[rad-green] From Resistance to Assistance: Little Med ia Pushback to Trump’s Iran Assassination

https://fair.org/home/from-resistance-to-assistance-little-pushback-to-trumps-iran-assassination/

*F.A.I.R.          JANUARY 9, 2020*

From Resistance to Assistance: Little Pushback to Trump’s Iran Assassination
*BY ALAN MACLEOD*

[image: Washington Post image of Trump discussing the assassination of
Qassem Soleimani]
<https://fair.org/home/from-resistance-to-assistance-little-pushback-to-trumps-iran-assassination/>


[image: Qassem Soleimani]

*Qassem Soleimani (cc photo: Sayyed Shahab Odin Vajedi)*

After Donald Trump’s election, both the *New York Times*
<https://fortune.com/2019/02/06/new-york-times-trump-nyt-subscriptions/>
 and *Washington Post*
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/is-donald-trump-saving-the-news-media/>
saw
huge jumps in subscribers, all hoping that the outlets would hold the
president to account. Both papers tapped into this sentiment: In February
2017, the *Post *adopted the motto
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-washington-posts-new-slogan-turns-out-to-be-an-old-saying/2017/02/23/cb199cda-fa02-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html>
“Democracy
Dies in Darkness” on its masthead; *Times* ads have used the slogan
<https://gremlin.media/marketing-campaign-new-york-times-the-truth-is-more-important-now-than-ever/>,
“The truth is more important now than ever.”

Trump has played his part, attacking
<https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1163063723952676864?lang=en> media
that bother him as “failing,” and reportedly telling
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-instructs-federal-agencies-to-cancel-washington-post-and-new-york-times-subscriptions/2019/10/24/aefcf0b0-f68a-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html>
all
federal agencies in October to cancel their *Times* and *Post*
 subscriptions.

Yet when the president does indeed carry out dangerous, aggressive actions,
such as the assassination of Iranian general and political leader Qassem
Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3, “resistance” turns to assistance from
the corporate press. FAIR studied every editorial and opinion piece on
Soleimani’s killing published by the two newspapers, from the attack until
January 7 (around three dozen articles), and found their pushback to
Trump’s actions to be distinctly limited.
*‘Indisputably an enemy’*
[image: BBC footage of Qassem Soleimani funeral]

*Some of the millions of people (BBC, 1/6/20
<https://youtu.be/1ndfa37Y4-0>) who turned out for the funeral of Qassem
Soleimani, whom no one thought “was a great guy the world will miss” (New
York Times, 1/7/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opinion/democrats-iowa-iran-impeachment.html>).*

Opinion writers and editorial boards took great pains to emphasize the
disgust and contempt they held for Soleimani, a “terrorist mastermind”
(*Washington
Post*, 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/we-are-uncharted-territory-now-are-we-prepared-that/>)
“as evil as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Bahdadi” (*Washington Post*,
1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/trump-just-upped-ante-middle-east-is-he-ready-what-comes-next/>).
As Gail Collins wrote in the *New York Times* (1/7/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opinion/democrats-iowa-iran-impeachment.html>),
“There seems to be a wide range of opinions about Soleimani, none of which
are that he was a great guy the world will miss.” The millions of people
<https://youtu.be/1ndfa37Y4-0> who attended his funeral may beg to differ;
two-thirds of Iranians rated him “very favorably,” according to a 2018
University
of Maryland poll
<https://www.newsweek.com/iran-most-famous-general-more-popular-president-new-threats-home-abroad-813803>
.

Some people in Lebanon
<https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1929396/soleimani-reveals-details-role-he-played-2006-israel-hezbollah-war>
 and Yemen
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-iran-houthis/exclusive-iran-steps-up-support-for-houthis-in-yemens-war-sources-idUSKBN16S22R>
who
received his support against foreign aggression, and citizens of Iraq and
Syria who no longer live under the ISIS caliphate he helped defeat
<https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-america-s-secret-partner-in-iran-1.5376767>,
may also have a perspective on Soleimani that went largely unrepresented in
leading US papers. As Noam Chomsky (*Truthout*, 1/7/20
<https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-is-a-rogue-state-and-suleimanis-assassination-confirms-it/>)
remarked of Iraqi Kurds:

They have not forgotten that when the huge, heavily armed US-trained Iraqi
army quickly collapsed, and the Kurdish capital of Erbil, then Baghdad and
all of Iraq were about to fall in the hands of ISIS, it was Soleimani and
the Iraqi Shia militias he organized that saved the country.

