What’s Aleppo ?
“worse than you imagine possible even taking into account the fact that it is worse then you imagine possible” — Brad DeLong
OK so Gary Johnson former governor and libertarian candidate for president asked Mike Barnicle “What’s Aleppo”. This is shocking and appalling, but the New York Times managed to top it.
I will assume that angry bear readers know what Aleppo is (it is quite probably the oldest continuously inhabited city although some archaeologists think that Jericho is older) and what has been happening there in the past few years.
Alan Rappeport wrote that Aleppo is the de facto capital of Daesh. Then an anonymous editor added a correction writing that Aleppo is the capital of Syria. So one New York Times article has two highly embarrassing corrections.
This is just one of four strange things which happened recently at the New York Times.
One lesson we learn is that the New York Times would be imrproved and Vox.Com worseneedif Alan Rappeport and Zack Beauchampt traded jobs. In general this reminds me that the new journalists who started out as bloggers are vastly superior to the MSM journalists with traditional career paths.
But I think it mainly shows the catastrophic cost of the journalistic field called campaign or political journalism. The Times’ latest catastrophe must have something to do with the fact that an article on “what’s Aleppo” was written by a political journalist not a foreign affairs journalist. Also the editor must be a political journalism sub editor not a general sub editor. The Times also employs Karen Zraik who know a lot about Aleppo.
This rant was meant to be a long introduction to a comment on this post by Jon Chait, who asks why Hillary Clinton is so unpopular.
The key related interesting passage is
The mechanics of campaign coverage add to the problem. One set of reporters covers Trump, and another covers Clinton. The Trump reporters are overwhelmed with evidence of his unsuitability. The Clinton reporters have a job, too — they need to cover their subject in a suitably tough fashion. The toughest subject matter with Clinton is her email and foundation problems. Even when reporters are doing their jobs well, the political narrative that comes through is two different candidates afflicted by different but essentially parallel vulnerabilities. Every day, Trump is nagged by questions about his fitness for office and his racism, and Clinton by questions about her ethics.
By a priori editorial decision the NY Times (and all news organizations) covers Trump and Clinton separately and, therefore, automatically writes (or says) roughtly as much about either. This causes balanced reporting even when fair reporting would be unbalanced. The convention of political journalism is that good reporting is finding a scandal, Ok reporting is finding a gaffe, and discussing a policy proposal is just not done. So a priori it was decided that Clinton is roughly as scandalous as Trump (for the political news pages — the opinion pages are roughly fair and therefore totally unbalanced).
This isn’t the whole story, Chait goes on to note that reporters don’t reliably do their jobs well.
And even within this restrictive framework, journalists don’t always do their job well. The New York Times recently reported a completely innocuous episode — in which the Clinton Foundation requested special visas to help rescue hostages from North Korea and was turned down by a fastidious State Department — as “rais[ing] questions” about “ties.” Matt Lauer grilled Clinton on her emails and let Trump blatantly lie without challenge about having opposed the Iraq War.
He also notes sexism, discussing evidence from experimental psychology that both men and women disapprove of ambition in a hypothetical female politician but not a hypothetical male politician. He also blames Bernie Sanders (this is Chait the anti leftist liberal writing, but he does have data on his side). Finally he notes the disfunctional relationship between Clinton and the press and traces the origin to Clinton’s “paranoia”. Oh well aside from that it is an excellent essay. Reading that word, if felt like screaming “just because they’re out to get you doesn’t mean that you are paranoid.” It seems to me that Clinton’s belief that the press is out to get her is not a psychopathology and is instead the only sensible conclusion consistent with the evidence of the past 24 years.
Ooops slipped into ranting. The relevant point, is that Chait argues that The New York Times fails to inform, because its reporters specialize. So there are Clinton reporters (which means Clinton pseudo scandal reporters) and Trump reporters but no one who writes about the facts of both cases in the same news story. This is like the problem that there are political/campaign reporters and reporters who actually know something about something and they don’t communicate.
This can make the Times a journal of record which can’t answer two questions
1) “What’s Aleppo ?”
