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In an editorial this morning, the New York Times takes Iran to task for "Cruel, Pointless Games" for claiming that the three Americans captured this summer are spies. Sadly, in making its argument against Iran, the Times bolsters its case by citing Iranian actions that seem to have equal counterparts in US actions.
I have no basis for forming or stating an opinion on whether those detained are innocent hikers, government spies or something in between. The point I want to make is that because of its own actions, the United States has now lost the moral high ground for making accusations such as those in the Times’ editorial.
The editorial starts by referring to "Iran’s mullah-led government". Is the United States headed down that path? In discussing the Stupak Amendment before it was passed, Jane Hamsher asked "Is the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives calling the plays on health care now?" The outcome of the House votes on health care move the answer to that question closer to "Yes" than we have been in a long time.
The first paragraph of the editorial concludes with "it continues to threaten and abuse its own citizens who dare to speak out". Although the Times is speaking of Iran, the disclosure by the Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday of the overly broad subpoena to indymedia.us tells us that threats to US citizens are quite real when the government is chasing after those who have spoken out. Those threats turned into abuse last summer at the Republican National Convention protests.
The Times notes that "There is some question about whether the Iranian government has filed formal charges against the three…" President Obama himself has said that he favors indefinite detention without charges for some Guantanamo prisoners, so complaining about holding without charges is now "off the table".
We learn from the editorial that the hikers are being held "in the infamous Evin prison, where political prisoners are routinely incarcerated and too often abused". How is that different from the news, repeated again yesterday, that abuse at Guantanamo has actually gotten worse under Obama?
The most hypocritical accusation, though, comes as a one-sentence paragraph in the middle of the piece:
The hikers’ case is only the latest example of the Iranian government misusing and undermining its judiciary for political ends.
There are just too many examples to list and link for this one. Obama enlisted the aid of many fans of Constitutional government during the primary season because of his promises to remove politics from the Department of Justice and to call for accountability for those in the Bush administration who broke the law. He then completely abandoned that promise and allowed the Bush officials to escape all accountability. He now continues to use the DOJ to prevent disclosure of any government wrong-doing. Our judiciary, through its manipulation by the DOJ, is far too political in its operation today.
The Times editorial offers scathing rebukes of the Iranian government for being abusive, political in the application of justice and being dominated by religious considerations. Sadly, those same charges apply to the US and weaken our position in calling out Iran for these same flaws.
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Yep. Doubly sad, I think. Sad because we have lost that position from which we could credibly make such criticisms of other countries. And then sad again because, as a culture, we haven’t come to grips with our downhill slide–haven’t any awareness that we’ve slid.
Did the US ever have the “moral high ground?” Did the US have the moral high ground when slaves were deemed 3/5 of a person for their “masters’” voting pleasure?
I’ve got a friend who is close to the hikers. They were just hiking.
Well, there is that. But it seems like the pace is accelerating.
not even close.
The New York Times has been stirring anti-Iran sentiment in the US public for years now. Their editorials, with the singular exception of Roger Cohen, have been one-sided, alarmist, and distorting. Their reporting on Iran has mostly either come from CFR member David Sanger or the Times’ vaunted Jerusalem Bureau, which is staffed by a handful of Zionist Israelis who have high-level connections to the Israeli government and American military in the Middle East. Some of these figures – most notably Ethan Bronner – are effectively Israeli propagandists using the Times as a way to “communicate” with the American public.
The New York Times is certainly a high-quality newspaper, but on any issue in the Middle East and Central Asia there are agendas at work in both their reporting and editorials.
The hikers probably are spies. At any rate the story is being spun. Just as with the girls in Korea you begin to wonder at how often Americans “accidentally” cross borders. And the last girl the US said wasn’t a spy when Iran arrested her, later admitted to having secret Iranian military documents on her when she was arrested.
you might want to read through that stuff about “secret military documents” again, just on the off-chance that accuracy matters.
“Sadly, those same charges apply to the US and weaken our position in calling out Iran for these same flaws.” ; such doesn’t ‘weaken’, it shows the hypocrisy that is the U.S.
Funny -to me- is the SouthPark episode where Cartman went back to the signing of the Constitution and came away with the ‘solution’ that allowed the Constitution to be signed and that solution was to say one thing and do another.
Would that be the first signing statement?