[image: WaPo: Don’t believe Iranian propaganda about the mourning for
Soleimani]

*Don’t believe Iranian propaganda, says an employee of the US propaganda
service (Washington Post, 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/dont-believe-iranian-propaganda-about-mourning-soleimani/>).*

There was little deviation in the *Times* or *Post* from the idea that
Soleimani was an “evil” (*New York Times*, 1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-airstrike.html>, 1/7/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opinion/democrats-iowa-iran-impeachment.html>
; *Washington Post*, 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/we-are-uncharted-territory-now-are-we-prepared-that/>),
“blood-soaked” (*New York Times*, 1/4/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/opinion/editorials/trump-iran-threats-Suleimani.html>)
“terrorist” (*New York Times*, 1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-airstrike.html>) who “had
it coming” (*New York Times*, 1/4/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/opinion/trump-soleimani-strike.html>),
a monster comparable to Nazi Holocaust leaders (*Washington Post*, 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/dont-believe-iranian-propaganda-about-mourning-soleimani/>).
For *New York Times *columnist Bret Stephens
<https://fair.org/home/three-reasons-bret-stephens-should-not-be-a-nyt-columnist-and-the-real-reason-he-is-one/>
 (1/3/20 <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-airstrike.html>),
certain Nazis were, in fact, too good to be compared to Soleimani: “To
think of him as a worthy adversary — an Iranian Erwin Rommel — is wrong,”
he wrote. Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman (*New York Times*, 1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-general-soleimani.html>)
labeled him “the dumbest man in Iran and the most overrated strategist in
the Middle East.”

The chief reason for Soleimani’s nefariousness, the *Times* editorial board
(1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-trump-suleimani.html>)
explained, was that he was “indisputably an enemy of the American
people…and an architect of international terrorism responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of Americans.” The claim that Soleimani had killed
hundreds of Americans was repeated, word for word, in many articles in the
papers of record (e.g., *New York Times*, 1/7/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opinion/soleimani-killed-us.html>;
*Washington
Post*, 1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/yes-soleimani-was-an-enemy-that-doesnt-mean-trump-made-the-right-call/2020/01/03/d30fc2fe-2e32-11ea-9b60-817cc18cf173_story.html>
, 1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/trump-just-upped-ante-middle-east-is-he-ready-what-comes-next/>)
as well as across the media (e.g., *Boston Globe*, 1/3/20
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/01/03/metro/us-faces-inevitable-counter-attacks-after-strike-says-ex-diplomat-now-teaching-harvard/>
; *Fox News*, 1/6/20
<https://www.foxnews.com/media/green-beret-democrats-soleimani-killed-americans>
; *The Hill*, 1/7/20
<https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/477217-trump-puts-us-exit-from-iraq-on-hold-amid-fallout-of-soleimani>
).

These “hundreds of Americans” were US forces killed by improvised explosive
devices (IEDs) during the Iraq War, supposedly made in Iran and planted by
Iranian-backed Shia militias. As professor Stephen Zunes pointed out in the
*Progressive* (1/7/20
<https://progressive.org/dispatches/-no-evidence-iran-is-responsible-for-the-deaths-of-hundreds-of-americans-zunes-200107/>),
the Pentagon provided no evidence that Iran made the IEDs, other than the
far-fetched claim that they were too sophisticated to be made in Iraq—even
though the US invasion had been justified by claims that Iraq had an
incredibly threatening WMD program. The made-in-Iran claim, in turn, was
the main basis for pinning responsibility for IED attacks on Shia
militias—which were, in any case, sanctioned by the Iraqi government,
making Baghdad more answerable for their actions than anyone in Tehran.
Last year, Gareth Porter reported in *Truthout*, (7/9/19
<https://truthout.org/articles/lies-about-iran-killing-us-troops-in-iraq-are-a-ploy-to-justify-war/>)
that the claim that Iran was behind the deaths of US troops was part of
Vice President Dick Cheney’s plan to build a case for yet another war.

