Annals
Of Mendacious Punditry:
When The Shill Enables The Kill
By Jason Miller
08 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Jonah Goldberg is the living,
breathing embodiment of virtually all that is pernicious in the malignant
socioeconomic and political structures collectively known as the American
Empire. Yet tragically, this scheming sycophant to the cynical, privileged
criminals of the US plutocracy reaches countless millions through myriad
corporate media conduits as he weaves his sophistic arguments supporting
nearly every morally repulsive aspect of United States foreign policy.
Rising to his position amongst
the US mainstream punditry elite through vigorous and shameless self-promotion
based on his mother’s involvement in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal,
young Jonah quickly learned our culture’s ferocious appetite for
the sordid, the lurid, and all that validates our collective pathological
narcissism euphemistically called the American Dream. To this day, he
skillfully crafts malevolent agitprop to convince and reassure us here
in the United States that it is our unconditional right to murder, exploit,
invade, and oppress as we preserve and advance the “American Way.”
To get a sense of the extent
of his reach and his penchant for promoting himself, take a gander at
the bio sketch he penned for himself. (This appears at National Review
Online):
“Jonah Goldberg is
editor-at-large of National Review Online for which he writes his thrice-weekly
column “The Goldberg File” and a contributing editor to
National Review. Goldberg also writes a nationally syndicated column
distributed by Tribune Media Services, which appears often such newspapers
as the Kansas City Star, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Times,
the Orlando Sentinel, San Francisco Chronicle, the Manchester Union
Leader, and others. He also writes a regular media criticism column
for The American Enterprise magazine. Mr. Goldberg was a contributing
editor and columnist for the now-defunct Brill’s Content.
Mr. Goldberg is also a CNN
contributor and regular panelist on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.
He is an occasional guest-host on Crossfire and has appeared on numerous
television and radio programs.
Since Mr. Goldberg became
editor of National Review Online, it rapidly become one of the dominant
players in web journalism, earning high praise from The Columbia Journalism
Review, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The
Christian Science Monitor. The New York Press concluded that National
Review Online is “by far the best political online operation going
today.”
Jonah Goldberg is a former
television producer who has credits in a wide range of productions.
He was the senior producer of Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, the award-winning
public-affairs program and he has written and produced two PBS documentaries.
Prior to his work in television Mr. Goldberg was a researcher at the
American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. An award-winning journalist,
his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Worth, the Wall Street Journal,
Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard,
the New York Post, Reason, The Women’s Quarterly, The New Criterion,
Food and Wine, The Street.com, and Slate.”
It is a tragic indictment
of our so-called “Fourth Estate” that an enabler of egregious
war crimes enjoys such a massive megaphone through which to shout his
virulent lies.
Consider this assessment
of Goldberg by Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, a
preeminent expert on the Middle East:
“Extremist rightwing
hawks like Jonah Goldberg used their privileged position as pundits
to terrify the US public that Iraq was a threat to the US. He repeatedly
said in the buildup to the war that Iraq was a menace to the US, and
he repeatedly brought up North Korea’s nuclear weapons as a reason
for a preemptive attack on Iraq.
Iraq never has had nuclear
weapons. Iraq never has been as close as two decades from having nuclear
weapons. Iraq dismantled all vestiges of its rudimentary and exploratory
nuclear weapons research in 1991. Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons
program in 1992, 1993 and all the way until 2002, when Jonah Goldberg
assured us Americans that we absolutely had to invade Iraq to stop it
from imminently becoming a nuclear power just like North Korea….
Jonah Goldberg is a fearmonger,
a warmonger, and a demagogue. And besides, he was just plain wrong about
one of the more important foreign policy issues to face the United States
in the past half-century. It is shameful that he dares show his face
in public, much less continuing to pontificate about his profound knowledge
of just what Iraq is like and what needs to be done about Iraq and the
significance of events in Iraq.”(1)
*Now that we have some background
on Jonah, let’s subject some of his writings to critical scrutiny:
On 12/15/06, Goldberg opined
in “Iraq Needs a Pinochet”:
“I think all intelligent,
patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S.
could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would
be even better than an Iraqi Castro…
Now consider Chile. Gen.
Pinochet seized a country coming apart at the seams. He too clamped
down on civil liberties and the press. He too dispatched souls. Chile’s
official commission investigating his dictatorship found that Pinochet
had 3,197 bodies in his column; 87 percent of them died in the two-week
mini-civil war that attended his coup. Many more were tortured or forced
to flee the country.
