Dartblog

The newswriting industry, as you might imagine, has a special cant. One word in the vocabulary is lede, which is written in the lower case but is an acronym for ‘live end; dead end’. It is a way of referring to the meat of a news story. By almost all style books, the lede is supposed to be the very first paragraph of a wire report.

So here is an interesting lede, from a reporter called Andrew Hammond, writing for the wire service mockingly and often deservingly called al-Reuters. Hammond’s story, “Arab media shows sharp divides over Saddam and U.S.,” moved on the Reuters wire at 11:08 this morning. Here is how the story begins.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Arab media coverage of Saddam Hussein’s execution has reflected sharp divisions between Arabs opposed to U.S. influence in the region and those allied with Washington.

Arab men and women who are pleased that Saddam Hussein has been killed—a majority, by any measure—and who are not actually American operatives have been entirely forgot.

The last section of the sentence represents what is called a false dichotomy. In this instance, it is a fallaciously false dichotomy, since any seasoned Middle East reporter has at least the intelligence to understand its inaccuracy and the certain political argument made there.

To repeat the offending assertion: The Arab world is divided into two sets—a set opposed to United States influence in Arab nations and a complementary set composed of “those allied with Washington.” According to this exceedingly convenient framing, Arab states and their people are either independent-minded sovereigns or acolytes of Washington, D.C. Which do you suppose Hammond favors?

Under this false dichotomy, America can never win. Either we successfully convert the Arab street into political allies (an impossibility, most will confess), or Arabs elect to be independent. That latter is a certainty. In point of fact, a successful pro-democratic American foreign policy would preserve and indeed honor Arab independence, and wouldn’t demand political alliance from these fresh democracies—and similarly would not demand that they start playing golf and listening to Britney Spears. The notion that liberal democratic government opens the floodgates of American culture and binds new liberal democracies to partnership with the United States is employed by freedom’s enemies with great profit. Those who choose to employ it owe Reuters reporter Andrew Hammond a debt.