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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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I have a LOT of issues with the NYT. Not least of which is their ability to turn ANYTHING into "and this is why it is bad for Democrats"
But I think you, like many others, are very much forgetting just how strong bipartisan support was for the 2000s Iraq War at the start. And how it was actually moderately strong even for Desert Storm.
Politicians and pundits (and influencers) like to talk about how they were always above it all because nothing is worse than a flip flopper (rape? Boys will be boys. CHANGING YOUR MIND UPON RECEIVING MORE INFORMATION?!?!? FUCK YOU AND DIE!!!!). But in the late 80s/early 90s? There were a LOT of reasons to support military intervention in Iraq or, more specifically, Kuwait. Basically the exact same reasons to support military intervention in Ukraine.
And while we (rightfully) focus on the complete fabrication of WMDs*, there were still a LOT of humanitarian reasons to have intervened when we went back in the 2000s. Of course, we refused to do anything meaningful and mostly just created a power vacuum and plunged the region into chaos all while tricking people into cooperating with us and then leaving them to be murdered when we left but... we are talking about the start of the war. And that also ignores the nationalistic fervor after 9-11.
*: That actually gets a lot more complicated if you go by the actual definition of WMDs. But we were sold on nukes rather than "just" chemical weapons and the mechanisms to create nukes. Which were very much not believed to be there.
Reporting the truth is their job though. When the UN weapons inspectors are making the rounds telling everyone that the Bush administration is lying they should have run strongly worded articles.
When no evidence of a functional WMD program of any kind showed up they should have gone after Bush with a bucket of tar.
Instead the myth of chemical weapons is so pervasive that even now you hedge your post. But the only thing we ever found were some rounds so old and decrepit they were more likely to fall apart the second they were moved than anything else.
They completely abrogated their duty to bring truth to the people for the Iraq war. And then coverage turned so hard on the Iraq war people ignore the fact that the main thing was a success. The government and democracy there endures to this day.
Even in your comment you get annoyed that people are acknowledging the facts, rather than just the narrative you wanted. it is not "hedg(ing)" to acknowledge that: By the strict definition of the term, there actually were WMDs. And we would have known the scale if inspectors were allowed to do their job. They just weren't the WMDs that were used to sell people on the war. That is nuance. That is Truth.
People don't want Truth. They want people to fight their battles for them under the guise of "Truth". Journalists are great right up until they say something we don't like, at which point they are "just as bad as the rest".
It is not journalism's job to tear down a government. It is their job to provide The People with the information they need to make those decisions. Instead, republicans insisted that any journalist who acknowledged how much of a liar the bush administration was are traitors. And most of the left decided the thing they hate the most is sensationalist headlines/24 hour news/clickbait/whatever. And... after a few people got fire bombed and had to go into hiding, it just wasn't worth the fight.
I have friends in journalism who literally had to go into hiding or flee the country. I have had to help one of my best friends store some data because one of the tech giants was pissed at them and they genuinely feared for their life.
And I've seen the outcome. The story they spent years writing and researching gets turned into a single editorialized headline on social media and the few people who even claimed to read it are arguing that it is toothless and was written by a boot licker. With the more common response being people who are genuinely proud of NOT reading it because it is "too long".
Lmao, "we were technically correct" is not a basis for war. People fucking died. That's not the time for edgy bullshit.
And nobody got firebombed for going against the Iraq war. Stop trying to conflate things. In fact journalists being killed in the US is extremely rare.
And it's absolutely the job of journalists to expose the lies of a government. That's literally why they're the fourth estate.
You're going so hard to defend stuff not even the journalists want to defend. Do you work at NYT or something?
Being a good reporter does not mean deferring to whatever is popular at the time.
All those risks and flaws were evident in the build up for war (Bush Jr.'s). Maybe many people believed the bullshit, but that's not an excuse for the people who are supposed to be calling bullshit bullshit rather than cheerleading the march to war. I am very much not forgetting the bipartisan support for war. I was there marching against it and calling it bullshit at the time, along with many more diligent reporters than the NYT. People rightfully didn't trust the Bush Jr. administration.
When institutions fail in big world altering ways that kill a lot of innocent people, hold them to it, don't pretend they did the best they could and no one could possibly expect better.