[lbo-talk] Amy not-so-good

[Joseph Wanzala]

Today's DN! was really another instance in Amy Goodman's continuing role as 
a witting or unwitting propagandist for the establishment metanarrative of 
the 'war on terror'. I tend to think Amy has made a conscious decision to 
take an approach that focuses on the less critical issues that 'question' 
the Bush agenda without really getting into the deeper contradictions - that 
go to the heart of the very clear crisis that the American Republic and the 
world faces in terms of the criminalization of the state. There has also 
developed over the last 2-3 years a heirarchy of conspiratorial views' where 
some conspiratorial views are more equal than others. According to this 
heirarchy, it is permissible to talk about the conspiracy between the Bush 
and Bin Laden families, and the (alleged) audacious spiriting out of the bin 
Laden family from the US shortly after 9-11 when all planes were grounded 
and conclude that this just shows 'what good friends they were'. But not to 
wonder about whether this obstruction of justice was perhaps evidence of 
complicity between elements of the Saudi intelligence networks and the Bush 
controlled US intelligence networks and whehter this fact makes palpably 
clear the hypocirsy of the war on terror - the premise of which Amy Goodman 
fails to interrogate!

It is to me very sad to watch Amy's able mind be hobbled by her fealty to 
the Bush metanarrative. So here we have Amy making the statment today that 
'if you took a poll, most Americans would think that Sadaam was behind 9-11, 
when in fact (according to Amy) it was Saudi Arabia through the bin Laden 
connection. I think there may be Americans who believe this, indeed there 
have been polls (if you believe them) that show that Americans think Sadaam 
was involved in 9-11. But at the same time, anybody who has been readign any 
news reports on 9-11 clearly knows that the supposed Saudi connection has 
been made very clear - so it is not a matter of people believing one of the 
other, but a matter of the narrative being completely incoherent and easily 
manipulable depending on the imperatives of the US govt. For whatever 
reason, Amy has decided to accept the notion that Bin Laden and the Saudis 
and Al Qaeda were responsible for 9-11 and there is fundamental legitimacy 
in the war on terror. Thus, all her reportage simply complements or quibbles 
with this narrative but does not fudamentally challenge it.

Also, if you go to Amazon, you will discover that people who bought Carl 
Unger's book also bought books by Kevin Phillips, and Kerry/Clinton-boosters 
Joe Conason and David Corn. Which goes some way toward explaining the 
inexplicably silly statement made by either Juan Gonzalez or Carl Unger that 
Clinton had in fact fought the good fight against terrorism and his efforts 
were hampered by the impeachment proceedings and his valiant efforts to bomb 
Sudan and Afghanistan were 'unfairly ridiculed'. Amy and Juan themsleves, in 
their apparent zeal to boost both Bush's war on terror and boost the 
Democrats in 2004 seem to have forgotten that even they reported on the 
cynical foolishness of Clinton's bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan. To make 
matters worse, Juan Gonzalez even felt it necessary to point out how the 
attorney representing the Sudanese government against the US govt. was a 
Bush associate - as though this changes the fact that the attack by Clinton 
was cruel and cynical.

I think today's program was another defining moment in progressive discourse 
and a depressing one at that. I really hope that Amy Goodman and the staff 
at DN! and progressives in general can begin to take a more intellectually 
honest approach to this and related issues. We all owe to ourselves. It is 
significant that former naysayers or nothingsayers about US government 
complicity in 9-11, including Howard Zinn, Richard Falk have expressed their 
concern about the issue at least in their (respectively blurb and intro) to 
David Ray Griffin's superb new book

http://www.interlinkbooks.com/New_Pearl_Harbor.html

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