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Libya and Mainstream Pundits
by Jacob G. Hornberger

A fascinating example of the mindset of American mainstream journalists is provided by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote a glowing piece this week praising the U.S. government’s humanitarian intervention in Libya. It’s entitled “Thank You, America!”

Kristof’s article comes across as a glorious paean to the U.S. government — how good and wonderful the government is — how it has made tremendous sacrifices to bring freedom to this one small part of the world. And how the Libyan people are so ecstatic and grateful for the intervention — well, at least those who weren’t killed in the operation.

Kristof’s mainstream mindset is absolutely astonishing. It’s as if he lives in a self-contained universe that views the federal government as all-good, all-caring, all-knowing, and all-powerful, a government that exists to spread freedom, peace, and harmony around the world through its military empire. Oh, sure, sometimes it runs into obstacles in spreading its good will around the world but now is not the time for dwelling on such things. According to Kristof, now is time to celebrate the government’s great humanitarian success in Libya.

Now, consider this article by former Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner, which appeared on the Internet on a website called justia.com. The title of her piece is “When Gaddafi Was Our Friend.”

Mariner’s article details how the CIA rendered at least six prisoners to Libya for purposes of torture between 2004 and 2006. Yes, the same Libya that was ruled by Gaddafi, the dictator who was just ousted from power.

The CIA is a principal agency of the U.S. government. When the CIA does things, the U.S. government is doing them. When the CIA renditioned people to Libya for purpose of torture, it was the U.S. government doing it — yes, the same U.S. government that Kristof glorifies for its wonderful, selfless sacrifice in ousting Gaddafi from power.

Now consider this Internet piece by Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald, which critically analyzes the Kristof article, along with those of other mainstream commentators praising the “success” of the Libyan intervention.

Does there not seem to be a disconnect here? When you read Kristof’s piece and then Mariner’s and Greenwald’s articles, you almost get a sense that we’re living in two simultaneous, completely different universes.

Mr. Kristof, the U.S. government — the same government to whom you’re singing your praises — cut a deal with the dictator Gaddafi to torture people!

How was that deal negotiated? We don’t know. Who negotiated the deal? We don’t know. Did President Bush approve the deal? We don’t know.

In fact, we still don’t know the answer of any of those questions with respect to the CIA’s torture deal with Egypt’s dictatorship and the CIA’s torture deal with Syria’s dictatorship.

Why don’t we have answers to such questions? Well, one reason is because of the mainstream press. They just don’t like asking those questions. The questions either don’t occur to them or they make the mainstream commentators uncomfortable.

Think how great it would have been if Kristof had used his column to at least ask, “President Obama, can you please order the CIA to reveal all the facts and circumstances behind the U.S. government’s torture partnership with the brutal dictatorships in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere?”

What’s amazing is how Kristof can write such an article without being at least a bit suspicious of the motives of U.S. officials in effecting a regime-change operation in Libya. Did the U.S. government have a road-to-Damascus experience on the way to Tripoli? Did U.S. officials recently wake up and exclaim, “Golly, we’ve shouldn’t have been partnering with that dictator. We shouldn’t have gotten him to torture people on our behalf. We’ve got to help the Libyan people to oust him”?

It doesn’t seem that such questions even enter the minds of mainstream journalists. They just continue in their little bubble of innocence, one that views the federal government as a good, grand, and glorious god, one that does no wrong, not even when its CIA is entering into agreements with dictators to torture people.

Last Friday, I commented about how mainstream journalists seem to live in a universe in which they view the U.S. government as a glorious, saintly entity that roams the world helping the poor and oppressed, as exemplified most recently by the U.S. intervention in Libya. I pointed to a column last week by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that praised the U.S. intervention in Libya. The title of the column was “Thank You, America!”

I compared Kristof’s commentary with a commentary by former Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner, which focused on the CIA’s partnership with Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, to torture people on behalf of the U.S. government.

It’s as if we live in two simultaneous universes. The mainstream pundits live in the universe in which the U.S. government is perceived as a saintly organization that makes great sacrifices for the benefit of the world — bringing people food, helping them in earthquakes, tsunamis, and other emergencies, and freeing them from dictatorships.

The other universe — the one in which the U.S. government is sending billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to dictators, entering into torture-partnerships with dictators, torturing people, invading and occupying countries, waging undeclared wars of aggression — is ignored because, as an alternative universe, it’s simply irrelevant.

