, and a surplus of lazy invective. And while that’s not treasonous, it ultimately seems quite cowardly.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
It absolutely was more newsworthy, and more important. I’ll applaud the Times for their Pulitzer, because I can’t think of a more deserving series this year (Claudia Rosett from the Sun deserved one for oil-for-food, but that was a coupleof years ago now).
My comments were purely addressed to the part of Justin’s post that begins “Yes in a time of war” and ends with “I’m not right in the head.” Which seems to veer from a scolding of certain rightside bloggers (deserved, but of dubious value, IMHO) into an unnecessary new topic.
And there, the topic is not newsworthiness, or Pulitzer-worthiness, but courage.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
I passed through East Germany in 1979. The people there had freedom to open their mouths and criticize the regime. Of course, if they did, there was a good chance the Stasi would show up and do unpleasant things to them. So they generally kept their lips shut tight and walked with the kind of stiff, fearful gait I associate now with abused children.
I don’t think their decision was “valid and vital to freedom of speech.”
I work for a newspaper. Sometimes, an important person will call up and ask that we not print some minor item, a DUI charge, for instance. Even if we can’t figure out what the connection is between the state legislator and the DUI suspect — you can be damned sure that the mere attempt by the official in charge to steer the news coverage guarantees that that particular item is going to be published.
I do call that “valid and vital to freedom of speech.”
True in spirit but not in fact is the legend that, when German occupation headquarters in Copenhagen ordered all Jews to wear yellow armbands with a Star of David, the Danish king and all his subjects, Christian or Jew or otherwise, wore armbands adorned with a Star of David. I call that story an illustration of something “valid and vital to freedom of speech.”
Of course, it would have mortally offended the Nazis and their ideology.
[Denmark did better than that; it managed to smuggle all but a handful of its Jews to neutral Sweden.]
Indeed, why do we need newspapers at all? Everything is on the Internet. What’s the point of a dead-tree press? You’d think that fact would make editors more, not less, protective of their right to tell the truth and raise hell.
Where have you established that Bennett, Powerline, et al “show a decided lack of courage?” You introduced the idea of courage only in reference to the Muhammad cartoons. What you said about it was that you didn’t believe it was courageous to publish them.
How does this translate into calling Bennett, Powerline, et al “cowardly”? Are you going so far as to say “it was cowardly to call for publishing the Muhammad cartoons”?
April 18th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Those people did not have the same choice we have in this country. Bad comparison.
Why newspapers? I’ll consider that rheotrical.
See, you talk about this “right to tell the truth and raise hell”, and yet is that what a newspaper is supposed to do? Are they supposed to raise hell? Tell the truth yes, but you can do that without creating an editorial event by publishing clearly offensive cartoons which have already been reprinted in numerous other publications.
Cowardly to call for the cartoons being published? No. But I think it’s cowardly when they use their brand of hacky rheotric as a weapon. I think it’s cowardly to call reporters, who simply published a story which they sat on for over a year, treasonous. And I find their use of both of these words fascinating. While they proclaim one kind of publishing treasonous, they call the other courageous. And again, if they feel that one is treasonous and the other is courageous, well, I personally think they’ve got a very skewed view of the what treasonous and courageous mean.
Also, I think their “free speech” fervor over something that clearly needles Muslims and then their calls of “treason” on the other hand for a story that’s damaging to the administration is disingenous at best.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
But they had the same choice we have in this world. Speak the truth to the power of Islamist anger. Or let the threat of violence silence you.
Do you think the decision to not publish cartoons was made on the basis that some people would be offended by them? Or on the fact that some people would willingly kill you for exercising that particular bit of speech? If you’re in doubt, read the statements of those who chose not to publish the cartoons and explained their reasoning.
The whole point of the cartoons, at their inception, was to break a taboo that had descended over Europe: A taboo not rooted in European values and the freedoms that had been won over centuries, by the blood of those who resisted the Inquisition and the state censors. But a taboo rooted in a medieval ideology that also forces women into veils, kills homosexuals, and puts God’s law above man’s.
Some people took a stand against the fatwa brigade. Some didn’t. You may deny them courage, but I don’t.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
It’s easy to wax rhapsodic about ‘courage’ when it’s not your taboo’s being violated. I wonder if the same people lauding the courage of those who did publish are the same as those who defended the NYT, or, perhaps a better analogy, my ability to burn the U.S. flag. There is certainly some overlap, but Bill Bennett and the Powerline crew are not in that set.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
You have a right to burn anything you like, as long as you paid for it. I have a right to tell you “that’s a waste of your money, and bad for the atmosphere, to boot.” If you burn a flag at, say, a Vietnam veterans biker club rally, I’ll applaud you for a certain kind of courage. I might even step in and argue on your behalf, depending on how many I’ve had, but don’t count on me for that.
In the Big Book of Modern American Values, you’re allowed to have taboos about what you look at, or draw. You’re not allowed to have taboos about what I look at, or draw.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
No argument here.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Still, I think the comparison is not apt. For the purposes of your argument, the threat of Islamic violence in this country always seems greatly exaggerated. Yes, 9/11 was awful, awful, awful, as was the first attack on the WTC, but those are still two isolated incidents. Were the newspaper editors worrying about another such incident in response to printing cartoons? I highly doubt it.
Listen, I don’t think it was particularly courageous to print the cartoons, just as I don’t think it was courageous to NOT print them. I also don’t think it was courageous to report the warrantless wiretapping scandal. I reserve courageousness to the Michael Yon’s of the world, who get in the middle of the suck and report what they see.
