HAS PRESIDENT BUSH done anything right in his campaign to liberate Iraq? You wouldn’t think so, judging from some New York Times articles that have run this week. While many informed observers think the war is justified and will be over quickly the Gray Lady has been brimming with negative news stories about the prospects for the war and its aftermath, and some “news” stories have been obviously critical of the U.S. efforts in leading the coalition to disarm Saddam:
Monday’s A-section headlines included “Arab League Leader Calls for Peace, but No One Listens,” “A Long Winding Road to Diplomatic Dead End,” and “Candlelight Vigils Are Held Around the World for Peace.” In a story about the Azores meeting which carried the headline, “Bush and 2 Allies Seem Set For War to Depose Hussein,” writers David E. Sanger and Warren Hodge made sure readers knew that “France was the clear target today.”
In a companion “news analysis” piece, Sanger editorialized that “An angry sounding Mr. Bush said today that the United Nations had failed miserably . . . The very fact that Mr. Bush had to come here this weekend to an island free of protestors for a meeting with the previously convinced is evidence that he has also failed, as some of his own aides acknowledge.” He continued, “The political problem is clear; if he initiates an attack without Security Council approval, which now appears likely, he will go to war without the political legitimacy he and his allies have craved.”
Tuesday’s edition of the paper featured more of the same. In the page one story “Relief on End to Uncertainty and Fear About War’s Toll,” David M. Halbfinger and Jacques Steinberg advised us–with no evidence–that “on the eve of a potential war” there is some “national cockiness that many recall accompanied the prelude to Desert Storm.”
Halbfinger and Steinberg interview ten people about their support for a U.S.-led war and then conclude that “there are widespread fears that the Bush administration has committed itself so thoroughly and irrevocably to war in Iraq that it has left America’s flanks across the world and even at home exposed” and that “there is a concern that the president’s willingness to go it nearly alone, at a dear price to international support, could prove fateful at some later date.”
Gloomy headlines like “Just Another Bush Day, Except for the Conclusion,” “Diplomatic Effort Ends–Terror Alert Level Raised in U.S.,” “In Another Setback for Blair, Cabinet Minister Resigns,” and “For Immigrants, Mixed View of War and a World of Hate” cover the A-section.
Yesterday, negative war news included stories like “Higher Alert and Tighter Budgets,” “Blair Survives a Mutiny Over Joining U.S. in War,” and “A Worried World Shows Discord”–a piece not so much about a worrying world as it is about criticism of the president. Citing a poll by the Pew Research Center–but without using any actual numbers–the piece gasps, “Underscoring the criticism in official circles, a new opinion poll has found increasingly popular resentment toward the United States and Mr. Bush in most of America’s major allies and Russia.” Much of the “criticism in official circles,” of course, has been coming from the New York Times.
Rachel DiCarlo is a staff assistant at The Weekly Standard.
