Washington Post Relies on Dubious "Experts"

In a bizarre piece this morning, Washington Post reporter Michael Powell (no relation to the former Secretary of State or the former FCC Chair), shores up the recent Mearsheimer and Walt Harvard hit piece on the outsized influence of the Israel lobby in this country. One would expect this from the Posties, of course, since the piece reflects leftist dogma. (Yep, it's fisking time.) Look who Powell cites to support his counterattack:

Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, suggests the authors make commonplace points -- that U.S. Middle East policy is driven disproportionately by those who favor Israel, and that this lobby resorts to all manner of vile accusations to discredit opponents.

"There's nothing intellectually wrong with arguing that U.S. policy in the Middle East is dislodged from its natural moorings by the power of a domestic constituency," Cole said. "But most people are timid -- they don't want to be smeared and risk having their lives ruined."

What a nice smear from the oleaginous Cole, whose blatherings have a huge following in the outer fringes of the Blue States, of course, regularly misrepresents facts or invents them; and, with alarming frequency, slanders and smears anyone who disagrees with him as is amply documented time and time again in rightie blogs. How leftwing idiotarians like Cole and Paul Krugman gain intellectual traction and even newspaper columns (Krugman in the NYTimes), let alone professorships, is the topic for another blog entry. Nonetheless, trumpeting anything intellectually tainted individuals like these say is simply poor journalism. True, Powell does quote a couple of rebuttals. But then he rapidly moves to Cole and, even more astoundingly, gives Marxist ideologue Noam Chomsky the penultimate word:

Although he applauded their courage in standing up to "anticipated hysterical reaction," Chomsky wrote that throughout the 20th century a broad swath of the political intellectual class has favored a muscular and illegal exercise of imperial power, in the Middle East and worldwide.

"Has it been a failure for U.S. grand strategy based on control of . . . middle eastern oil and the immense wealth from this unparalleled material prize? Hardly," Chomsky wrote.

Note the nifty rhetorical trick in Chomsky's first sentence: "anticipated hysterical reaction." Using this phrase accomplishes several things. First of all, it stealthily allows Chomsky to claim advance credit for "anticipating" any reaction at all. Second of all, by cleverly pre-labeling any reaction as "hysterical," Chomsky undercuts any negative reaction, whether rationally valid or invalid, thus discrediting all negative reactions in advance. Powell somewhat naively identifies Chomsky as "left wing" but this is almost certainly an intentional understatement. Chomsky is and has always been a Communist, and his clever rhetoric is the hallmark of a brilliant Marxist rhetorician.

But another professor gets the actual last word:

University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and describes the professors as "incredibly bold" at stirring policy and theoretical debates. But, although Telhami is a critic of the war, he does not believe Jewish neocons and their Christian supporters forced the United States into the war.

"There's no doubt that neocons long wanted a war," Telhami said. "But in the end it was the decision of a president who was super-empowered after 9/11 and who could have ignored them."

(Note, BTW, that Brookings is a reliably left-wing think-tank. Remember that every time you read a quote from one of their fellows.)

Here again, brilliant and absolutely wrong leftist spinning is on full display. Telhami "forgives" the neocons for sins they really didn't commit, even though they "long wanted a war." He manages to manipulate his magnanimous forgiveness to blame it all on Bush, the current, unbelievably simplistic (and unbelievably effective) left-wing meme. Thus, he gets to Bush-bash while indirectly neocon-bashing, stating, without any supporting facts at all, that the neocons have been slavering for a war.

Citing "critics" like this and giving them the last word in a piece is typical of the kind of attack journalism being published in the Post and the NYTimes during the entirety of the current administration. Without having anything effective to counter-offer, the left uses the convenient avenue of the MSM to trumpet their own dubious ideological viewpoints, knowing full-well that the reporters, who are in total agreement, will never seriously question these statements. Facts, as always, take a back seat to demagoguery.

HazZzMat is not the only blog that's noticed all the free leftie advertising at the Post lately. Instapundit has linked to another canny watchdog. Click on the short link, then click through for more info.

BTW, we'd have no problem with pieces such as Powell's if they appeared on the op-ed pages. But they appear instead as "factual" newspieces, which, in the Post, they increasingly are not. We also would not have a problem if the Post and the NYTimes identified themselves as left-wing newspapers. But they pose as "objective" reporters of the news. This is patently false, and we challenge them, offering the current story and others like them as evidence, to prove otherwise.

UPDATE: More positive iconoclasm from Power Line.