{"id":193823,"date":"2021-09-06T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=193823"},"modified":"2021-08-31T06:39:07","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T05:39:07","slug":"the-media-is-lambasting-biden-over-afghanistan-he-should-stand-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/09\/the-media-is-lambasting-biden-over-afghanistan-he-should-stand-firm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Media Is Lambasting Biden over Afghanistan. He Should Stand Firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president was right to withdraw the US from Afghanistan \u2013 and he\u2019s being skewered for it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Joe Biden delivers remarks about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House.
Photograph: Jonathan Ernst\/Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

29 Aug 2021 – <\/em>W<\/span><\/span>hen Joe Biden, a conventional politician if there ever was one, said he was concluding the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan<\/a> this month, in line with plans set in motion by the Trump administration, the response from the mainstream press was hostile. Following the Taliban takeover of the country, the tenor has only grown more hyperbolic.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the Trump years, publications like the New York Times and Washington Post presented themselves as the last defenses of freedom against creeping authoritarianism. The latter adopted a new slogan<\/a>, \u201cDemocracy dies in darkness\u201d, and spent millions on a Super Bowl ad featuring Tom Hanks extolling the importance of journalism as a profession.<\/p>\n

But for all this talk of \u201cdefending freedom\u201d, the mainstream media has a history of reflexively defending militarism, foreign interventions and occupations. Biden \u2013 who dared fulfil a campaign promise and end America\u2019s longest war \u2013 is learning this the hard way.<\/p>\n

As Eric Levitz recounts<\/a> in New York Magazine, the media has created a public backlash against Biden, with outlets like the Times calling the withdrawal a humiliating fiasco. For the New York Times Editorial Board<\/a>, the two-decade occupation of Afghanistan is described as a \u201cnation-building project\u201d that reflected \u201cthe enduring American faith in the values of freedom and democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: I Served with NATO in Afghanistan \u2013 It Was a Bloated Mess<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Key to the media narrative is the echoing of \u201cexperts\u201d on Afghanistan like former ambassador Ryan C Crocker, who wishes in another Times op-ed<\/a> that instead of bolting after a couple of decades, US troops might have remained in Afghanistan for more than a half-century, as we\u2019ve done on the Korean peninsula. Crocker regrets that \u201cMr Biden\u2019s decision to withdraw all US forces destroyed an affordable status quo that could have lasted indefinitely at a minimum cost in blood and treasure\u201d.<\/p>\n

But as the writer Jeet Heer points out<\/a>, the status quo was far from \u201caffordable\u201d for ordinary Afghans. The tragic figure of more than 2,000 dead US troops pales in comparison to the more than 200,000 Afghans killed<\/a> since 2001. Indeed, prolonged civil war has put this year on pace to be the bloodiest for civilians as a failed US client state has overseen plummeting social indicators, widespread corruption and a total breakdown in public safety.<\/p>\n

The media had ignored the mounting chaos for years, only to laser-focus on it as a means to criticize Biden. They\u2019ve ignored their own role in cheerleading a misguided \u201cWar on Terror\u201d and pinned the blame for two decades of imperial hubris on the president who finally made good on promises to leave the country against the wishes of even some in his own party<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s underlying much of the approach is a mainstream media fidelity to \u201cexpert\u201d consensus. Many who presented themselves as fierce truth-tellers in the face of Trump hold the opinions of former intelligence and military officials in higher regard than that of a president democratically elected by 81.3 million people and pursuing a policy supported by 70% of Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not only are corporate media pundits and talking heads wrong to advocate staying in Afghanistan, they\u2019ve been wrong about generations of conflicts that ordinary people have opposed. Contrary to the popular imagination, opposition to wars from Vietnam to Iraq were spearheaded by workers<\/a>, not the rich and the professional classes that serve them. It\u2019s this general aversion to costly overseas conflict that the president should confidently embrace.<\/p>\n

Biden has never been a very good populist. For all his \u201cAmtrak Joe\u201d pretenses, he\u2019s a creature of the Beltway, the ultimate establishment politician. It\u2019s no surprise that his administration appears paralyzed in the face of criticism from its erstwhile elite allies. But unless he manages to push back against the narratives mounting against his administration, he\u2019ll risk undermining his popular domestic agenda<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden did something good \u2013 and the media want to kill him for it. He should embrace their scorn and defend his actions to the American people.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of <\/em>Jacobin magazine<\/a> and a <\/em>Guardian US columnist. He is the author of <\/em>The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 Aug 2021 – The president was right to withdraw the US from Afghanistan \u2013 and he\u2019s being skewered for it. Joe Biden did something good \u2013 and the media want to kill him for it. He should embrace their scorn and defend his actions to the American people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":193824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[93,2197,2314,1855,70,1365,481],"class_list":["post-193823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-afghanistan","tag-biden","tag-corporate-media","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-usa","tag-war-journalism","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}