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Cutting one's nose to spite one's face
28-Aug-2007
The Washington Post's editorials on foreign policy issues have almost always been confrontational towards whatever country the United States government considers too disobedient. Even the Post's Op-Ed page is less predictable and servile than its editorials. Abandoning their duty to inform the public and hold the powerful accountable, the paper's hawkish editorial writers are no different from their counterparts in the ultraconservative Washington Times or the Soviet-era Pravda in Moscow.
Currently this servility is on display in a Post editorial on August 21, "Tougher on Iran", devoted to incriminating Iran based solely on unverified claims by the Pentagon that Iran is murdering U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Buttressing the White House's declared intention to list Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group, The Washington Post flatly states, with no supporting evidence, that IRGC "is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible."
The speculation is contradicted by the Post's own coverage less than a
year ago. In a dispatch from southern Iraq titled "British Find No
Evidence Of Arms Traffic From Iran," the paper's staff writer Ellen
Knickmeyer reported last October 4:
"A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their
cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the
desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of
patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or
any sign of it…. [After two months, they have] found nothing to support
the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training
in Iraq, several senior military officials said."
Following Israel's devastation of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the
Post similarly urged the Bush administration twice to "get tough" with
Iran, which it blamed for sponsoring terrorism in Lebanon.
The Post's unquestioning service to empire is all too familiar. Back in
the 1980s, the paper made a habit of playing stenographer to the Reagan
administration as it justified its murderous intervention in Central
America. Reagan falsely claimed that the US had to train and arm the
despicable Contra rebel army against Nicaragua because the country's
leadership was channeling Soviet weapons to neighboring El Salvador in
a bid to destabilize U.S. client states in the entire region. The
Washington Post editorial writers never wavered from that fabricated
line, not even when they feigned outrage at the scandalous Iran-Contra
scheme by Reagan's subordinates to fund the war on Nicaragua in
violation of a Congressional ban.
Similarly, the Post never questioned Reagan's full support for the
fanatic Saudis and Pakistanis who fought the Soviet occupiers in
Afghanistan in the name of freedom for Islam. It was those very evil
forces who later regrouped as al-Qaeda to exact revenge on the American
"infidels" on September 11, 2001.
One would expect an independent major newspaper like The Washington
Post to remind the Bush administration that Iran was a victim of
Taleban terrorism and made common cause with the U.S. as Washington
overthrew the Afghan government that harbored the perpetrators of the
9/11 terrorist attacks. Instead, the paper supports the Bush
administration's newly announced multi-billion dollar weapons shipments
to Saudi Arabia, whose ruling elite notoriously supports anti-American
extremists. That despite the well-known fact that Saudi funds and
jihadis are strengthening the Sunni fighters in Iraq who kill American
troops daily.
The Post editorial writers believe, as does the White
House, that the massive arms buildup, and the material support
Washington is (according to Seymour Hersch) giving to Sunni extremist
groups in Lebanon, are necessary to contain Iran. A more twisted
editorial logic is hard to imagine. Apparently, cutting one's nose to
spite one's face is considered professional journalism at The
Washington Post.
Based in Washington DC, Rostam Pourzal writes regularly on the politics of human rights.
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Only one reason
by jamshid on Sat Sep 01, 2007 04:07 PM PDTThat was only one reason. When the technocrat Amoozegar became prime minister two years before the revolution, he cut off most of the mullahs salary.
We need to learn from blogs like dailykos
by jigsaw on Sat Sep 01, 2007 01:11 PM PDTI think the liberal media and the liberal blogs in the U.S. do an excellent job of criticizing and sometimes demolishing the status quo, especially blogs like Dailykos and Firedoglake, which dissect every piece of legislation, political news, congress's action, all politicians and so on an hourly basis. They are master debaters and master researchers. Many of them are lawyers and highly educated who work in public policies and mobilizing the grass roots. We should really emulate them and learn from them how to do the same when it comes to Iranian politics.
Great info.
by jigsaw on Sat Sep 01, 2007 01:04 PM PDTVery interesting info. Also, isn't it true that almost all of the mullahs received a salary from the Shah? And one of the reason, they were angry at the Shah was the fact that he stopped their salary a couple of years before the revolution?
Rostam Goebbels???
by jigsaw on Sat Sep 01, 2007 01:56 PM PDTExcellent. I couldn't have said it better myself. These mozdoors might be able to fool a few American "useful idiots" but they can't fool Iranians. BTW, have you noticed that they all sound the same and repeat the same talking points almsot verbatim as if they all receive a memo to launch an offensive at the same time and with the same content and the usual suspects are always the same and they come out in full force dutifully and mindlessly....IRGC is basically a corporate army of the mullahs to protect their mafia empire while getting a cut for themselves.
