KLA takes charge

Seth Ackerman SAckerman at FAIR.org
Thu Jul 29 11:28:28 PDT 1999


Michael Pollack wrote:


> Hedges is an interesting case. He used to be a Times Bureau Chief, a
> position normally known for toeing the line. But he seems to have started
> writing about the KLA back when it was officially considered a bunch of
> maoist terrorists, and then left the Times before groupthink forced
> everyone else to reverse their views. He wrote a very good article in the
> January Foreign Affairs that had a few exclusive interviews in it (which
> Doug posted blind to his website). And now that he's both an expert on the
> subject and an ex-bureau chief, the Times seems willing to let him weigh
> in on it fairly regularly. (I suspect he might just have taken time off
> to write a book on the KLA). So he's left with a perspective that, while
> it doesn't stand out on LBO-talk, is almost unique among the mainstream
> American media. At it presents the peculiar picture of a person walking
> through the same city on the same day and interviewing the same KLA
> notables as everyone else, and producing diametrically opposite
> descriptions from those his colleagues having been writing in the same
> pages all week. An object lesson in the power of perspective.
>

Hedges also thinks Serbs are a race of men spawned from Satan's loins, with genocide flowing pure in their veins. He has also said that through their repression of the Kosovars, the Serbs have lost their right to any sovereignty over Kosovo. Which is a brand new approach to international relations, as far as I can see. Meanwhile, Stephen Kinzer, the Times' Turkey correspondent wrote in a recent analysis article that even autonomy for the Kurds is out of the question -- there's just too much water under the bridge. Also, since Turkey tends to bristle at advise from foreigners, there's "little" the West can do to resolve the Kurdish issue, other than offering Turkey "delicate encouragement" to do better by their southeastern population.


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