Journalism being the first draft of history, most
journalists today do not realize that they shape their own legacy with every
article they write. This is because future students of history will consult their
work to write history in hindsight. And if they discover that a journalist
habitually distorted the truth to advance a point of view, they will avoid his
or her work. Eventually such journalists will acquire a reputation so bad that
they will end up on a blacklist, and will be known to all teachers and all
students of history that they are not worth consulting.
Future historians will also consult the opinion makers of
today to see how they interpreted the events of their time to their readers.
And here too, the historians will be guided by the quality of the author's
work. In this case, they will gauge the amount of insight that the author
yielded, the depth they gave to their work, and more importantly, the
historians will want to be assured that even if the author had a definite point
of view, he or she was genuine in their search for the truth, and not merely
trying to advance a point of view by spinning the truth to make it conform to
their biases.
Needless to say that in today's charged atmosphere where
everything that is said or that is done is imbued with partisan politics, it
will be difficult for future historians to find material that will give them an
accurate description of our times except for the fact that they were rancorous
times. There are, however, some welcome indications that things may be changing
because out of two opinion pieces that appear in the February 21, 2014 issue of
the Wall Street Journal, one article remains as biased as ever but the other
shows signs that the author may be trying to change for the better.
There is Fouad Ajami's piece that came under the title:
“Obama's Syria Debacle Laid Bare” and the subtitle: “When the president leaves
office, it will be said that he kept us out of that war. But at what price?”
And there is Walter Russell Mead's piece that came under the title: “Putin
knows History Hasn't Ended” and the subtitle: “Obama might like to pretend that
geopolitics don't matter, but the slaughter in Kiev shows how mistaken he is.”
The irony here is that most of the time the editors of the
publication and not the authors choose the title and subtitle for an article.
And while the Ajami article sounds like it may be moderate judging by the title
and subtitle, it is in fact as biased as ever. And while the Russell Mead
article sounds like it may be biased judging by the title and the subtitle, it
is in fact moderate compared to how this author used to present his arguments.
And so, looking at the Ajami article, we see that he begins
it by quoting Senator John McCain whose views on the Syrian civil war are
uncompromisingly hawkish, and would not rest till Bashar Assad is removed from
power. And right there, in the first paragraph, Ajami leaps to a reflective
stance to do one highly deceptive thing: to associate the Syrian subject with
words that belong to the documented horrors of the Balkan conflict two decades
previous. The words are: evidence of torture, starvation, systemic rape and
slaughter, all of which were proven to have happened in the Balkans but not in Syria , and
certainly not by the Assad forces.
The author goes on to lay the blame squarely on the
shoulders of President Obama whom he has continually blamed for everything
under the sun. He now speaks of “130,000 dead and millions displaced” to pin
those numbers on Obama's chest for failing to remove Assad from power. Future
historians will notice all that, and will most certainly want to trash the
article before reading it to the end. If, however, someone continues to read it
– perhaps out of curiosity – they will come to a point in the middle of it
where they will make a discovery. They will see this: “The jihadists … more
than 20,000 of them, from lands as far away as Russia 's
North Caucasus, have made their way to Syria .”
And this is where the future historians will scratch their
heads and ask what these jihadists were after. They will want to consult
another author to find the answer but in the meantime, they will take the
following from the Ajami article: “For these holy warriors, the war is not so
much about Syria
as it is about the acquisition of a territorial base for their operations.” And
the historians will ask how many jihadists died fighting against the Assad
forces, how many died fighting each other, and how many civilians did they
kill? How many of the 130,000 deaths that Ajami has quoted were they
responsible for?
Instead of discovering the answer to these questions in the
Ajami article, they will find this: “The jihadists come bearing the message
that the world powers took no interest in the fate of the population, and the
diplomacy of the past three years lent credence to their worldview.” What is he
insinuating here? Is he trying to say that the jihadists would have been
scared, and would have stayed home if Obama had only barked at them? Now is the
time to trash this article even if there are other nuggets buried in them.
As to the Walter Mead article, it is about the turmoil in Ukraine of which the author says the following
in the first paragraph: “The turmoil is forcing the EU and the U.S. to
re-examine some deep assumptions...” And right there you can tell that Mead
himself is doing some soul searching of his own, not merely trying to crucify
President Obama which has heretofore been his penchant. Instead, he goes on to
explain how the conflict started and how it evolved, always stressing its
European roots which is what allowed him to avoid mentioning America or pinning
the blame on its President.
He then does something that is truly the work of a scholar;
the kind of work he is paid to do as a professor. He tells how and why – as
seen from his vantage point – the world has come to where it is today. He says
this: “Both Obama ... and the decision-making apparatus of the EU believe that
the end of the Cold War meant an end to geopolitics … This helps explain why
American diplomacy these days is about order and norms.” He expands on that
point of view which is something that future historians will enjoy reading.