2) What’s a scandal ?
Apparently everyone is being reduced to incoherence in this election cycle
One of the oldest inhabited cities. Arabs, Mongols, Mameluks, Ottomans battled for it. What is Aleppo then? Everything then and today nothing concerning the western world. Mr. Johnson probably does not know what an Ottoman is much less its past empire.
This is Aleppo today: http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/09/what-is-aleppo-this-is-aleppo/499163/
i can say with certainty I won’t vote for Johnson but “What’s Aleppo” is at least a coherent policy for someone running on a platform of avoiding foreign wars.
Mike:
What is your point on avoiding wars other than joining forces with the libertarian Koch Bros?
The real truth is that this question was not framed properly or put into context and any moron could see that. What did you think he was asking about some dog food or something? What a “got ya” joke. So I’ll connect the dots for you since so many cannot. This was purposely done so that Gary Johnson cannot be allowed to be on the main stage of the political debates. This was no accident and was purely politically motivated in my opinion by the MSNM to keep Johnson out of the debates because they know on both sides that if he gets in he will take more of their votes away.
The real truth is people in the US don’t need to know what Aleppo is because we have no business there.
Is there oil or opium there….. no? So I guess it’s just another far off location where the US murders brown skinned people for absolutely no reason at all.
Oh thats right barrel bombs , well we can’t have people using stuff like that on civilians they are supposed to buy cluster bombs and napalm from our defense contractors.
Run,
I am not aligned with Johnson at all but avoiding foreign entanglements is advice going back to George Washington. But it does pay to be sure you know who you are supporting if you do get involved. Just because one side us getting beat up doesn’t mean they are good guys or that they won’t do everything possible to kill you. My preference is to avoid helping people who will do their utmost to kill me.
Mike:
Ok, I agree. I could not tell from your statement. Who do you think has done a good job of keeping us out of most conflicts?
“Who do you think has done a good job of keeping us out of most conflicts?”
This is a meaningless question. FDR didn’t keep us out of one of history’s most massive conflict. OTOH, Kennedy kept us out of nuclear war over Cuba. Of course, FDR served nearly 4 terms. Kennedy barely completed one. Lincoln did a poor job of keeping us out of the most significant conflict in our history. Was Lincoln a bad president?
“The real truth is that this question was not framed properly or put into context and any moron could see that. ”
The real truth is that Johnson didn’t know what Aleppo is. Any moron who actually watched the video could see that.
and here I always thought it was Kruschev who kept us out of nuclear war over Cuba.
@Dale,
Having just finished Michael Beschloss’ “The Crisis Years,” I have to say there’s some truth to that. But if you read the book, you’ll see that it was, in the end, a collaboration. Our young and callow POTUS could easily have been swayed to make decisions that Khrushchev would have been powerless to change.
Dale by that logic it was Hirohito that ended the War in the Pacific in WWII. And Robert E Lee that ended the carnage of the American Civil War at the Appomattox Courthouse.
Kennedy got dealt a bad hand. It wasn’t his decision to base nuclear missiles in Turkey or to initiate the planning and Ops that led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And I suppose you can give partial or equal credit to Kruschev. And not just for blinking at the end.
But there were a lot of ways that particular chess game could have ended, and changing my original metaphor a bit, Kennedy manuevered out of an unfavorable opening position. With the result that I was not incinerated in my first grade classroom, which incidentally was in Key West Florida in 1962-63. Some of my first memories being the beaches dug up for gun emplacements to stave off an enemy only 80 miles away.
God knows Kennedy was no peacenik. But he sure as hell wasn’t Curtis LeMay.
“But he sure as hell wasn’t Curtis LeMay.”
