GONE NATIVE:

The same old song: As war news turns sour, critics point their fingers at who else — the Jews (Jonathan Tobin, May 28, 2004, Jewish World Review)

[Marine Gen. Anthony C.] Zinni rose briefly to fame in 2002 during a brief stint as Washington's envoy to the Middle East, an experience that gave new meaning to the word fiasco. The man was so ineffective that the post itself was obsolescent. The general who'd helped inflame Arab expectations that the U.S. would pressure Israel to appease Palestinian terrorists dropped from the public eye.

But there's no keeping a publicity-hungry ex-military man down. Zinni used the commencement of the war in Iraq to begin to try and even the score with his political foes inside the Pentagon. This campaign of self-aggrandizement via anti-war rhetoric has now reached its climax with the publication of a book (co-authored by techno-thriller maven Tom Clancy), coupled with the "60 Minutes" interview.

Correspondent Steve Croft played right into Zinni's hands as he described the Iraq invasion planners as "a group of policymakers within the administration known as 'the neoconservatives,' who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel.

They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter" Libby.'

Following in the footsteps of other media outlets, including Business Week, that have played the same tune, Croft managed to list only those members of the administration who are Jewish. That's a neat trick when you remember that neither Bush, Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld nor any member of the Cabinet is Jewish. Nor did he mention the fact that a broad cross-section of the defense and intelligence establishment viewed Iraq and Saddam Hussein as threats to U.S. security and to the security of "moderate" Arab states.

Responding to previous criticisms of his singling out Jews, Zinni stretched his thin supply of credibility to the breaking point: "Because I mentioned the neoconservatives … I was called anti-Semitic. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested."

Given the confrontational culture of the "60 Minutes" genre, you would have expected Croft to nail Zinni for uttering such disingenuous tripe. At the very least, you would expect a follow-up question. But just because he plays "journalist" on television — like the rest of "60 Minutes" on-screen celebrities — doesn't mean he actually practices the craft of journalism. Zinni was allowed to get away with not only spreading a whopper of a lie, he wasn't even challenged to defend it.

Zinni's screed is, of course, just the tip of a growing anti-Semitic iceberg that stands ready to sink public discourse on the war into a morass of hate.

In all fairness, the war is religious in nature--it's just that it has been driven by an evangelical Christian as much as by Jewish neocons. Jews just happen to be easier targets than Christians, but by much.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 28, 2004 5:04 PM