But on the plus side, Pinochet’s
abuses helped create a civil society. Once the initial bloodshed subsided,
Chile was no prison. Pinochet built up democratic institutions and infrastructure.
And by implementing free-market reforms, he lifted the Chilean people
out of poverty. In 1988, he held a referendum and stepped down when
the people voted him out. Yes, he feathered his nest from the treasury
and took measures to protect himself from his enemies. His list of sins
— both venal and moral — is long. But today Chile is a thriving,
healthy democracy. Its economy is the envy of Latin America, and its
literacy and infant mortality rates are impressive.”
Here Mr. Goldberg crests
the summit of the Everest of American hubris. Pinochet was the United
States’ instrument to advance the “noble” agenda of
free market ideology. Under the guidance of Henry Kissinger (an unindicted
war criminal), the CIA and ITT (a major US corporation with significant
business interests in Chile) carefully orchestrated the coup (including
the assasination of the popularly elected leftist, Salvador Allende)
which brought Augusto Pinochet to power.
Interesting that Jonah boasts
that Pinochet “built up democratic institutions” when Augusto
himself once quipped, “Democracy is the breeding ground of communism.”
Since communism is anathema
to Goldberg and his ilk, Jonah would need to exhaust himself with mental
gymnastics to overcome the gross inconsistency between Pinochet’s
alleged accomplishments on behalf of democracy and Augusto’s belief
that democracy bred communism.
Even if our master prevaricator
managed to overcome such a hurdle, how could he hope to resolve the
glaring contradictions created by attributing the proliferation of “democracy”
to an autocrat installed by the CIA through assassinating a leader elected
by the people of a sovereign nation?
To justify and rationalize
the perpetual imperialism necessary to satisfy capitalism’s insatiable
demand for new markets, cheaper labor, and inexpensive raw materials,
the United States needs adept professional liars like Jonah. His apologia
for Pinochet, a tyrant who had been charged with over 300 crimes (including
egregious human rights abuses and massive embezzlement) before he died
in 2006, demonstrates Goldberg’s unswerving allegiance to the
cause of the moneyed elite.
Penned in October of 2001,
Mr. Goldberg’s “Time to Return to Colonialism?” offers
a particularly revealing look at the nature of his character and his
agenda:
“SUDDENLY, serious
people are rethinking an old idea that’s time has come again:
colonialism.
For years, colonialism has
been discredited. It was considered racist on the left to point out
that many people lived better and more productive lives under, say,
British rule than they have without it (Belgian rule is another story)….
…. But Americans may
be willing to listen to a serious argument for American Empire. And
now we have it. Max Boot, the features editor of The Wall Street Journal,
has written a cogent and measured essay in the Oct. 15 issue of The
Weekly Standard explaining that our problems abroad don’t stem
from too much American “imperialism,” but too little.
Boot runs through the litany
of American foreign policy failures in the last decade and, uniformly,
he finds our mistakes stemmed not from an arrogance of power, but from
a reluctance to use it.”
Who are these “serious
people” who are “rethinking an old idea that’s time
has come again?” They are obviously seriously deranged reactionaries
if they truly desire a return to colonialism. Jonah’s attempt
to repackage and revitalize Kipling’s “White Man’s
burden” is the height of arrogance and reeks of racism and totalitarianism.
Sorry Jonah, but the incredibly
sorry state of affairs in much of post-colonial Africa, the murder of
600,000 Filipinos, the slaughter of 3 million Vietnamese, and the annihilation
of 600,000 plus Iraqis are but a handful of many poignant examples which
demonstrate the abject immorality of colonialism and reveal the fact
that ultimately, human beings are willing to kill and die before sacrificing
their sovereignty to a brutal oppressor.
Jonah, most of us are now
living in the Twenty First Century. Join us.
Goldberg delivered a gem
in December of 2006 when he sang the praises of a malefactor of monumental
proportions in “Jerry Ford’s Magic”:
“And now we have dear,
sweet Jerry Ford. Everybody, it seems, loves Ford. Ted Kennedy even
gave him a Profile in Courage Award a few years ago. But there’s
an interesting difference. Ford was Tito Puente-ized early. His decision
to pardon Richard Nixon — the courageous act for which he later
got his Profile award — elicited enormous criticism and, some
argue, cost him the election in 1976. But he quickly rebounded and was
never hated the way Reagan, Goldwater or Nixon were…
….But Ford’s
legacy is more important than the maneuvering of ideological partisans.