D’accord.
bruce and joel
perhaps you-all know more about this than i do. but as i recall (second year at college) JFK was doing the saber rattling (and all my friends to my surprise were saying “we have to stand behind the president”).
the fact that Krushchev turned the boats around may have made him the loser at Appomattox, or Tokyo, but avoiding a war, while it may be losing face, is not losing a war.
whether JFK could have made a bad decision, i am not sure I quite give him credit for NSK removing any excuse for that decision.
i’d have been just as happy if JFK had said, “look, Nikita, we’ll remove our missiles from Turkey if you remove yours from Cuba.”
but now i think there was never a possibility of nuclear war over Cuba. JFK was playing to the American public. neither he nor K was going to blow up the world over those missles.
“i’d have been just as happy if JFK had said, “look, Nikita, we’ll remove our missiles from Turkey if you remove yours from Cuba.””
Which, in the event, is what happened.
“but now i think there was never a possibility of nuclear war over Cuba.”
“The Crisis Years” reaches a different conclusion.Beschloss is a historian and lays out his case in immense detail, including correspondence and interviews with all the people who were there. I know you’ll understand if I prefer such facts and evidence over your conjecture.
“One Hell of a Gamble” by Fursenko and Naftali reaches the same conclusion as Beschloss–that Nhruscchev and Kennedy drove the world to the brink of nuclear war. “The Crisis Years” is just a better-written book, IMO. If you want to learn what was actually happening while you were in school, either one would educate you.
Khrushchev, not Nhruscchev.
Coberly/Joel,
Khrushchev was not the only Russian who kept the US from starting the doomsday machine.
The problem with Aleppo is: what is the US stand? Clinton is to dump Assad and make Aleppo a mess. Trump is for a less fixed view.
The Obama stand seems to be side with the Sunnis because the Saudi, that brought US 9/11 15 years ago, side has more money
Morning Joe is not my cup of tea.
I have eaten in the Chinese restaurant in out of the way Alexandria where the informal talks by the lower level took place in Oct 62.
I lived in New Mexico the entire time of Gary Johnson’s eight years as Governor. He mainly vetoed a lot of bills from the Democratic legislature, seemed to be pretty ethical. Towards the end of his second term, he came out in favor of legalizing drugs, which caused him to lose some support from the Republican establishment.
He really is a Libertarian at heart, he wants to very drastically cut the size of the federal government, legalize all drugs, get the government out of our bedrooms.
He was a building contractor before he ran for Governor, working on government projects.
I think he will peak at 10% and probably end up closer to 5% in November. Right now he is probably drawing from both Clinton and Trump supporters.
Joel
on a good day i would defer to your superior knowledge. i even indicated as much in my first comment on this thread.
but i have read a lot of books in my life and i have learned that they are not “knowledge.” and if Beschloss is who i think he is, i was not impressed when i saw him pontificate on television.
as a matter of fact i knew that missiles in turkey for missiles in cuba was what finally happened, but you wouldn’t have known it from reading the news of the day.
and for what it is worth, i don’t think i was ever “in” school… certainly not the way my “support the president” friends were.
but i don’t expect you to accept my conjecture, which i clearly labeled as such. do be a little cautious, however, about accepting all the facts and even evidence you read.
I was in Jr High. A friend’s older brother was on a Navy carrier.
In later life I spoke with a lot of conventional arms types who were in during that crisis who were deployed to Fl. I do not know that the guard was activated but a lot of reserve formations were “recalled” since no “presidential order” (raising an army) is needed for reserve units.
The options include significant military action in Cuba.
Run,
I think your question should be modified. Keeping us out of conflicts is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Of course, if you do get into a conflict, you want the following things to be true:
a. there was a damn good reason to be in the conflict, and one which couldn’t have been resolved through other means
b. the conflict was brought to a successful conclusion
c. the conflict did not increase the likelihood of bad outcomes in the future
It doesn’t seem like the events in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya over the past 16 years achieve conditions b. and c. I think we aren’t far enough along on Syria, but it will probably end the same way. A lot of people whose values are not compatible with liberal Western values seem to be among the big winners of those four sets of events, and somehow, a lot of people aligned with them are now in the West.
Mike:
– Have you ever gone to war? I could think of a dozen names of why we should never have gone to war. If you personally have not gone to war, then enlist and come back and tell us the war stories so many of us try to drink away.
