The death of the conservative press?

We often talk about the death of the mainstream media and how they have become nothing but the New Pravda for the Bush administration. The former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, Paul Craig Roberts explains that the same thing has happened to the "conservative" press.

What happened to a formerly conservative press to reduce it to political partisanship and warmongering? Specifically, I have in mind National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

When I was associated with National Review, the magazine understood that the US Constitution and civil liberty had to be protected from government. It was not considered unpatriotic to take the side of the Constitution and civil liberty against a sitting government, even if the government were Republican. Some things were still more important than party loyalty.

And yes he has some examples.

Consider, for example, Byron York writing in the February 13 issue. York doesn’t understand why former US Representative Bob Barr lent his Republican conservative credentials to former Vice President Al Gore’s speech against President Bush’s transgressions against law and civil liberty, or why Barr is associating with liberals opposing the "Patriot" Act.

Barr is the former Republican member of the House of Representatives who led the impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Barr did so not out of political partisanship. As a former prosecutor, Barr regards lying under oath to be a serious offense. A president who commits that offense must be held accountable. Otherwise, presidents will go on to lie about greater things – such as war.

In opposing Bush’s transgressions, Barr is simply being consistent. For Barr, party loyalty takes a backseat to defense of the Constitution, the rule of law, and civil liberty. If the US had more leaders of Barr’s caliber, Bush and Cheney would already have been impeached.

York cannot understand this, because he thinks party loyalty and defense against terrorists are the controlling virtues. York scolds Barr for letting himself be used by partisan liberal organizations, but York takes his own partisanship for granted. It is only the other side that is partisan.

And how about the Wall Street Journal?

Consider the Review & Outlook of February 3, which declares Iran to be "an intolerable threat." Iran is portrayed as a threat because the country’s new president has used threatening rhetoric against Israel. But, of course, Bush and Israel are constantly using threatening rhetoric against Iran. To avoid being regarded as a wimp by his countrymen and by the Muslim world, the new Iranian president has to answer back. It doesn’t occur to the editorialists that Iranians might see the nuclear weapons of Israel and the US as intolerable threats.

Unlike Iran, Israel does have nuclear weapons. In view of this overpowering fact, it is difficult to see why Bush and Wall Street Journal editorialists think the US needs to protect Israel from Iran.

But what if Iran were to succeed in fooling the International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear inspectors and develop a bomb. Might not crazed mullahs drop it on Israel or give it to an al Qaeda terrorist, who might use it to blow up Washington DC or New York?

What would Iran gain aside from its own immediate destruction? If mutual assured destruction worked for decades against a powerfully armed communist state every bit as hostile to American "bourgeois capitalism" as Iran is to the "Great Satan," why would it fail against a state that is puny compared to Soviet standards?

Iran does not require nuclear weapons in order to do all the things the editorialists marshall in their case against Iran. Indeed, a US or Israeli attack on Iran is likely to precipitate the dire deeds that the editorialists fear: a Shia uprising in Iraq, disruption of oil supplies, closing of the Straits of Hormuz, and terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East.

Yes they are in favor of the misguided foreign policy of this administration which has already made us less safe and continues to do so.