Politics is about moments. The American people in 1974 yearned for a
respite from the ideological clamor of the previous decade. Ford, by
the sheer force of his own character, turned the Oval Office into the
calm eye of a storm the American people had grown all too weary of.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said
Ford was the most decent man in politics he’d ever met. Ford’s
‘luminous affability,’ in the words of the National Review,
‘enabled him to unite the country instantly, magically, in a way
that would have been impossible for the (men) who had been lining up
for the job. … This accidental President was exactly — for
the moment — the right man.’
Considering the ideological
clamor of the current moment, it’s tempting to ask who the right
man, or woman, today might be.”
“Dear, sweet Jerry
Ford” pardoned a man who ordered secret, illegal bombing campaigns
in Cambodia that liquidated 600,000 human beings. How about we give
him a posthumous “Profile in Cowardly Participation in Mass Murder
Award”?
Let’s not forget that
Ford and Kissinger also green-lighted and supported Suharto’s
invasion of East Timor, which resulted in the slaughter of 200,000 innocent
people.
Jonah reveals his true agenda
behind his sickening hosannas for Ford, an abject war criminal, when
he asserts that “it’s tempting to ask who the right man,
or woman might be” to give us a “respite” from the
“ideological clamor of the current moment.” Who indeed,
Mr. Goldberg, will rise up to provide cover for the current crop of
malefactors in DC and prevent a mass revolt against your precious establishment,
which has been rotten to its very core for years?
Jonah scribbled, “What
Protestors Don’t Get: Globalization=More Democracy,” in
February, 2002:
“For example, if multinational
corporations threaten democracy, how come the number of democracies
grew simultaneously with the rise of the multinational corporation?
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact date for when the “multinational
corporation” or “globalization” began, but over the
last 30 years we’ve been told that democracy is increasingly threatened
by these diabolical forces. The funny thing is, the number of democracies
has been rising, with occasional fluctuations, pretty much nonstop.”
Obviously Mr. Goldberg has
a unique vision of what democracy entails. Where are these democracies
about which he raves? Would Chile under the Pinochet regime have qualified
as one? We don’t even have a democracy in the United States. In
fact, there is very little left of the constitutional republic which
existed before the evisceration of our Constitution.
Corporations, spawned by
a rapacious economic system driven by selfishness and greed, are structured
as tyrannies. Given the fact that oligarchic corporations wield such
immense power in the United States, and throughout the world, it is
lunacy to assert that “the number of democracies has been rising”
in conjunction with the proliferation of corporate influence. Unfortunately
for Jonah, a whole comprised of totalitarian parts cannot be a democracy.
Unless of course one subscribes to Goldberg’s nonsense and defines
a plutocratic imperial power and its neo-colonies as democracies.
In August of 2001, Jonah
graced us with “Americans Wouldn’t Tolerate Terrorism at
Home”:
“In fact, it’s
worse than that because Israel never intends to kill innocents. When
terrorists kill Israeli civilians, Israelis attack terrorist strongholds,
military targets and bomb-making infrastructures.
Sometimes, they’ve
even used rubber bullets. But even when the “payback” is
unambiguously severe, it is always delivered to grown-up, declared combatants.
Hence, when Palestinian innocents die it is virtually always an unfortunate
byproduct of Israeli action. When Palestinians kill, innocents are the
target.”
The more one reads his work,
the more apparent it becomes that Goldberg’s objective is to vindicate
as many ruthless oppressors as his seemingly infinite capacity to lie
will allow.
According to information
updated on May 31, 2007 at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/, since September
of 2000 Israel has killed 934 Palestinian children while Palestinians
have killed 118 Israeli children. A total of 4,098 Palestinians and
1,021 Israelis have died in the conflict over the last seven years.
Over 31,000 Palestinians have suffered injuries; only 7,600 Israelis
have been wounded. The United States subsidizes Israel to the tune of
over $7 million per day while giving the Palestinians nothing. Israel
has been targeted by 65 UN resolutions (each of which, being the rogue
state that it is, it has ignored). The Palestinians have not been censured
by the UN once. Israel is holding over 10,000 Palestinian political
prisoners and the Palestinians hold one Israeli captive. While Israel
has demolished over 4,000 Palestinian homes, the Palestinians have razed
zero Israeli houses.
“…Israel never
intends to kill innocents.” Do you think the family members of
those innocents that Israel has killed at a 4:1 ratio give a dam about
the intent of the IDF, Jonah?
Israelis pack a wallop with
those “rubber bullets,” don’t they, Mr. Goldberg?
What Goldberg fails to reveal
in his commentary is that the “Israeli action” which causes
innocent Palestinians to die as an “unfortunate byproduct”
represents the implementation of the ultimate Zionist objective, which
is to eradicate Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank through oppression,
economic strangulation, and, when they can get away with it, direct
military action.
