Arab Intellectuals and the American Media

I saw this article in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago: “Why Arab intellectuals are now praying for Saddam.” The theme of the article, reported from Saudi Arabia, is that Arab intellectuals who have long despised Saddam Hussein are now praying “that God preserve him for a few more weeks”:
“They want Saddam Hussein to go and they expect him to go eventually, but they want him to hold on a little longer because they want to teach the Americans a lesson,” says the manager of a Saudi newspaper.
It strikes me that, if you substitute “President Bush” for “the Americans,” that pretty well sums up the attitude of the American media toward the war. American newscasters, reporters and editors, virtually all of whom are Democrats, don’t–with a few exceptions–actually want the U.S. to lose the war. Nor do they want large numbers of American soldiers killed. But to them, domestic political considerations mean much more than issues of war and peace. So they want the war to be successful, but not to be perceived as successful, so as to deprive President Bush of a victory that would probably make any Democrat’s 2004 challenge futile. Hence the current non-stop barrage of negativism in the American press. Amazingly enough, the Democrats’ virtual monopoly on the “mainstream” press makes it a realistic goal for them to cause a successful war to go down in the public mind as unsuccessful.

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