Even if one is inclined, against all experience, to take US claims about an
official enemy on faith, the language that Soleimani killed “hundreds of
Americans” is a deliberately nebulous. American *what*—children? Civilians?
Indeed not. The allegation is that he targeted US troops or
“contractors”—i.e., mercenaries—stationed not at home, but in a region on
the other side of the world that the US illegally attacked and has occupied
for most of this century. “Soleimani provided effective military resistance
to foreign occupying forces,” though, sounds very different from “killed
hundreds of Americans.”
*Minor quibbles about protocol*
[image: WaPo: Yes, Soleimani was an enemy. That doesn’t mean Trump made the
right call.]

*In a characteristic formulation, the Washington Post (1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/yes-soleimani-was-an-enemy-that-doesnt-mean-trump-made-the-right-call/2020/01/03/d30fc2fe-2e32-11ea-9b60-817cc18cf173_story.html>)
argued that Soleimani was “an implacable enemy of the United States”
responsible for “countless atrocities”—but complained that Trump “has yet
to offer any explanation” of why his killing was “in America’s strategic
interest.”*

In the papers studied, the majority of articles carried a similar,
cookie-cutter structure: agree that Soleimani was a bad guy and deserved to
be killed, but worry about the consequences and criticize the president on
technical grounds. The *Times*’ editorial board (1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-trump-suleimani.html>)
wrote that “the real question” wasn’t whether Soleimani’s killing “was
justified, but whether it was wise.” Meanwhile, the *Post* (1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/yes-soleimani-was-an-enemy-that-doesnt-mean-trump-made-the-right-call/2020/01/03/d30fc2fe-2e32-11ea-9b60-817cc18cf173_story.html>)
made exactly the same point: “Yes, Soleimani Was an Enemy,” the editorial
board declared. “That Doesn’t Mean Trump Made the Right Call.”

Criticism of the government’s actions was largely limited to worrying it
might escalate tensions and spark a hot war—something for which US
corporate media have been laying the groundwork for months (*FAIR.org*,
7/2/19 <https://fair.org/home/creating-a-climate-for-war-with-iran/>) if
not years (*Extra!*, 3/12
<https://fair.org/extra/upping-the-ante-in-iran-propaganda/>). Complaints
included that the US lacked a clear grand strategy (*New York Times*, 1/7/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/opinion/soleimani-killed-us.html>),
that it was a “rash and shortsighted” (*Washington Post*, 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/welcome-to-trumps-war/2020/01/06/e35c75c8-30ba-11ea-91fd-82d4e04a3fac_story.html>),
that there were “no more adults in the room” (*New York Times*, 1/6/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/trump-iran.html>), that it
would “bolster” the Iranian regime (*New York Times*, 1/6/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/trump-iran-trade.html>) or
could “trigger a bigger conflict” (*Washington Post*, 1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/trump-just-upped-ante-middle-east-is-he-ready-what-comes-next/>)
that risks “ensnaring” the US in a wider encounter (*Washington Post*,
 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/if-deescalation-with-iran-is-the-goal-trump-is-actively-thwarting-it/2020/01/06/769ef5c6-30a8-11ea-9313-6cba89b1b9fb_story.html>).
(In corporate media mythology, the United States is always an innocent
party getting accidentally trapped into going to war, rather than actively
pursuing it—*FAIR.org*, 6/22/17
<https://fair.org/home/syria-the-latest-case-of-us-stumbling-into-war/>.)

The *Times* and *Post* offered some meager objections based on
congressional technicalities. “Why didn’t the White House alert senior
Democrats in Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi?” asked the *Times* (
1/3/20 <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-airstrike.html>).
The *Post* (1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/trump-wags-hippopotamus/>
, 1/6/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/trump-is-sucking-us-into-another-war-with-lots-arrogance-little-strategy/>)
made similar criticisms, as if had Trump done so, there would be no legal
issues with killing a foreign leader in another country.

