About that “revered military leader” Suleimani
Old and busted: “austere religious scholar”
New hotness: “revered military leader”
And garbage journalists wonder why so many Americans view them as a hostile enemy force. https://t.co/kRcmt3e7UF
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) January 3, 2020
The media continually makes choices about how to cover stories, or whether to cover them at all. The death of the Iranian terrorist head Suleimani at American hands is one such story, and it’s a big enough one that it really can’t be ignored.
The death of a terrorist is ordinarily celebrated and praised, especially one of that magnitude. So the task facing a Trump-detesting newspaper like the WaPo is to cover it but to make sure that Trump comes out looking bad. It’s something with which they’ve had a great deal of practice.
This particular tweet of the WaPo’s – referring to Suleimani as “Iran’s most revered military leader,” has gotten a lot of flak and a lot of ridicule, and rightly so. But first I want to note that the WaPo probably thinks it covered itself by only offering this “revered leader” thing as what “Iraqi state television” has reported, not what the WaPo itself is calling him.
I don’t know whether that’s the defense the WaPo is using; so far, I haven’t seen whether they’ve defended themselves at all. But it’s certainly one they could use, because technically that’s what the tweet said.
But if they are offering it, it’s a completely inadequate excuse for the simple reason that they chose to highlight this particular phrase in a tweet that doesn’t reject it or put it into any context whatsoever. It’s also (as many people have kindly pointed out) of a piece with their ludicrous characterization of al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar.”
Although I suppose that, if you consider the possibility that none of Iran’s military leaders are the least bit “revered,” it may indeed also be technically true that Suleimani was their most revered. Which is to say he wasn’t revered at all, except by those “protesters” (another euphemism) who were “demonstrating” (still another euphemism) in Baghdad so recently.
There are many ways to wage war. The WaPo does it with words.
Third time attempting to post this link:
https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-call-for-flags-to-be-flown-half-mast-to-grieve-death-of-soleimani
Earlier link to an RCP note 29 Dec about
NYT’s Dean Baquet And WP’s Marty Baron: We Can’t Dismiss Trump Supporters, They Deserve Our Respect
This WaPo obsession with spinning news to make Trump look bad is a clear indication Marty Baron was lying.
There are 4 types of political news, but Dem media only tells two types:
News that makes Dems look good, and news that makes Reps look bad.
The two not told:
Where the Dems look bad, where the Reps look good.
It’s pretty easy to see which ones are being told, but hard to see those not covered. Non-Dem news sources are often better at the whole real news.
Russia Today, available in Slovakia, is pretty good at telling:
Where the Dems look bad, and where the Reps look bad; i.e. Wherever America looks bad, or in a way to make the US look bad.
A perfect example of clueless actions that inevitably lead to the proverbial “unintended consequence”; the MSM’s sedition is part and parcel of the forces that are driving America toward a new civil war.
When they lose that conflict, their sedition will neither be forgotten nor forgiven. It is an especially egregious and willful betrayal of the very journalistic principles they pretend to support.
https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/01/03/there-it-is-jim-acostas-report-on-what-trump-said-about-the-soleimani-airstrike-includes-bonus-rebuttal-on-behalf-of-iran/
Being as this is Twitchy, Acosta does not escape unscathed.
https://babylonbee.com/news/john-bolton-cant-believe-he-quit-just-before-war-with-iran
I’d love to see a clever wordsmith come up with some juicy phrases “if Trump were President during WWII”.
Along the line of “Germany’s colorful vegetarian leader” or “the ebullient and controversial ‘Il Duce'”.
But perhaps it’s been done before.
These clowns don’t have a clue how they look from the outside.
JimNorCal on January 3, 2020 at 9:17 pm said:
I’d love to see a clever wordsmith come up with some juicy phrases “if Trump were President during WWII”.
Along the line of “Germany’s colorful vegetarian leader” or “the ebullient and controversial ‘Il Duce’”.
But perhaps it’s been done before.
* * *
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/28/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-washington-post-austere-headline/2483340001/
More here.
https://www.businessinsider.my/washington-post-isis-leader-baghdadi-parody-wapodeathnotices-2019-10/
Oh, and this:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f59f9141518e680067bda3d1f8b436a7004a7fea9b7744ce9b98f90dc5ba03fb.jpg
Aesop:
😆
“Iran’s most revered military leader” from a slightly different perspective…
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hadji-qasem-a-whole-cult-blown-away/
That made me to think of Fouad Ajami Barry, and consequently how I miss reading his analyses of these and such-like events.
Yes, Ajami was unique and insightful; a distillation of profound politico-cultural analyst and lyrical, poetic expressionist; robust Western-educated academic and complex, multi-layered Levantine. In broad terms, Bernard Lewis combined with C.P. Cavafy….
The fellow who wrote that blogpost stood out (for me) because of his emotion (perhaps a bit OTP), which might remind one of Ajami, but also because of his background: according to the blurb at the bottom of the post—looks as though he wrote it himself—he is a reformed Islamic fanatic, which if true would provide him with some rare and valuable insights….
Anyway, here’s something much more thoughtful, yet also profound, from an Azeri academic, i.e,. someone in a position to understand the Iranian reality:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/with-soleimani-gone-irans-regional-hegemony-faces-setbacks/
The problem basically is the NATURE of the revenge attacks (which it would only be prudent to expect): WHERE they will occur (they can choose from a rich target environment, either military or civilian—since for them, there is no distinction), and WHEN they will occur (Iran—and proxies—may decide to wait) and, finally, what the response(s) will be to those attacks should they occur….
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-threatens-tel-aviv-us-bases-in-middle-east-after-killing-of-soleimani/
Of course, everything, alas, is purely speculative….
Cavafy!
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians??
Those people were a kind of solution.
Yikes. (“OTP” should have been “OTT”—been reading a bit too much George Catlin of late….)
Aesop, thanks that was great!