Chris Hedges: The Treason of the Intellectuals
from truthdig:
The Treason of the Intellectuals
Posted on Mar 31, 2013
By Chris Hedges
The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among Bushs useful idiots argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the liberal hawkswho included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchensdid what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.
These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed the political cesspool. Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all. He called the typical anti-war protester a blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist. The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the warshutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing patriots and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own patriotism and realism about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.
The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be toldthe biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that arent safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.
Leslie Gelb, in the magazine Foreign Affairs, spelled it out after the invasion of Iraq.
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, he wrote. 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 commonoften wrongwisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less. ..............................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_treason_of_the_intellectuals_20130331/
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Dryvinwhileblind
(153 posts)One party, two divisions, and We ain't invited, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom?, yeah right. Eeeewessay! Eeeewessay!
SHRED
(28,136 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)formercia
(18,479 posts)Lies one tells to people on the Outside.
Lies one tells to people on the Inside.
Then, there are the lies we tell Ourselves.
Saying at CIA
steve2470
(37,457 posts)Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)Perhaps the establishment media will knock it down, but I get the feeling that several of the younger class are beginning to kick back at the diehard sucker-uppers and saying, "You did it wrong! It's time to change!"
How refreshing would that be?
We are all seeing the same type of brainwashed rhetoric in the current gun control debate. It is a shame !
Joe Bacon
(5,165 posts)One just is amazed to see Tweety lying through his teeth for the past week!
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)with drone warfare and oil pipelines and domestic spying and some other issues. The PTB have improved their technique - they have a "liberal" president enact all of these initiatives and thus get a lot of otherwise decent people on board, and thus squelch troublesome protests before they begin.
Big K/R for Hedges
bvar22
(39,909 posts)...the Privatization of our Public Schools,
and opening the Treasury Door to the For Profit Health Insurance Corporations.
And STILL, The Left (mainstream FDR Democrats) is viciously condemned for even questioning these activities.
You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)And the strange part is the president enacts policies that serve a bunch of people who hate him with every fiber of their being. The more Republican he becomes, the more Fox "News" and Hate Radio vilify. It seems he hates us (the left) as much as the right hates him. What a wasted opportunity.
Plucketeer
(12,882 posts)just what WOULD the Right do if Obama decided he wanted an (R) next to his name? Could the GOP refuse to accept him??? From where I sit, he could make the switch and seem more honest than he is now.
Marr
(20,317 posts)that don't service the agenda are uniformly excluded from all debate. Like the simple fact that Social Security contributes nothing to the deficit.
That one, simple fact would, in an honest dialogue, end the argument for Social Security cuts immediately. And so it's ignored-- particularly by the people on "our side".
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)"Environmentalists " who hold more stock in Jamie Dimon than Henry Thoreau.
They are at the core of dishonesty that has crippled our party. Publicly expressing sentiments that tug at the hearts of those who still care while privately dismantling the small victories of the past.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Hotler
(11,484 posts)Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)He's spent years on the front lines, and behind the scenes. He knows what he's talking about, and doesn't take any bullshit.
FairWinds
(1,717 posts)The unhappy conclusion I reached during the run-up to the war in Iraq is that most political scientists (I am one) are boot-licking careerists who would cheerfully stuff people into red hot ovens if they could get a grant or a consulting gig out of it.
Most of them are abject cowards.
KG
(28,753 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Freakin' crystal ball.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)...let's not forget to mention the material/applied scientists in academia. The ones who've sold their labs and their souls and their Bunsen burners. Why yes we must not forget to mention them for all they've done for us. As well as BIG PHARMA, BIG AGRI, from the Skunk Works to Oak Ridge, from Hanson to the Deep Horizon. And for all they are still doing for those who are driven to PROFIT no matter the COST to anyone else. Like all those engineers who developed FRACKING. Why they've also given us great gifts of security like Predator drones and TASERS, RFID chips and constant surveillance, as well as nuclear bombs and lasers. And topping it all off with food and water that's not fit for consumption. Nutritionally empty and destined to cause more disease than the world has ever know. Along with the cure(s) -- for a price.