This Hirsch piece in Newsweek is sadly hilarious
http://www.newsweek.com/id/222142
Obama’s going on a diplomatic offensive for America, abroad, but nobody anywhere seems to have anything they want from us anymore. Nobody wants our advice, we have no money to give, and nobody has any faith left in any promises we might care to make. Forget about the moral high ground, how about irrelevance? The sole superpower is a lame duck.
Thanks shrub.
Thanks for that link. Very interesting reading.
The U.S. lost the moral high ground a long time ago.
What it has lost recently is its economic muscle.
Now it is just a brutal empire.
And a failing one too.
I don’t mind the NYT, or any other American news organization, criticizing Iran’s human rights policies. They should be criticized. What I find alarming is that they can’t apply those same principles to our own society. We’ve had extra-legal captures of suspects, torture, and trials of dubious legitimacy right here in the U.S.
To me, that’s the problem with these editorials. I could take them a lot more seriously if they applied those principles of justice to everybody.
then there’s the run-of-the-mill stuff – gender-based persecution and institutionalized discriminaton against gays (OK, a lot of countries have problems in this area, but still), the abusive immigration detention and repatriation system, domestic surveillance, the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, the vast prison-industrial complex, the prison forced-labor and labor-outsourcing system (the world’s largest, by far), the death penalty lottery, the execution of the mentally ill, the corrupt judges who sell petty criminals and children to serve to time in private prisons, the systematic brutality of thuggish local police departments, etc., etc. Our Amnesty Int’l rap sheet domestically doesn’t read any better than anyone else’s these days.
The American media, like American politicans, have yet to adapt to the new reality – the one where we lost the moral high ground as a country, through our own callousness, arrogance and greed, and the one that requires us all to now focus on rebuilding our standing and reputation with real reform – at home and abroad. Obama is very popular abroad personally – because he offers the hope that we’ll be able to bring this type of change about. His country, less so.
I seem to recall that we kidnapped three Iranian officials a couple of years ago IN IRAN and put them in prison somewhere. Whatever happened to them? Are they still in custody? Are they now ransom for the hikers? or vice versa? An appeals court just threw out Maher Arar’s very legitimate claim for justice after he was kidnapped by US officials and sent away for torture. It boggles the mind that we can now claim any moral high ground. If an American was kidnapped on vacation in Mexico and sent to Syria for torture, we would probably declare war! and then spend 8 years fucking it up.
There were some Iranians taken prisoner in Iraq a couple of years ago. Is that who you’re thinking of?
American self awarded moral high ground history post WW2 is one of those American myths Americans often repeat. The truth and facts being otherwise.
Japan had two largely urban civilian populations put to death by American atomic weapons in 1945. There was no moral high ground involved. WashingtonDC wanted to use air dropped atomic weapons to let Moscow know WashingtonDC could do so. We know it is certain that if Japan had ever done same to two American cities of similar populations the outrage and desire for most hateful of revenge would have been himalayan in scale. If you doubt this see American reaction to 9/11/01.
The NYTimes likely does the best daily American newspaper which still can be found at the newstand. Sunday NYTimes is one of a kind.
However as other commenters above point out the NYTimes has big problems with being fair and square on the Op-Ed page regarding Israel and Iran.
Israeli propaganda and whitewashing get NYTimes boosts repeatedly.
For NYTimes to do so erodes the papers credibility very much on matters to do with Israel and Iran. As shown in the example above plainly so.
American moral high ground? A myth. Less suggested,supported and repeated the better.
Who went into Iran in 1953 and toppled the Iranian government?
Who rained ruin across SE Asia from early 1960s through early 1970s?
Which country led way to place sanctions on Iraq and caused terrible suffering and death to fall on millions of Iraqis during 1990s while its SoS suggested lots of Iraqis dying because of the sanctions on Iraq was worth it?
Where was NYTimes outrage regarding Maher Arar? Where is it?
American moral high ground? How would you like it if Pakistan were flying drones with Hellfire missiles over your neighborhood and fired them into your house based on what Pakistani military had seen via a video feed back in Pakistan of your home? This is what the Pentagon is doing to Pakistanis everyday.
American moral high ground? More accurate to know it as propaganda.
No, it seems hard to imagine these are innocent hikers. No one can be dumb enough to hike that close to Iran. They must be spies…just like the “hikers” that crossed into North Korea a while back. I think they had ties to Al Gore’s spy corporation.
Superb post, Jim.