Presswatch/Bums
Ledeen, Michael
ican's pride and the media elite's disdain may betray an endemic sourness of spirit among those who try to set the nation's tastes but do not succeed. Not far below the surface, however, can be...
...But after the weekend's windup, he more precisely pinpointed the source of his disaffection...
...And the results have been disastrous...
...Predictably, growth in productivity has sharply declined, and the consequences have been painful...
...And of course the coverage of inter-national terrorism remains notable as much for what is not covered as for what is...
...Those hundreds of people who died from Libyan-sponsored bombs—as well as those hit by ours—weren't buried because of anxiety attacks...
...She compared Liberty Weekend with the Bicentennial celebration of 1976, when Americans were in a chastened mood over Vietnam and Watergate ("We were grateful rather than triumphant"), and found it wanting...
...Not far below the surface, however, can be found political motivations...
...One of the hostages on the BA plane was immediately killed...
...This was published within two days of implementing the strategy, thus rendering it useless...
...PRESSWATCH As promised last month, here are just a few of the cases in which the media have helped terrorism: •In 1974, terrorists seized a court-house in Washington, D.C...
...Schmid and diGraaf show, for example, how media coverage of one event serves as an inspiration for others (hijackers of airplanes who asked for parachutes became a near-epidemic at one point, clearly because of the publicity given to the first such cases), how journalists encourage terrorists, and so forth...
...As luck would have it, they kept the hostages in a room that had a two-way mirror in it, permitting the police to see what was going on...
...Whether setting aside a portion of the harvest as "seed corn" for the next year's crop, laying-in stores of food for winter, or saving for a home, college, old age, or the unexpected emergency—the wisdom of saving was as deeply ingrained in the American spirit as the work ethic...
...There we learn that a very large body of evidence, drawn from confessions, police investigations and captured documents (not to mention captured weapons), leaves little doubt about the Soviet Union's active support to organizations which practice terrorism as a matter of policy...
...This was immediately broad-cast;- the terrorists heard it and evaded the police trap...
...Horrock and O'Shea continued: Although they couldn't have known it, these ordinary Americans . . . played a key role in setting the Reagan administration's policy on terrorism—a policy that last month sent American aircraft to bomb Libya, a sovereign nation . . . that was not formally at war with the United States...
...Perhaps the weekend was conceived as more of a farewell to liberty than a celebration...
...This was announced by the German Press Agency, which even went so far as to report the time and place that the ransom was supposed to be paid...
...the countries that engage in terrorism don't want to be openly identified with it, but they do want the results that they gain from it...
...Together these characteristics fueled the unprecedented economic growth of this country...
...Four days later Schleyer was dead...
...After the relighting ceremony, Shales wrote of some people—himself obviously included--!'who like to think America is `about' more than sales figures, merchandising brainstorms and the blowing of one's horn...
...For a series of 36 of these award-winning essays, send $10.00 to Alternatives, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242...
...Meanwhile, it is discouraging to see that an impressive number of American journalists consider acts by our government to strike back against terrorists as somehow immoral...
...But now we are faced with the very real possibility that our children will actually have to accept a lower standard of living than we have had...
...In response to the terrorists' demands that their comrades in other countries be freed, an aircraft—which was supposedly carrying the released terrorists—landed in Cairo...
...I didn't, here in the nation's capital...
...The terrorists, who had taken the plane to Algiers and had given the authorities until 7 a.m...
...Noting a "high profile" over the weekend for Ronald Reagan,his wife, and his Cabinet, Shales said "this is hardly an administration that is likely to go down as one of the most liberty-loving in history...
...It's the transformation of America between the start of the Jimmy Carter years and the six years of Ronald Reagan...
...Did you notice that when the President went public with the information that we had intercepted telephone conversations between Tripoliand East Berlin that showed the Libyans' role in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, hardly anyone stopped to ask what the Soviet and East German role had been...
...Next month: the silly season is upon us...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986 29 likely blissfully unaware—showed that such a policy would be popular...
...Journalists love to travel and cover summits...
...in charge," and the "vulgar pageant" of the new-citizen swearing-in...
...As a bonus, we will also send you a free subscription to our monthly journal Imprimis...
...One could continue this list at far greater length...
...Nowhere in the three-part series was American policy dealt with seriously...
...But wait—just two paragraphs later comes the journalists' protective shield (the "maybe we didn't really mean it" gambit): Whether this poll directed President Reagan in his actions or simply reassured him may never be known, but four months later he would order an attack remarkably along the lines of what the survey said the people wanted...
...A San Francisco radio station monitored police frequencies during the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and learned of an impending arrest of three terrorists...
...Someone once remarked that the degree to which a society saves is a measure of its hope in the future...
...The 7i-ibune's authors (Nicholas Horrock and James O'Shea) began with an ac-count of a public opinion poll taken at the request of the Holloway Commission on terrorism in December 1985 to determine the attitudes of the American public on the matter...
...One might have hoped that Horrock and O'Shea would point out that terrorism is adopted by countries like Libya precisely because it is an unconventional, low-intensity form of warfare...
...It has been estimated that this de-cline meant S 125 billion in lost production in the 1970's and the loss of more than two million American jobs...
...We have come to take such progress for granted...
...Then the Post, instead of simply acknowledging Broder's error (by saying, "Novak is in fact a registered Democrat"), throws doubt on Novak's veracity ("he calls himself...
...It wasn't a war of nerves, fellows...
...The shortage of investment capital has severely retarded the modernization of our industries...
