Replaying the Tet: Are the Old Lies Really That Good?

The incisive and brilliantly written Belmont Club boasts the most insightful analysis of the game the large media are currently playing in:

Replaying the Tet

The leftwing media has hit upon the possible winning strategy of describing every event in the world as a setback for the Bush Administration. Both the attack by Hamas on a Jerusalem bus and the Israeli retaliatory execution of the perpetrator are portrayed as setbacks. The American acceptance of a United Nations refusal to guard its headquarters is a setback. The American attempt to improve cooperation with the UN to prevent further attacks is a humiliating admission of its indispensable legitimacy. The Afghan arrest of dozens of Taliban only proves that the threat has grown larger. Ten thousand wholly avoidable deaths due to a French heat wave illustrate the American culpability for Global Warming. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the Jews are about to be sued by the Egyptians (hat tip Across the Atlantic) for escaping during the Exodus. Yet despite the apparent inventiveness of the 'setbacks', the concept is wholly derivative. The Big Lie is a tactic as old as the Left itself. One in which they repose much confidence. In 1968 the press portrayed the disastrous North Vietnamese Tet offensive as a Communist victory and bluffed the real victors into retreating from the battlefield. Surely they can do it again?

Two problems stand in the fabulist's path. The first is that while the North Vietnamese had no ability to chase a retreating US army back to California the jihadists will almost certainly follow a withdrawing America right back to the streets of New York -- and London and Sydney. The second is the existence of alternative sources of news that make it impossible to sustain a Walter Duranty-like lie for very long. A fiction cannot be maintained when reality can make an imminent appearance. Perhaps if the Internet had never been invented by Al Gore.

People often end such an except by advising their readers to "read the whole thing." You might instead consider reading the whole site.

Posted by Van der Leun at August 31, 2003 7:20 PM