As for the wounded and dead
Israeli civilians, they are the tragic victims of retail terror carried
out in response to the wholesale terror waged by their government and
that of the United States.
“Wanted: An Iranian
Saddam” from January of 2006 offers quite an impressive display
of mental contortions and truth distortions, even for one as ethically
limber as Jonah Goldberg:
“Conventional wisdom
holds that there are really only two options for dealing with Iran:
military strikes (by us or Israel) or the usual bundle of conferences,
ineffective sanctions and windy UN speeches that lead to nothing….
But there is a third option
that, alas, has become less and less likely in recent years: regime
change from within. Pro-democracy — or at least anti-mullah —
sentiment has been building in Iran for over a decade. In recent years
there have been huge protests against the regime. Soccer stadiums full
of Iranians have chanted “USA! USA!” In 2004, polls of various
sorts indicated that anti-regime attitudes were held by up to nine out
of 10 Iranians.
Iranians are a proud, nationalistic
people and would probably rally around their government — or any
government — were it threatened from without. That’s one
reason Ahmadinejad has been rattling his sabers so much lately: It’s
an attempt to bolster his unpopular regime.
A coup by sophisticated and
serious members of the military would be great news. Even better would
be a popular uprising. And best of all would be a combination of the
two.
An Iran with an old-style
military dictatorship charged with defending democratic institutions
would be an enormous, epochal victory for the West and for the Middle
East. That would go a long way toward guaranteeing success in Iraq and
would neutralize the threat of the Iran’s nuclear ambitions, even
if they decided to pursue a bomb. After all, the argument about nuclear
weapons is no different than the argument about guns. The threat is
from the people who have them, not from the weapons themselves. Lots
of countries have nukes; we only need to worry about the ones run by
whack jobs.”
Writing from an ahistorical
perspective so typical of the corporate media in the US, as Jonah laments
that the “third option” of “regime change” is
becoming “less likely,” he neglects to remind readers that
the United States has been there and done that in Iran. In 1953 the
CIA installed the Shah to replace Iran’s prime minister, Mohammed
Mossadegh. (Mossadegh, elected by the people to serve in parliament
and by parliament to become prime minister, had exhibited the audacity
to nationalize the oil industry to prevent US ally, Great Britain, from
reaping nearly all the profits from Iran’s petroleum.)
By 1976, the Shah’s
rule had evolved into such a brutal tyranny that Amnesty International
declared that Iran had, “the highest rate of death penalties in
the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture
which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in
human rights than Iran.”
It was the blatant US violation
of Iranian sovereignty that catalyzed the 1979 revolution, hostage crisis,
and subsequent formation of an Islamic government, a government which
remains understandably hostile to Western intervention in its affairs.
“Regime change” worked so well the first time. Why not try
again, eh Jonah?
“An Iran with an old-style
military dictatorship charged with defending democratic institutions
would be an enormous, epochal victory for the West and for the Middle
East.” Wow! Jonah veered way outside the parameters of rational
thought with that bizarre conclusion. “Old style military dictatorships”
and “democratic institutions” are components of antithetical
political structures. His column on Pinochet and this piece seem to
indicate that Mr. Goldberg suffers from the delusion that the two can
somehow coexist. Or perhaps he simply regards the intellect of his readers
with such contempt that he thinks they will swallow his nonsense.
As for his assertion that,
“lots of countries have nukes; we only need to worry about the
ones run by whack jobs,” George Bush has the largest nuclear arsenal
on the planet at his disposal. If Jonah’s statement is true, we
have tremendous cause for concern.
As nauseatingly opportunistic
as his mother, Lucianne Goldberg, a woman who spied on George McGovern
for Nixon in the 1972 presidential campaign and advised Linda Tripp
to tape her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, Jonah has few peers
in the punditocracy who can match his mendaciousness or the degree to
which he has prostituted himself.
May his readers, listeners
and viewers recognize that he is nothing more than a shill for exploitative
imperialists who impose their will on the world through acts of economic
extortion and wholesale terror.
Further, let us hope that
one day he reaps the bitter harvest of the noxious seeds he so eagerly
sows.
Notes:
* As Jonah has so proudly
informed us, his agitprop appears in numerous media outlets, but the
source for each of the excerpts in this analysis was the online version
of the Jewish World Review.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jonah_Goldberg
Jason Miller
is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually
and spiritually. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate
editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/)
and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at [email protected]
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