Issue #24/79, December 12 - 26, 1999  

by Matt Taibbi

Anyone out there interested in getting arrested, for a good cause? Because if you are, I may need your help with something. Let me explain...

Here's the deal. I'm fed up with writing this column. Emotionally, it's just gotten too unsatisfying. I've decided I've got to go to the next level to make this worth it. So from now on, instead of just bitching and moaning about the American press, I'm taking volunteers to help me throw rotting food at the actual buildings housing the newsrooms in question.

Seriously--I'm going to the States soon, and when I go, I want to go to Washington and throw about three or four dozen old, smelly eggs at the Washington Post building. More than that, if I can get away with it. If they haul me off to jail for this, so be it. It'll be worth it. So if there's anyone out there who wants to join me, let me know. There's strength in numbers, after all... And ten years from now, when we're all old and impotent, we'll be able to get together and reminisce about it, like the Watergate conspirators.

Need a reason? Try reading the Post's editorial this past Sunday about Russian aggression in Chechnya. It's probably no more and no less patently offensive than most of the Post's political coverage, but it's still about as naked a display of hypocrisy as one could probably find in print. Read on and I'm sure you'll agree: when hypocrites achieve this level of public self-assuredness, they need to have something thrown at them.

The editorial starts off with the admission that "in many ways" Russia had more justification for intervention in Chechnya than...no, not the United States in Kosovo, but Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo. The Chechens, the Post noted, had failed to control incursions from their territory into Dagestan, so they deserved a military response more than the Albanians did. The editorial then takes a sharp turn:

"But whatever sympathy Russia therefore might have enjoyed for its campaign it has squandered with methods that echo all too familiarly those of Mr. Milosevic. Not only the looting, but also the indiscriminate shelling of civilians; the creation and mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees; and, according to sketchy accounts, the abuse of prisoners and suspected "terrorists" -- all this goes far beyond what might have been justified by difficult circumstances."

Isn't there something extremely twisted about the Washington Post claiming moral outrage over the "indiscriminate shelling of civilians" and "the creation and mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees"? Because the United States did exactly the same thing in Kosovo, but the Post had no problem with what we did there, from what I remember.

Take, for example, the Post's editorial from April 18 of this year, entitled "Ends and Means in Kosovo." Here's how it leads:

"IT`S INEVITABLE in a democracy with a free press that an allied bombing accident that kills dozens of civilians will garner as much attention as an adversary's murder of hundreds or even thousands of innocent people. The concern is legitimate; NATO should be pressed to account for its actions."

Can you smell a "but" coming? I sure can. And yes, here it is: "But it's also important not to lose sight of the larger point," the paper writes. "The victims of NATO's mistakes were on the road, like hundreds of thousands of others, because the troops of Slobodan Milosevic, off-camera, are burning" villages and raping citizens, etc., etc...

America gets to do the Machiavelli thing-the "ends" in Kosovo justify the "means"--but Russia doesn't. That's what they're saying, right? Russia has a good reason to go into Chechnya, but the way it's going about it sucks so it should get out. The way we're going about the Kosovo operation sucks, but we have a good reason to be there, so it's okay. Please, if I'm wrong, write and fill me in, but it sure looks like a pretty clear double standard from here. Remember, the U.S. created hundreds of thousands of refugees in Kosovo. And the U.S. indiscriminately bombed thousands of civilians in Kosovo. In fact, as it turns out, we probably killed more innocent civilians in Serbia than Milosevic did--many times more.

Here's another excerpt from the recent editorial about Russia. Here, the Post seems concerned that Russia hasn't thought out this military operation very well:

"But neither the government nor the military seems to have a long-term strategy, unless you count the depopulation of Chechnya. Now Russian troops have encircled the capital of Grozny and warned all civilians to leave; what is left of the place apparently will be destroyed. And then what? No one seems to have thought that far ahead."

Compare that with the Post's editorial on April 6 of this year, entitled "To Undo Ethnic Cleansing." In it, the paper argues that although there were failures of judgement on NATO's part, the operation must continue at all costs, if only for the reason that it must show a willingness to oppose Milosevic militarily:

"WITH HIS calculatedly evil campaign against the people of Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic has created a problem and a challenge that NATO did not anticipate. Whether NATO should have known better, and who is responsible for its failure of anticipation -- these are legitimate questions. But they are not the principal question. What matters most now is that NATO adjust to the new reality and make clear that it will undo Mr. Milosevic's brutal handiwork, no matter how long it takes."

This was despite the fact that the U.S. very conspicuously had no clear military objective going into the Kosovo war. At first it planned on just bombing the country from the air with the aim of forcing a quick surrender, then entered into an agonizingly long public flirtation with the idea of sending in ground troops, then decided finally to stick to the air campaign and finally resolved the crisis diplomatically with help from an unexpected source, the Russians. The U.S. clearly had no thoughts about Serbia's future, and in fact openly hoped that "what is left of the place apparently will be destroyed". Remember? That was part of our military strategy, destroying Serbia's economic infrastructure, which was usually euphemistically described as "Milosevic's war machine".

This was no different from what the Russians are doing, but it was morally superior to the Russian strategy, because it was being conducted by us, and not by the Russians.

That's what the Post (an pretty much every other major American press outlet) is all about. It's propaganda. If we want to do it, it's okay. If someone else is doing it and we don't like it, it's not okay. The Post (whose opinion page, incidentally, is now edited in part by the formerly Moscow-based rat-snake correspondent Fred Hiatt) is all about manipulation of public opinion in the service of state policy. It's propaganda in a very crude form. And that's all it is. It is definitely not anything like what it is supposed to be, which is a reliable and independent moral voice helping us make sense of world affairs.

There's really no point in complaining about any of this. People like me can write all we want, and what's the Post going to do--change? Not very likely. About the only thing one can do about any of it is to find a way to make oneself feel better about the whole situation. And as far as I'm concerned, that means TP-ing and egging the Post building. It won't change anything-- but it'll make me feel better, for one day, anyway.

It's very simple. What the Post is doing is wrong, plain and simple. It's plain, undisguised hypocrisy. And they don't really care if I know it, or you know it, or if a thousand or even ten thousand people like us know it. In fact, they WANT us to know that they don't care if we know it. It adds to their prestige that way. So you know what? If that's the way they're going to be, fuck 'em! Bomb 'em with eggs! The bastards!