Presswatch / Boycott the Times
Ledeen, Michael
BOYCOTT THE TIMES by Michael Ledeen It is time to organize the great 1981 national boycott of the New York Times. Now that Richard Burt has left, one can expect to find an uninterrupted flow...
...needs to have happen now...
...There are other problems as well: Should the American government attempt to constrain the development of Russian energy programs, or should we encourage them...
...Michael Ledeen is Executive Editor of the Washington Quarterly...
...I saw one quiet AP story on December 4 in the Washington Star, reporting Seaga's speech to a distinguished American audience...
...That clause should be there, because even those few citizens who know what the Marshall Plan was, forget that the Russian campaign against Western Europe, Greece, and Iran was the catalyst for the program...
...To begin with, the notion of the Italian Communist Party "voting" does some violence to the English language, but to imagine that over a million people would vote "unanimously" is absurd...
...Lest you think that this sort of rhetoric is limited to such "progressive" publications as the Times, I was surprised to see Karen Elliott House, one of our best correspondents, spreading high-level disinformation in the Wall StreetJournal...
...Now that Richard Burt has left, one can expect to find an uninterrupted flow of the sort of ideological frenzy that we read on Christmas Eve...
...This move would make it easier for the Italian government to support military buildups in Europe in response to any Soviet invasion of Poland...
...The point of all this, is that we need a presidential decision about the basic question, rather than a patchwork of ad hoc decisions, case by case...
...Is it the strategic balance...
...The Boston Globe editorialists think we should help: If we interfere with Soviet energy development, the Globe said on December 10, it "can only . . . help drive up the world price of oil, which neither Europe nor the U.S...
...This sort of personalization of serious problems ill serves us...
...And I like to think that the demon in charge of typos punished the Globe with this memorable last line: "And that is something Roland Reagan might want to keep in mind...
...And they failed to add that the Marshall Plan was offered in response to mounting Russian pressure on American friends...
...It's a peculiar "news story": "Does the Soviet Union's doctrine contemplate fighting, and winning, a limited nuclear war, as some Western specialists contend...
...the closest thing to it is a letter from Secretary-General Berlinguer to the heads of other Communist parties, warning that a Russian invasion of Poland might have dire consequences...
...Brzezinski...
...Kissinger believed that this should be part of an overall policy of "linkage," by which he meant that we should be willing to sell certain items to the Kremlin if, and only if, the Russians' international behavior is tolerable...
...A Soviet military expert who consented to be interviewed on the subject said Moscow's doctrine did not...
...What is the overall context of the editorial...
...How realistic is it to believe linkage can be achieved...
...One additional point: This story-that the Italian Communists would break with Moscow if there were an invasion of Poland-was circulating around Washington for about ten days before it was-picked up...
...And has Jo Thomas never heard of the rationing in Cuba...
...Hodding Carter III...
...As a result, the Russians were able to continue to trade with us even though their imperialistic actions became steadily more menacing...
...New York Times Department: The Times, in its endless campaign to persuade its readers of benign Rus- sian intentions, dropped a little box onto page 27 on the 7th of December...
...Perhaps the remaining weekly slot will be given to Andrew Young...
...The 1,700 Cuban delegates to the congress looked well fed, sometimes overfed...
...But Karen House is a good reporter, so I called several leading Italian Communists to find out what had happened...
...Not at all...
...It means that the Associated Press editorswho know their business-realize that the American public no longer knows what the Marshall Plan was...
...Surely there is some lonely Stalinist in the mountains of northern Italy who is in favor of the invasion of Poland...
...after all, more than 60 percent of Italian Communists still approve the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...You know what that means...
...Carter had a different concept: We should trade unless there is a clear reason not to...
...Is that what drove the tens of thousands of refugees out earlier last year...
...What the Times did not say was that Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard University had written in to advise the Times editorial board that Ogarkov himself, in the latest edition of the Russian Military Encyclopedia, had advocated a war-winning nuclear doctrine...
...Now let's go back to the Globe...
...But that bit about the Cuban peasants becoming rich is too much for me...