...So far as I know, the only time this matter was raised with the seriousness it deserves was on "This Week with David Brinkley" the Sunday morning after the raid, when former National Security Adviser Brzezinski stressed that it was in-conceivable that the East Germans had cooperated with Qaddafi without Soviet approval...
...In truth, the media assault had lots more to do with Ronald Reagan than with Elvis Presley lookalikes...
...But that's not really what makes my good friend Mary angry...
...In the September 19, 1977 edition of Stern magazine in Germany, it was revealed that the government team negotiating with the Baader-Meinhof Gang for the release of hostage Hans Martin Schleyer, had no intention of releasing the prisoners that the German terrorists were demanding in return for Schleyer...
...And for those interested in the phenomenon, I highly recommend a little-known book, written by two Dutch scholars, Schmid and diGraaf, Insurgent Terrorism and the Western News Media (Leiden, 1980...
...You get the idea: Reagan bombed poor, innocent Libya—which, after all, hadn't done us the favor of formally declaring war, thereby eliminating all doubt about their role in international terror—because the people interviewed months earlier by the Holloway Commission indicated they'd like firm steps taken against terrorists...
...Our electronics, textile, steel, and auto-mobile industries, once unrivalled, have all lost vast markets to foreign competition...
...She went through the obligatory ventilation about commercialization, the Elvis Presley look-alikes, the special medals, "Hollywood and Broadway...
...to meet their demands, took off two hours earlier, thus depriving the governments involved of the possibility of immobilizing the aircraft in Algeria, rather than facing the almost hopeless task of liberating the hostages in Beirut...
...That came close, but it took syndicated columnist Mary McGrory to really make the point—shared but not admitted and perhaps not even perceived by so many colleagues...
...Where we once took great pride in our self-reliance and productive capacity, we now grow increasingly dependent on cheaper, and some Hillsdale College Hillsdale Michigan 49242 say better, foreign-produced goods...
...But to say such things might jeopardize the latest version of detente—and even detract from the wonderful spectacle of another summit in 1986...
...Did you find that quoted in your local paper...
...they want to portray Reagan as bombing Libya simply because the poll—of which the President was most Michael Ledeen is senior fellow in international affairs at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies...
...For twenty years, personal savings (as a percent of Gross National Product) has been lower in the United States than in any other industrialized nation...
...Following the hijacking of an American airliner in 1972, in which the hijacker parachuted to safety, police planned to place transmitters in parachutes in the future...
...Does this suggest that an America where the credit card is "in" and the savings account is "out" will become before long an America without hope...
...We have measured our muscle against some of the smallest nations on the globe and we have prevailed...
...During the Hanafi Muslim occupation of the B'nai B'rith building in Washington, D.C...
...Over the past two decades, however, we have saved less and consumed more...
...O...
...The spectacle of Liberty Weekend that made Americans feel proud en-raged Mary McGrory and a good many other journalists, who are less willing than she to admit ideological motivations but jabber instead about bad taste...
...Nor did I see it on television, or hear it on the radio...
...Just at the time that the police were trying to win the confidence of the terrorists to negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis, one of the hosts of a local talk show asked the terrorists, "How can you believe the police...
...During the TWA hijacking in the summer of 1985, an American televi-sion network announced that the "Delta Force" had been sent to the Mediterranean to free the hostages...
...Hundreds of journalists raced to the spot, and of course no transfer of money took place...
...The coveted Bum of the Month Award goes this month to an old friend, the Washington Post, for its "correction" of July 3. Here is the full text: Author Michael Novak, referred to as one of three conservative Republicans in David S. Broder's column last Sunday, calls himself a conservative Democrat...
...The Tribune's journalists avoid this matter...
...We've invaded Libya, we're fighting a surrogate war against a little country in Central America...
...But this fact was revealed by the media, and the terrorists had the mirror covered with—fittingly enough—newspapers, thus increasing the hostages' risk...
...Indeed, the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi was described (in the May 13 issue) as "a dangerous and unpredictable [sic] escalation in the war of nerves with Khadafy...
...For more than a century, each generation of Americans has enjoyed a standard of economic life twice as high as the pre-ceding generation...
...You see, in the universe defined by David Broder and his colleagues, a Democrat is what they want it to be (liberal, fashionable, anti-Reagan) and not what Michael Novak is (neoconservative, a high official of the Reagan Administration...
...The terrorists then broke off all negotiations with the government, opened a channel to Schleyer's son, and negotiated a ransom of fifteen million dollars...
...The Debt Penalty Of all the traditional values which have come under attack in recent years, perhaps none has been more thoroughly subverted than that of saving, of foregoing present consumption in order to provide future benefits...
...This was left to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London—not known as a particularly hawkish outfit-in its annual Strategic Survey...
...Ambassador Novak, a distinguished scholar and diplomat, has been downgraded to simple "author" (so as to drag him down to David Broder's level...
...But a local radio reporter broadcast a real scoop: There were no terrorists on board, it was a hoax to trick the hijackers...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986...
...It's supposed to make us feel proud—and patriotic...
...On November 22, 1974, a British Airways airplane was hijacked to Cairo airport...
...Until fairly recently, Americans understood the critical importance of saving...
...and took hostages...
...So we haven't heard much about the Soviet role in international terrorism...
...She describes what's wrong not only with the Liberty Weekend but with America: "We're complacent, we're standing tall...
...The Chicago Tribune ran a three-part series in May on the American response to Libyan terrorism...
...The Post, as you see, has fully earned its award...
...It is a model of hownot to analyze foreign policy...
...in 1977, the terrorists were interviewed on radio talk shows...
Vol. 19 • September 1986 • No. 9
