I’m agnostic about US military action in Syria. But it just blows my mind how uncritically establishment media is praising Trump’s action. It’s not just open wingers like Cupp.
Fareed Zakaria:
.@FareedZakaria on Syria strikes: "I think Donald Trump became President of the United States" last night https://t.co/dLipRu6SZu
— New Day (@NewDay) April 7, 2017
“We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean,” said Williams “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’”
And there was the usual moral seriousness, heart/God bullshit:
The nonsense continued throughout Thursday night and Friday morning. Matt K. Lewis, the Daily Beast writer and CNN personality, took note of the references to God in Trump’s statement on the airstrikes, and salivated over the president’s moral seriousness. Even worse was Mark Landler’s “news analysis” in the New York Times on why Trump greenlit the attack, given that the president has shown a strong affinity for dictators and little concern for suffering. Failing to mention that Trump was in the process of banning refugees from America, Landler painted a laughable picture of a man consumed with grief because of images of children dying. (“On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First,” the Times tweeted.) Not only does coverage like this badly distort an important issue like Syria, but it serves as a reminder (as if one were needed) of exactly the boost—not to mention the political capital—Trump would gain in the case of a national emergency or terrorist attack. As if a Trump with normal powers wasn’t horrifying enough.
This isn’t much of a left/right thing, in terms of the punditry. I remember the media getting all excited when Obama had those Somalian pirates killed; not that Obama wasn’t right to it, but it was revolting just how much Joe Klein et al. got off on it.
Atrios reminds us just how prescient Alex Pareene was about this when he was writing about the Navy SEAL operation in Yemen:
Now that Trump has learned that there is a direct relationship between a president’s body count and how “presidential” the mainstream political press considers him to be, the whole world is fucked.