...The Caribbean: With all the attention directed at the Caribbean revolutionaries, you'd have thought there would have been more interest in the drubbing delivered by the Jamaican people to their own revolutionary regime under the leadership of Michael Manley...
...By such actions the Italian Communists acquire a certain legitimacy without actually doing anything at all...
...it's the NSCState conflict...
...Why is theJournal doing this...
...All the news that's fit to print, or all the news we want to print...
...Reagan says he wants to go back to linkage, but whereas six or seven years ago there was a predominant strategic advantage in our favor, today the balance has shifted in favor of the Russians...
...Boycott the Times...
...The foreign delegates, especially those from Western countries, were far better dressed, but they were often thin, sometimes frail, and they had about them the passionate fervor that in Cuba, 21 years after the revolution, sometimes seems a bit mechanical...
...Apparently it's easier to generate passion for aid to one's enemies...
...So far as they know, there has been no such "vote...
...Moreover, according to the Globe strategists, "there is little point in trying to penalize the Soviet Union in ways that penalize ourselves even more heavily in the long run...
...This, of course, is back-asswards...
...Stories like this seem to have an independent life, floating around the media universe until someone finally gives them precise form...
...And ifJo Thomas hasn't, where are the editors...
...But there has been no vote, and certainly no unanimous vote (aside from the usual, empty sense of the verb in its Communist context: The leader spoke, and the comrades saluted...
...And the last paragraph is one of the most important to appear in the American press in a long time: "The Marshall Plan was an American financed project that led to the recovery of shattered Western European economies after World War II...
...Technology Transfer Department: There are few problems more complicated than that of selling-or giving -high technology to the Russians...
...Signed by Jo Thomas, the story described a meeting in Havana involving Guatemalan guerrillas.: They had come to Havana to represent a coalition of four armed Guatemalan guerrilla groups at the second Cuban Communist Party congress, an event that drew hundreds of foreign delegates and turned into a sort of Woodstock for revolutionaries, a festival of affection that revolved not around music but around the person of Fidel Castro, who, revolution well in hand, dominated the meeting .. If Cuba is now having to tax its peasants because they are threatening to beconie rich, if Cuba is now having to worry about producing more color televisions and fretting over how to get lazy employees to work, it is still a nation where the portraits ofJosd Marti and Chi Guevara hang on every wall and the memory of its aging revolution generates respect...
...One understands that the New York Times likes correspondents who hail the revolution, and even show enough independence to criticize the Cuban revolutionaries for overeating...
...But why, of all things, the Wall Street Journal...
...The Russian expert is a retired general named Milshtein, and in a long interview published in September he said that the latest Soviet doctrine, as reflected in the thoughts of a certain Ogarkov, was not in keeping with the earlier statements of General Sokolov, who had called for a war-winning nuclear strategy...
...The question of Russian energy policies...
...On the other hand, if we help the Soviets achieve a higher degree of energy independence, might that not encourage them to meddle in the Persian Gulf, which can only cause us potentially fatal problems...
...Oh, yes: Did you know that the Wall Street Journal will soon offer space to Mr...
...But whereas lots of outspoken congresspersons and editorialists have implored the administration to send money to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, not much thought has been given to support for the new government in Jamaica, even though the new prime minister, Edward Seaga, has called for a new "Marshall Plan" in the Caribbean in support of pro-Western governments...
...That the reverse occurs is one further sign of the confusion characteristic of our political culture...
...On December 11, House wrote: "Already, Italy's Communist Party has voted unanimously to break relations with the Soviet Union's Communist Party if Russian troops invade Poland...
...The former once a month, the latter twice a month...
...Presumably, to show how broad-minded they are, and to give their editorial pages some "balance...
...Alexander Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn) and Mr...
...It's one of the curiosities of American journalism that as daily journalism becomes more politicized, the op-ed pages strain for 'balance...
...We want balanced, accurate reportage, and strong, politicized editorial comment...
...For the Globe editorial- ists, a recent decision to withhold some high-technology items from the Russians testifies to the nincompoopery of Mr...
...Quite a performance, even from the newspaper that gave us Herbert Matthews and lionized Fidel in the first place...
Vol. 14 • February 1981 • No. 2