Though, I doubt these people will stop writing half-truths and spreading their tired and Goebbelsesque propaganda anytime soon:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
— upton sinclair
Yes he did, but I am not
by jamshid on Sat Sep 01, 2007 04:47 AM PDTYes he did, but I am not too proud of his reasons. He was a pro-mullah, the mullah being Behbahani. His anti-Mosadegh tone was extreme and landed him in jail after his newspaper was closed. After 28 Mordad, when he realized, and I am quoting him, "bokhaari az Behbahani boland nemisheh", he shifted to another akhoond whose name I don't remember. But then that got him in trouble with the Shah.
Jamshid
That's interesting. Did your
by Parham on Fri Aug 31, 2007 05:43 PM PDTThat's interesting. Did your uncle ever tell you what it was specifically that got the paper closed?
Re: Parham
by jamshid on Fri Aug 31, 2007 01:58 PM PDTNot Mirfetros. It is based on my late uncle. He was ordered by Mossadegh's goverment to stop printing his newspaper. When he refused, both his offices in Tehran and Esfahan were shutdown and sealed closed. His newspaper was not the only one. After he went underground and continued printing. they arrested him.
He was freed and resumed printing his publications soon after 28 Mordad, only to be shutdown again, this time by the Shah's goverment.
...
by afshin on Thu Jun 14, 2012 08:18 AM PDT...
Why worry??
by Sabalan on Wed Aug 29, 2007 09:43 PM PDTI read the Washington post article and there are no false claims or facts there. If anything, that article is short of many facts about the guards and activities they are involved with. Activities which are most relevant to Iranian people such as killing and torturing of students, women, bus drivers, teachers, union workers or anybody who dares to ask for his or her basic human rights. The strategy you are using to refute their facts is all too familiar strategy of half-lies, or in your case 10% truth and 90% lies, by telling this story of Washington post supporting the actions taken by Regan administration on helping contra rebels and other killers in Central America . Even if we take this as being true (the support of Washington post of Regan administration for its actions in central America), it still doesn’t have any relevance to stating the facts about revolutionary guards in Iran or proving anything about the falsehood of their claims about Pasdaran and Iranian regime. In fact, they are not telling the whole truth about the role of Pasdaran on killing and oppression of Iranians and their full terrorist activities outside of Iran in places like Lebanon, Palestine and assassination, or should I say massacre, of Iranian dissidents in Iran and abroad. So don’t worry my fellow agha zadeh, the media in the west is still very much reluctant to let the truth fully out about your killing, oppressive right arm (pasdaran and basij) and even if they misbehave here and there, you still have your good European friends on your payroll (political whores) to back you up and keep you in power to suck more blood out of Iranian people and share the profit with them. No need to get so stressed out now, your western masters have not decided to get rid of you and your services yet.
Re: "At will"
by Parham on Wed Aug 29, 2007 05:07 PM PDTJamshid, what are you basing your claim that Mossadeq "closed newspapers at will"? Mirfetros?
I'm asking because I'd like to know your source(s).
Press freedom in Iran
by Parham on Wed Aug 29, 2007 04:57 PM PDTI'll just add that there was a very brief period of press freedom right after 22 Bahman 1357, which lasted for about only a few weeks.
To Jamshid
by AMIR1973 on Wed Aug 29, 2007 03:36 AM PDTPress freedom was greater under Mosaddeq than at anytime after 1953. That's not a "fabric" of my imagination (I think you mean figment, but anyway). It's a fact that the CIA used Iranian newspapers to plant anti-Mosaddeq stories as part of Operation Ajax (read Stephen Kinzer's "All the Shah's Men", among other works). Perhaps, Mosaddeq should have down those newspapers "at will". Mosaddeq was not an "Imamzadeh", but he was much better than anyone with the names Pahlavi, Khomeini olr Rajavi, notwithstanding your revisionism.
Correct, but incorrect
by jamshid on Wed Aug 29, 2007 01:13 AM PDTYou are correct, but the US media is still more free and independent than Iranian media and less of a mouthpiece and propoganda for its goverment.
And no, the greatest period of free press was not in the brief premiership of Mosadegh, that's just a fabric of your imagination, it was during the constitutional revolution. Mosadegh shut down opposing newspapers at will. Don't make an Imamzadeh out of the guy.
We SHOULD criticize US papers: we live in America, not Iran!
by AMIR1973 on Tue Aug 28, 2007 07:31 PM PDTLet the Iranians in Iran worry about Iran's newspapers. It's their responsibility to push for greater press freedom. Neither under the IRI nor under the Pahlavis did Iran have a free press. It's greatest period of press freedom came during the brief premiership of Mossadeq. In fact, the CIA and MI6 used that freedom in order to plant anti-Mosaddeq propaganda in Iranian newspapers and help to overthrow his government. Iranian-Americans need to worry about the U.S. government, since it is using our tax dollars to occupy Iraq and possibly plan to attack Iran. The corporate-owned US media is the mouthpiece and propaganda appararatus of the government, also known as the so-called "independent media".
Fix yourself first...
by Rostam on Tue Aug 28, 2007 06:02 PM PDTYou are criticising Washington post. What about Iran's newspapers?