Well, you’ll never believe what happened. On Saturday, Kristof’s newspaper, the New York Times, carried a front-page article detailing the torture partnership between the CIA (which is a core agency within the U.S. government) and Gaddafi.

Talk about being mugged by reality!

Why was this suddenly news? Because attorneys for Human Rights Watch in Libya beat the CIA to Gaddafi’s secret files. Among the files the attorneys uncovered was one on the CIA rendition-torture partnership between the CIA and Gaddafi.

According to the Times, the secret files reveal “that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.” In fact — get this — the British spy agency even helped the tyrant Gaddafi spy on his own people, tracing phone numbers for him.

It gets better. The CIA actually was drafting speeches for Gaddafi. Here’s a one-page speech that the CIA drafted for the tyrant around Christmastime in 2003:

At a time when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of our contributions towards a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion, the Great Jamhariya presents its honest call for a W.M.D.-free zone in the Middle East,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.

The “Great Jamhariya” was the name for Gaddafi’s revolutionary regime.

When Libyans requested that a certain suspect be renditioned to them, the CIA responded that “we are committed to developing this relationship for the benefit of both our services” and promised to do its best to find the guy.

Reality check: The CIA is the U.S. government. When the CIA does things, the U.S. government — our government — is doing them. They are not two separate and distinct universes.

What was the CIA’s response to the disclosures? Reflecting the deep moral debauchery into which the U.S. government has plunged our nation, especially since 9/11, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood commented, “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.”

Ms. Youngblood, with all due respect, while this news certainly doesn’t surprise us libertarians, take my word for it: It undoubtedly comes as a horrible shock to many Americans, including mainstream journalists, who simply cannot bring themselves to confront the fact that their government does these sorts of things.

After reading that article on Saturday, which has now spread to newspapers all over the world and all over the Internet, I asked myself: What does Kristof do now? This is the newspaper he writes for, and it’s on the front page. How can he just ignore the reality of the U.S. government’s torture relationship with this cruel and brutal dictator? Would he now confront the reality of U.S. foreign policy? Would he now use his column in the New York Times to call for a full investigation into the U.S. government’s torture relationship with Gaddafi? After all, the Britsh government has just announced that it will conduct a formal investigation into the matter.

It didn’t take long for my questions to be answered. On Sunday, Kristof published a new article entitled, “The Fuller Story from Libya.” I thought to myself, “Yeah! Here it is! The fuller story! The other side of the story! The U.S. government’s torture partnership with the dictator that it has now ousted from power — and possibly a call for a full congressional investigation into the matter.

Alas, it was not to be. Not one single mention of the CIA’s torture partnership with Gaddafi. Not one. Kristoff’s “fuller story” involved more examples of heroic resistance against the tyrant.

But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The U.S. government’s support of heroic resistance to tyrants is in one universe. The U.S. government partnership’s with such tyrants is in another.

Libya and Mainstream Pundits, Part 3 (Thursday, September 8, 2011)

Last Friday and last Tuesday, I wrote about New York Times’ columnist Nicholas Kristof’s paeans to the U.S. government’s intervention in Libya, paeans that contained no reference to the U.S. government’s torture partnership with Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. I indicated that Kristof, like most other mainstream journalists, lives in a universe in which the U.S. government roams the world bringing peace and harmony to foreigners and that he pays no mind to an alternative universe of darkness in which the U.S. government is supporting foreign dictatorships, entering into torture partnerships with brutal dictators, invading and occupying countries, imposing embargoes and sanctions, assassinating, and killing and maiming countless people in the process.

Well, lo and behold, you’ll never guess what happened today. In a new article about Libya, Kristof actually mentions CIA torture. Interestingly, the manner in which he sticks his toe in the alternative universe speaks volumes about him and the mainstream press.

Permit me to explain why I’m focusing on Kristof given that there are countless other mainstream pundits whose mindset is the same as his. The reason is because his mindset is a perfect exemplar of the mainstream mindset. Analyzing how Kristof sees the world helps to explain how most mainstream commentators view the world.

Here’s what Kristof says in part in today’s piece:

Some Americans have fretted that Islamic extremists will take over Libya, but very few of the rebel leaders have been associated with Islamic fundamentalism. One exception is Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a military commander in Tripoli, who says he was tortured by the C.I.A. in 2004. Yet HYPERLINK "http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/africa/02islamist.html" \o "The Times article" he told my Times colleague Rod Nordland that all is forgiven and that he appreciates the American role in the Libyan revolution.