– There is never a good a. It just means we failed somewhere else.
– War never comes to a successful conclusion unless you ignore the collateral damage.
– Do I look like a soothsayer? and you are not either. My Vulcan Mind Meld does not work and my crystal ball is cracked.
What did Paul Kennedy say in “The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers?” Go back and read the book again.
War is never a good thing. Even the winners lose.
ilsm
i would not rule out (in retrospect) an attack on Cuba, but i would rule out (in retrospect) a soviet nuclear response to that.
i think if you think about it from a sober military perspective, Krushchev gambled (and lost) with sending the missiles to Cuba. and was criticized by his peers because the gamble didn’t make much sense. what was he going to do with those missiles. Russia did not have the means to defend Cuba short of nuclear war and that was not going to happen. nor did the united states pose any threat to russian interests in the Americas (and probably not in Europe), while it could be argued that Russia definitely posed a threat to Europe absent American power, including the missiles in Turkey.
don’t want to make a thing of my opinion. i don’t really know anything, but i like to think that even American generals think in terms of military feasibility even if they don’t always get it right, and same for Russian generals.
this was cold war chess. K made an ill advised gamble and lost face, but he wasn’t going to start a nuclear war. and we can hope that neither was JFK, though K’s gamble gave Kennedy the opportunity to do some bold posturing on the world stage.
as for Beschloss… without having read his book… i see no reason why JFK’s posturing would not have been taken seriously by all the people who worked for him and even those who interviewed those in on the joke.
you may know something about this. i’d be glad to hear about it.
Cob,
Agree, Soviets were much cooler than US. I am constantly amazed at all the propaganda about Stalin and Mao, while US rolled the world killing and supporting unpopular puppets, while anyone disagreeing with US state sponsored slaughter was attacked by the Birchers!
Mike K.
US has not entered a conflict since WW II (doubtful) that met any standard for justifying organized murder put forth by St Augustine.
Despite what the chaplins tell US troops! I heard more than one of those BS sermons.
“War is a racket”* that makes people a lot of money and keeps folks money in overseas countries intact.
In Smedley Butler’s Central America experience it was US banking and agribusiness.
Today it is US war merchants, oil interests and MNC’s.
ilsm
not sure i am ready to get on board with the kind and gentle soviets.
i heard about Krushchev’s “reckless adventure” in Cuba from (as though from) the people who deposed him. but if the russians are cooler than us, they may be cooler in the British tradition… perfectly willing to lose face and win what they were playing for and then keep their mouths shut about it forever. K got the missiles out of Turkey.
Run,
I am not sure what I wrote that would indicate I am chomping at the bits for a war. One of the reasons I reluctantly favor Caligula over Valens is that the latter has favored war as a response to events in the past and hasn’t thought through the situation with the Goths very well.
That said, there are situations where war is not the worst possible outcome. Self-defense for one. Protecting one”s allies is another. I fear recent instances of Western leaders shooting their constituents in their collective feet is bringing us to a point where we will be dealing with a fight on our own soil. But we have, as a country, been in way more wars than we could justify. I don’t think any of the US wars in my lifetime could be justified by any reasonable standard.
Run
trouble is i agree with you — your reply to Mike.
trouble is there are bad guys in the world who would bring war and it’s consequences to you if they were not afraid you would beat them (in war).
and once you allow that, you have to at least consider that before they attack you they will be manuvering to put themselves in a strong position from which they think they can defeat you with little cost to themselves (no cost, actually, because the lives of their people don’t cost them anything).
so then when you see Japan or Germany aquiring territory and resources that will make them stronger than you, you might think it best to preempt them by starting a war before they are ready…
and, of course, once you allow that, it’s very hard to know where to draw the line
i would not have started any of the wars the united states has started since 1945. and certainly would not have fought them with the degree of immorality we have discovered ourselves capable of.
no reason for me to say any of this… except that while i agree with what you said to Mike I can’t see any way that wars will be avoided by our leaders, and certainly not prevented by us.