There were some exceptions. Law scholar Karen Greenberg (*New York Times*,
1/6/20 <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/qassim-suleimani.html>)
wrote that the general’s killing was illegal and an “inevitable outcome of
our dangerous ‘war on terror’ policy.” Iranian-American writer Azadeh
Moaveni worried about the effect of war on Iran and noted that Soleimani
was considered a “war hero” inside the Islamic Republic (*New York Times*,
1/6/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/iran-soleimani-funeral.html>).

Opposition to war from the *Times*’ regular columnists was more about who
was carrying it out. Michelle Goldberg (1/6/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/trump-iran.html>), condemning
Trump’s “unstable” actions, presented Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis
<https://truthout.org/articles/james-mattis-is-a-war-criminal-i-experienced-his-attack-on-fallujah-firsthand/>
as
a moderating force, although she did note that, “To Iranians, after all,
America is the aggressor.” Paul Krugman (1/6/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/trump-iran-trade.html>),
meanwhile, acknowledged that Iranians would not accept Trump’s right to
kill their leaders, but also claimed that before Trump, the US was
“relatively trustworthy” and “clearly stood for global rule of law,” always
behaving as “no more than first among equals.”

But across the spectrum of dozens of articles in America’s two most
influential newspapers, there was little difference in outlook. Contempt
for the commander in chief? Sure. But scrutiny of the state? Not so much.
As Stephens reminded
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-airstrike.html>
*Times* readers,
“What shouldn’t be in doubt is the justice.”
*Embarrassing predictions*
[image: NYT: Trump Kills Iran’s Most Overrated Warrior]

*America’s most overrated columnist was not impressed (New York
Times, 1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-general-soleimani.html>).*

With all the confidence of White Star Line Executives in 1912 proclaiming
HMS *Titanic* unsinkable, opinion columnists in our most influential media
made a number of utterly terrible predictions or assertions that were
immediately disproven.

The *Times* editorial board, echoing official claims, wrote
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-trump-suleimani.html> that
Soleimani likely “had come to Iraq in part to plot the next move against
United States military personnel or civilians.” In reality, he had been
invited to attend regional peace talks
<https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/06/soleimani-peace-mission-assassinated-trump-lie-imminent-attacks/>
with
Saudi Arabia by the Iraqi prime minister, who had personally asked Trump
for permission for Soleimani to attend. Trump agreed, then used the
opportunity to assassinate him.

Less than two days later, the Iraqi parliament voted overwhelmingly to
expel all US forces from Iraq, which made *Times* top columnist Thomas
Friedman’s assertion
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-general-soleimani.html> that
protests against the US embassy in Baghdad were staged to “make it look as
if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around” seem
distinctly foolish.

Meanwhile, both the *Post* (1/3/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/yes-soleimani-was-an-enemy-that-doesnt-mean-trump-made-the-right-call/2020/01/03/d30fc2fe-2e32-11ea-9b60-817cc18cf173_story.html>)
and the *Times* (1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-airstrike.html>) published
articles confidently predicting that “the killing will have the effect of
deterring further Iranian attacks on Americans, such as the rocket strike
that killed a US contractor at an Iraqi base last week,” and that Iran
“will prefer to tread lightly,” with the assassination “bring[ing] a sense
of realism to the Islamic Republic’s thinking.” Needless to say, the dozens
of Iranian rockets raining down on US bases in Iraq have proven these
predictions woefully incorrect.

While corporate media like to present themselves as holding the current
administration to account, in reality they offer little meaningful
resistance to its foreign policy adventures. As with Trump’s efforts to
overthrow the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia (see *FAIR.org*, 1/25/19
<https://fair.org/home/resistance-media-side-with-trump-to-promote-coup-in-venezuela/>,
 11/15/19
<https://fair.org/home/western-media-whitewash-bolivias-far-right-coup/>,
11/26/19
<https://fair.org/home/media-wonder-why-cant-venezuela-be-more-like-bolivia/>),
media are essentially lining up shoulder to shoulder with the president.
When it comes to opposing or even questioning an aggressive foreign policy,
the resistance™ is useless.

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