That’s it? That’s all that you have to say about this subject, Mr. Kristof? My gosh, the man has been tortured, brutally, by your very own government. Yes, Mr. Kristof, the reality is that the CIA is the U.S. government. When the CIA tortured this man, the U.S.government tortured him — your government—the government whose praises you are singing in your articles for the government that has “freed” the Libyan people from the tyranny of a brutal dictator. Is all you can say about this that the torture victim has forgiven his torturers and is now grateful for the U.S. intervention in Libya (an intervention that has ended the lives of countless other people in the process)?

Among all the bad things that came in the wake of 9/11 — the out-of-control federal spending, the wild borrowing from the Chinese communists, the Patriot Act, the illegal NSA spying, Gitmo, torture, kangaroo tribunals, assassination, the enemy-combatant doctrine, illegal searches, spying and monitoring, indefinite detention, militarism, and much more — I think the very worst might well be the degradation of conscience among the American people.

What better example of that phenomenon than Kristof’s blithe reaction to what the CIA did to that man and to so many others? It’s absolutely amazing. I find it astonishing that Kristof can just mention what the U.S. government did to that man without any sense of moral outrage and indignation.

Your government has tortured the man, Mr. Kristof. Your government cut a deal with Muammar Gaddafi — the brutal dictator whose ouster from power you are celebrating — to torture the man.

Of all the things that distinguish libertarians from statists — e.g., the fact that we favor economic liberty over socialism, and free markets over regulation, and republic over empire — I believe the biggest distinguishing characteristic might well be that our conscience seems to operate at a different level from that of statists.

Statists look at the CIA’s torture partnership with brutal dictators and seem so blasŽ about it. Libertarians, on the other hand, are deeply shocked and morally outraged that our very own government would do such a thing; and we want it fully investigated and stopped.

In describing the Libyan rebels, Kristof writes, “Are they just goons who will create their own tyranny or chaos?”

In Kristof’s universe, it’s only foreigners who are capable of being considered “goons.” What does he think those CIA agents who tortured Abdel Hakim Belhaj are? Oh, they’re not goons, he would say. They are honorable officials of the U.S. Empire defending the rights and freedoms of those of us here at home.

And it’s not as if Kristof is unaware of what these CIA goons did. In that excerpt from his article that I quoted above, Kristof links to a New York Times news article that describes what happened to Belhaj. It states in part:

In Bangkok, Mr. Belhaj said, he was tortured for a few days by two people he said were C.I.A. agents, and then, worse, they repatriated him to Libya, where he was thrown into solitary confinement for six years, three of them without a shower, one without a glimpse of the sun.

Tortured for two complete days by our very own government — the U.S. government. Solitary confinement for six years! Yes, six years! Not six days, not six months. Six long years without seeing anyone or anything except the inside of some small dark cell.

To libertarians, that’s astonishing. And although Kristof mentions only Belhaj’s torture, he’s not the only one who suffered torture as part of the torture partnership between the U.S. government and Libya’s brutal dictatorship. As I pointed out in Part 2, secret files recently seized in Libya indicate that the U.S. government — the same government whose praises Kristof is singing — delivered at least seven other people into the clutches of Libya’s dictator pursuant to the torture partnership between the CIA and Gaddafi’s torture team. And of course, there are the torture partnerships between the U.S. government and the brutal dictatorships in Egypt, Syria, and who knows where else.

How did all this happen? Who negotiated the deals? Why were the deals entered into? Did the president approve them? Did Congress approve them? Was the deals put into writing? How many torture victims have there been?

What else did the U.S. government do to support the Gaddafi regime? Why was the torture partnership terminated? What caused the Empire to turn on their partner? Why is the Empire continuing to support other dictatorships? What other torture contracts have been entered into with other dictatorships?

Does Kristof ask any of those questions? Does he call for a congressional investigation into the matter? Alas, he does not. Like so many other mainstream commentators, he continues to operating within his own little universe, sometimes peeking into the alternative universe of darkness, but then quickly pulling back into his universe of sweetness and innocence.

In his concluding paragraph, Kristof writes: “Countries like the United States, France, Britain and Qatar did something historic in supporting a military operation that was largely about preserving lives, not national interests.”

The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote, “Mental health is a commitment to reality at any cost.” It’s that commitment that our nation needs most of all.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

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