Again, I feel that pundits scream this hyperbole WAY too often, and therefore renders the words nearly meaningless. It’s sad and I wish it would stop. But hey, that’s what keep ratings humming right along…
April 19th, 2006 at 1:55 am
Boston Phoenix:
Meanwhile, the Boston Globe’s editor, Martin Baron, said the paper’s policy is not to print phrases or images that are considered “to be grossly offensive to a religious, racial or ethnic group.” Yet by his own admission the “Globe” published the Globe published ”Piss Christ,” a photograph by Andres Serrano that showed a crucifix covered in urine that offended many Christians, no less than three times between 1989 and 1992.
Frankly, neither “Piss Christ” nor the Muhammad cartoons offends me, but it’s disingenuous to argue that nobody at the Globe knew “Piss Christ” was “grossly offensive” to a “religious group.” So why one and not the other? Could it have something to do with the tendency of a certain “religious group” to hack off your head if you do something they deem “grossly offensive”? Could it have something to do with “courage,” or lack of it?
Let’s list some other things “grossly offensive” to this “religious group”:
*women with exposed hair
*women in shorts
*homosexuals
*the name “Israel” when applied to a certain chunk of Middle Eastern real estate
Shall these, too, be banished from the newspaper?
Or have we set ourselves up to decide which of THEIR fundamentalist religious strictures we will strictly obey, and which we will ignore. And what sort of neo-imperialists are we to do that?
April 19th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Calli, I’m with Justin here. “Because it takes courage to use your freedom to publish in the face of people who vow to kill you for it. And unless you use free speech in the places where it offends, you haven’t really got it.” Are you saying it doesn’t take courage to publish an article exposing highly questionable tactics used by the administration, so that Americans can have some sense of what is being done in their name?
“Is it your suggestion that this is not really a war? That America currently has no specific, organized, determined enemies who have declared war on it? Or is it that you being sick of hearing we’re at war makes it not so?” Sounds like you’ve swallowed some right wing talking points and you’re almost finished digesting. The war IS poorly defined. Do you want a war on Sadness next? If you acknowledge the past 60 years of Western history, you’ll note that the creation of the state of Israel has LONG been in dispute, and Western powers’ role in that creation–as well as their long-running meddling in Middle Eastern countries with oil–is truly the motivation for jihad. George Bush framed the “War on Terror” poorly by suggesting “the world changed on 9/11/01.” That could not be further from the truth, and if we are to reach a solution to terrorism OR The war on it, we must acknowledge that.
As for Luckovich, I just posted a complimentary entry about his win, because I believe it’s in the interest of democracy for people to question the “conventional wisdom” and make people THINK. Before you accuse me of being a “leftist” or whatnot, please note that of the 4 cartoons I highlighted in my post, I listed his response to 9/11 as one of my favorites because it too was very moving.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:06 am
On the NYT piece: It seems to me that newspaper journalists’ own livelihood (at the NYT or any other paper) is, or at least should be, of more concern to them than winning a Pulitzer. With that in mind, not subscribing to or otherwise reading a paper you think is harming America strikes me as a much more effective measure than screaming “traitor.” Indeed, the NYT and other U.S. newspapers have already been feeling this pain.
On the cartoons: Fear of liability in the event of a lawsuit stemming from a violent response is probably a more likely explanation for not publishing the cartoons than fear of the violence itself, much less sensitivity toward Muslims. Now, that particular brand of cowardice existed in corporate America (not just the MSM) long before 9/11/2001 and has nothing to do with Islam, but it’s still cowardice in my book.
This wouldn’t be a problem for the rest of us if the MSM didn’t hold itself up as the voice of the American people - but they do, and the message they send, whether that is their intent or not, is that the American people won’t stand up for their values and freedoms in the face of intimidation. As I recently wrote: “[W]e get the way of life that we’re willing to fight for by whatever means necessary.” It’s both sad and laughable at the same time that, in both Denmark and America, the ones on the front lines of that fight are not journalists but irreverent cartoonists.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I don’t know what power of word-twister you’re using to make me say that. Why is it so difficult to simply address what I say rather than trying to make me say things I clearly don’t.
I say, to defy the threats of violence against you and do the thing that you are told not to do is an act of courage. Justin, somehow, has convinced himself that it is not.
I am not at this point making any statement here about the New York Times articles on the Bush eavesdropping.
There could be other reasons to not do the thing in question. It is possible to say, for instance, :I won’t do that because it offends Muslims.” But once the threat is in, everything else changes. And especially if you and your industry have no track record of making the other kind of decision, your attempt to spin it that way now is going to be dubious at best. You could always say, “Well, I was going to give the bully my lunch money anyhow,” but I doubt anyone would believe you.
April 19th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Cal, you found an instance of inconsistency. I’m sure you’ll find many more. So your argument, if I’m correct, is that two wrongs make a right? Because that’s what you’re saying. Obviously the publication of Piss Christ was against their editorial policies, so it was a mistake. So they should then make another mistake by publishing the Mohammed cartoons.
Forgive me, but I don’t see the logic there.
Yes. All should be banned. Immediately. What ARE they thinking…?
April 19th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Seems to me they didn’t have any such policy till they discovered it when the Islamists shook a fist in their direction. That’s not a policy. That’s a white flag.
April 19th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Call ‘em up and find out.