Pajamas’ Man in Beirut Michael Totten has a subuded but lethal attack on The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh on his (Michael’s) blog this morning. In general I try to resist “piling on,”but Hersh so perfectly exemplifies the formally-liberal mindset that I say has become reactionary that I would like to examine his comments for a moment. At the recent annual conference of the Middle East Institute in Washington, Seymour said:
“I’m exceedingly skeptical, and I have been all along, of the point of view of what happened to Hariri,” said Mr. Hersh. “The American point of view is that it was Syria with the aid of some people in Lebanon. Despite all the back and forth about how the American press corps was totally manipulated, to its embarrassment, about WMD, I would still argue, we’re still being totally manipulated by this administration about Syria and Lebanese involvement.”
Well, that was a UN investigation (in the hands of a German) that implicated Syria in the Hariri assassination. And the UN is a well-known “lackey” of the US (witness French and Russian Security Council “cooperation” with America during the run-up to Iraq). But let’s not quibble. We all have our biases. I admit to being biased against the Assad Alawite Baathist regime of fascist murderers in Syria. On the face of it, Hersh would seem to be biased in favor of (or at least in agreement with) Hezbollah, or so it might appear in the article Totten links.
But I don’t really think so. Any pro-Hezbollah seeming comments made by Hersh would merely be to épater les bourgeoisie… or what Hersh conceives to be the bourgeoisie (anyone more than fifty meters from Zabar’s – at least in world view). No, I think in comments like this he is trying to relive his glory days of the secret bombing of Cambodia when he, Seymour, was a hero.
I can sympathize. This is a temptation we all have. Maybe, just maybe, gold will strike again. [Well, aren't you the clever boots when you're still flogging a quote for The Big Fix right on this site?-ed. At least that's only a mystery novel.] Unfortunately, history (pace Santayana) has a nasty habit of moving on. Iraq and the War on Terror, despite Hersh’s almost desperate desire for it to be otherwise, is not a replay of Vietnam, except in press response. If anything it’s more like World War II – and it’s not even very much like that.
In his need for things not to have changed, for him to remain dead center of the argument as he sees it and maintain his position at The New Yorker (even at the expense of that magazine’s credibility), Hersh has become reified into a kind of frozen artifact of 1972. Any hint of idealism that once was in him has been drained from his body. The idea that he could get any pleasure from democracy in Iraq is so remote as to be almost non-existent. I began this post with a playful (but slightly irrelevant) reference to Salinger. Actually, this reference to Edwin Arlington Robinson would have been more apt.
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19 Comments
1. Coisty:Regular readers in Canada may be interested to know that The Big Fix with Richard Dreyfus and Susan Anspach, directed by Roger L Simon is the Saturday feature film on Prime channel today at noon EST. Prime is a national channel but I don’t know if it shows the same programmes at the same time nationwide or if US border states have access to the channel. What I do know is that it is on in Ontario. As they say…check local listings!
Nov 12, 2005 - 7:23 am 2. legion:You are right about Hersh, of course. The narcissistic twit can conceive of no other point of view. The world is all about Seymour.
Thanks for pointing to Totten. I’d forgotten about his current adventure in Beirut. It’s great to be able to read from “correspondents” all over the world. People you can come to know through their daily writings.
Nov 12, 2005 - 7:26 am 3. PaulfromMpls:Not to mention reference to a long-ago song:
You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no to faith to lose
And you know it
Not to mention that wonderful final verse beginning “I wish that for just one time, you could stand inside my shoes…”
Nov 12, 2005 - 8:30 am 4. PaulfromMpls:Sure wish we could edit our comments once posted. Not to mention sure wish we could remove repetitive language once posted.
Nov 12, 2005 - 8:34 am 5. Patrick Tyson:Unfortunately, history (pace Santayana) has a nasty habit of moving on.
It, and the title, brought to mind the last sentences in the penultimate paragraph…
Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong?
—J. D. Salinger, Seymour — An Introduction
Nov 12, 2005 - 9:12 am 6. David M. McClory:The ironic thing about all this is to acknowledge the Syrian attitude to Lebanon.
Syrians believe Lebanon was carved out of Syria by the French in their project to set up a pro-French Christian enclave.
The Syrians have always hated this and have continuallyh schemed to get Lebanon back, even to the point of invasion, let alone the manipulation and scheming of recent years.
Assassination of prominent Lebanese falls well within the preceeding rubric.
I know that facts will ultimately decide this question, but until then, “duh!” is my answer to anthing that points to Syria. Mr. Hersh specializes in ignoring the obvious in favour of the obscure.
David M. McClory
Nov 12, 2005 - 10:07 am 7. PaulfromMpls:David M. McClory -
Very good point, regarding obvious versus obscure. It’s a favorite left tactic: find the obscure (in reality at best arguable), turn it into the obvious, and then label fascists or fools anyone who doesn’t see the obvious that they see.
Nov 12, 2005 - 10:25 am 8. TedM:speaking of Obvious and Obscure.