- K&R
~Carl Sagan
Scientists should start mixing a little ethics in with their science.
Uncle Joe
(58,562 posts)Thanks for the thread, marmar.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Stargleamer
(1,992 posts)how does Hedges figure that? Because Franken did a USO tour? He wasn't a Senator when the war started, despite the wording Hedges uses (including Franken's name with the names of other U.S. Senators)
From Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell them":
"As of this writing no weapons of mass destruction have been found. What has been discovered is that the Bush administration made its case to the American public on the basis of selectively chosen evidence that they knew was shaky. Or worse. . . . Nevertheless as I write this, 34 percent of Americans believe that we have already found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I wish I were among this 34 percent. . ."
I don't think is consistent with being a "liberal hawk". Maybe Franken thought it wise to invade Afghanistan after 9/11 (I don't know), but I don't think that even if he did that that translates into being gung-ho about the Iraq War.
marmar
(77,127 posts)Stargleamer
(1,992 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)where they stand, and 2) they always have some good facet (though almost never proactive or activist) that can be used to still pretend they're "secretly liberal, but blocked by Congress/the Constitution"
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)WHEN CRABS ROAR
(3,813 posts)Nothing changes.
librechik
(30,678 posts)too expensive--and necessary! to keep the war wagon rolling.
tout_le_monde
(23 posts)Politics sure makes strange bedfellows. Certainly Senator Kerry should have known better...especially after the faked "Gulf of Tonkin" incident that enabled the U.S. to pre-emptively start a war with North Vietnam. Wonder if any of them EVER marched against the Iraq War at any time after they were for it and then were against it. Anybody got any photos of these fair weather politicians marching against the Iraq War?
Mr.Bill
(24,373 posts)and actually go to Viet Nam to figure out the war was wrong is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I knew it was wrong in 1965.
I was twelve.
just1voice
(1,362 posts)Truth!
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)No where.
Initech
(100,149 posts)They're the ones who are trained to actively vote against their best interests. Thanks to them we have tacos that taste like Doritos and indicators telling us how cold beer is. Thanks to them the Fox Opinion Channel is a credible news network. Thanks to them we have farting iPhone apps and live action movies made after children's toys. You get the idea.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)defacto7
(13,485 posts)there is so much hyperbole in it that I don't think it honestly portrays a reasonable sense of truth. There is so much conjecture as to why many of these people sided with the pro war position that it teeters on mind reading. It's not a position of reasonable trust to tell truths and state facts just turn around after grabbing the audience and make a bunch of personal commentary as if it also is factual. That is disingenuous and I don't fall for that kind of manipulative "Fox News'ish" commentary.
Manipulation of the audience does nothing for dealing with reality and propagating truth. Yes, as far as I know the people mentioned in the article did support a war which was a major mistake for them to make. To set up the reason they made those choices and to state that they are basically lying is in itself a fabrication of magical proportion.
If it is just Mr. Hedges opinion, his error is in mind reading but his sin is in manipulating opinion with it.
Stick to the facts.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)Is how the idiots on the right are debating the Global Climate Change "theories".
We must be able to make logical progressions and build hypotheses without perfect or complete knowledge.
The only leap I noticed was the connection Hedges made towards "motive" of these Liberal Hawks.
And postulating that they decided to support the war in order to preserve or enhance their political reputations is, IMHO, spot on.
May not be provable, but we are not children...
defacto7
(13,485 posts)But I still have a problem when someone compiles a long list of names then postulates that they "all" belong in one big box because of a single common choice. Although I actually agree with you, it still is important that people know the difference between the objective and the subjective. Strong points can be made without fudging a point for the effect. The item you mentioned of "motive" is enough for this person to question the writers motive as realistic or hyperbole and it muddies my opinion of the writer.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)These words will serve us, to remind us to redouble our efforts at truth, transparency, and working through the lies and agendas of our leaders.
ESPECIALLY those who purport to share our political philosophy.