Leslie Gelb has passed away. Are some trying to make him a hero?
Les Gelb, who died today, is being profusely praised by the US Foreign Policy Community. He was long their icons. But in 2009, he wrote a scathing condemnation of them & their pro-war pathology, admitting he supported the Iraq War because cheering wars is *a career requirement*:
A scathing condemnation of them?
Is that what he wrote?
I saw a rather superficial survey passed off as an examination -- one he wrote Jeanne-Paloma Zelmati. It was entitled "Mission Not Accomplished:Meet the press—and see why it failed at several critical points during the Iraq War." It was published in the summer 2009 edition of DEMOCRACY.
The pull quote being Tweeted appears in the final paragraph of the seven page article:
My initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility. We "experts" have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we "perfect" the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common–often wrong–wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.
That pull quote is probably the closest to truth in the whole seven pages. And note that whole pages go by without a reference to even one report. Note that by page four he's already done with his survey of press before the start of the war. Note that he doesn't speak of the multitude of issues at play -- or even really any issues. Media consolidation desires by Big Press were part of the reason they went along. Finances and the war industry were another reason. Big oil was a large reason (Cheney's energy task force maps made that clear even before Alan Greenspan briefly wrote and spoke freely.) All of that's ignored. People just didn't work hard enough, that's the argument Gelb really presents.
If you're not getting how cowardly his article was, what's the one name everybody knows if they know about faulty Iraq War reporting? Judith Miller.
Search in vain for her.
Now Judith wasn't the only one. But somehow, despite all her bylines on pieces selling the war, she's not even mentioned. (But he finds time to name Todd S. Purdham?)
He does include Karen DeYoung -- basically cribbing (with some credit) the work Howard Kurtz had already done.
He's not anyone to be celebrated.
He wrote (co-wrote) his piece in the summer of 2009, a year after Barack Obama had rode anti-Iraq War sentiment to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate (and he'd go on to become the President). There's no bravery there.
Why wasn't that article written in 2003 or 2004? Or even 2005 when opinion began to shift?
He waited until Bully Boy Bush was out of the White House and the Iraq War had passed the six year mark. And he was a journalist. Meaning? He knew he was burying the lede by ending with that paragraph -- one that should have opened the piece and been the starting point.
And that doesn't even being to address how the piece was all wrong for DEMOCRACY. He doesn't deal with issues of politics and democracy. He's ruminating on journalism. The scope of the piece is ideal for COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW. It's not an analytical piece. It's a shoddy review. It doesn't belong in an academic journal -- certainly not one devoted to politics.
And for the pull quote everyone's hero-ing him over to have any real impact, the piece should have appeared in a general news publication like TIME or NEWSWEEK.
Instead, it was hidden away in an academic journal.