The Pres. made an important speech yesterday. In it he named the enemy, listed various battles we have seen around the world and spoke of the Islamist plans. He quoted Islamists and related what they said about us and our weakness.
The NYT coverage was totally devoted to that part of his speech where he took on the revisionists. Here is what the Times article said about the important part of his speech:
“He also continued his effort to cast Iraq as part of a broader struggle against a virulent strain of radical Islam.”
And thus we “obscure” the “obvious”
Can we ever get away from making GWB the issue?
The issue is the ENEMY. Unless we can get the media to focus on the enemy instead of the side issues we are lost.
If the glove dont fit, you must acquit. Just make sure that you ignore the defendants blood at the scene.
Nov 12, 2005 - 10:38 am 9. heather:I can remember “The Movement”, and the placards and the excitement of marching for “Peace”, and Cambodia and all of that.
But then life kept moving on, and I learned stuff… lotsa stuff. And I keep on learning, in large part because I had to make a living… outside “The Movement.”
However, Seymour made a huge name for himself IN “The Movement” back in the 60s and early 70s. He attained high status as a Thinker, he made a career out of hating the US Government, and all of his friends are in the same pickle. Pickled. That is what they are. They are piteable too, except they dominate excellent real estate in the international media.
Nice poem, Roger.
Nov 12, 2005 - 11:29 am 10. Terrye:The other day a young man I know looked at me and said “We will never get to stop hearing about Viet Nam until all the baby boomers are dead.”
And you know what? He is right. Viet Nam and Watergate were the events which fashioned the modern media mindset and the baby boomers that nursed it along.
Nov 12, 2005 - 11:36 am 11. TedM:Totten wrote something very appropriate to this about 6 months ago. It is well worth reading today.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/050504D.html
In it he cites Berman’s Terror and Liberalism. This book is a must reading, particularly since
it is written by a noted liberal.
Nov 12, 2005 - 3:44 pm 12. doc99:This curious stance puts Sy Hersh in the same camp with George Galloway, Pro-Fascist and Anti-Democrat. Soon he’ll find himself confronted by Hitchens on a dark podium.
Nov 12, 2005 - 4:06 pm 13. Kevin P:Roger:
Vietnam,Nixon, Watergate. It not only set the Journalistic mind set of Hersch and his leftist buddies but they can’t go two months without working at least one if not all three subjects into their work. The quagmire, Vietnam analogy started with the beginning of Afghanistan war and of course they eventually got around to the Bush-Nixon duet with the slim Plame, “16 words” scandals. It’s Pavlovian. They just take every political story and they eventually work their themes in. It is as suprisng as Mick Jagger putting his hands on his hips and doing his Stones strut.
The L.A. Times finally fired Robert Scheer after 2000 editions of the same story written over and over and over and over and over again. Someday Scheer and Hersch will wake up and realize that 1972 ended long ago.
Nov 12, 2005 - 9:33 pm 14. MikeD:“The L.A. Times finally fired Robert Scheer after 2000 editions of the same story written over and over and over and over and over again. Someday Scheer and Hersch will wake up and realize that 1972 ended long ago.”
But the best part, (or so I understand) is that he has been replaced by Jonah Goldberg’s syndicated column. I’m not sure this will halt the LAT’s decline but the irony is delicious!
Nov 13, 2005 - 10:28 am 15. Caroline:Roger Simon: “No, I think in comments like this he is trying to relive his glory days of the secret bombing of Cambodia when he, Seymour, was a hero.
I can sympathize. This is a temptation we all have”
It may be a temptation that many people have but it deserves no sympathy whatsoever. It ought to be roundly condemned. The stakes for the west as a whole are simply too high to pander to the ego needs of baby-boomer has-beens.
Nov 13, 2005 - 3:53 pm 16. WichitaBoy:Hersh hasn’t done a damn thing for 30-odd years except try to relive his glory days. It’s very sad. It’s like the high school quarterback or cheerleader who never finds anything else to talk about the rest of their lives.
Hersh has become reified into a kind of frozen artifact of 1972. Any hint of idealism that once was in him has been drained from his body. The idea that he could get any pleasure from democracy in Iraq is so remote as to be almost non-existent.
Sums up the whole generation quite well.
Nov 13, 2005 - 6:28 pm 17. Mork:Seymour Hersh is doing exactly the same thing as he has been doing for the last 40 years. If you thought he was a hero for revealing My Lai, but a villain for revealing Abu Ghraib and the extent of official torture, or any of his other recent work, it is you who have changed, and not him.
To those of us who value truth, freedom and democracy, he is as much of a hero as ever.
Nov 13, 2005 - 10:33 pm 18. greeneyeshade:Nothing Hersh says surprises me much since he told the Columbia Journalism Review a few years back that Bush took us into Iraq to distract the public from Enron and other corporate scandals. It doesn’t surprise me that the Review didn’t call him on it, either.
Nov 14, 2005 - 12:19 am 19. Dumbo:Hersh is peddling his 70’s conspiracy bs. Of course, he has his unnamed sources, the same vermin who blamed 9/11 on the Mossad I imagine.
Nov 14, 2005 - 10:40 am