On December 8, 2004, something big happened.  But it happened in a small way, quietly.  Quietly The New York Times announced it, burying it deep within its folds, on page A-13.  Quietly the day came and went, ushering out one centuries-long era and in another, as yet untried.

On December 8, 2004, Afghanistan shed its wizened skin of totalitarianism, tribal rule, barbarism, and brutality.  A beautiful butterfly was born out of a cocoon stamped flat by the steamroller of war, as Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first democratically-elected leader.

And where was the mainstream American media when this momentous event occurred?  Out to lunch, apparently.  This hugely important ceremony got little formal attention.  This triumphant saga was all but ignored by the big boiler-plate presses and the major network newsrooms.

The New York Times may have shortchanged the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but History will not.  The media went to lunch on the Afghan success story, not because it eschews good news, but because of whose success it is.  A resounding triumph of the first Bush administration, the democratization of Afghanistan bears witness to an American president determined to get things done, and in a part of the world that is sorely wanting in progress, Bush’s sense of urgency is not only understood but deeply felt.  In a time when western intellectuals would rather fuss over the fretful formalities of correct political protocol, Bush’s uncanny ability to skirt said protocol does more than merely yield results — it exposes the underlying hypocrisy of a left-wing establishment that is more content to complain about wrongs than to right them.  And remember: George W. Bush is allowed no triumphs.  Nada a one.

Had Bill Clinton presided over this nothing-short-of-miraculous, three-year transformation from Taliban dictatorship to American-style democracy, he would have won the Nobel Peace Prize, to nauseatingly loud national and international acclaim.  Even Clinton’s failures wrought more coverage than Bush’s successes.  Bill Clinton’s botched attempts to negotiate a Middle East peace accord merited more press than George Bush’s implementation of democracy in the heart of that backward, benighted region.

That is how the media’s bias insidiously corrupts our perception of events, and indeed, of history itself, even as it is made.  Bias is conveyed not merely by the way in which the news is covered, but by which news is covered, and in what order; by which material editors do and do not deem newsworthy; and by which stories do and do not make the front pages.  Doubtless The New York Times will tell you that its article on the Afghan inaugural is unbiased and “factual.”  But where the editors chose to position that story tells us as much about their regard for it as the way it is written.  The New York Times need not come out and say that the metamorphosis in Afghanistan is no big deal; all it must do to convey that impression is to submerge the story on page A-13 (a Freudian slip if ever there was one, since its editorial staff not-so-secretly wishes any Bush endeavor bad luck).

But History, which is non-partisan and helped by hindsight, will take a different view.  Whatever his momentary lapses, George Bush will go down as one of the greatest of the greats, for he perfectly embodies Peggy Noonan’s characterization of Ronald Reagan, who, as she says, became President not to “be big,” but to “do big things.”

And so he was big.  And it is no small feat to do big things.  It takes a big man to do them.  Clinton, on the other hand, became President to be big.  And so he wound up, by comparison, looking small and, for want of a gentler word, downright petty — ridiculous even.

Bush, however, had no big ambitions when he took office.  He was a simple man.  Back then big things were few and far between, and growing ever more remote.  The bubble had burst.  The big things that first summer were all the color of blood, not money — in fact, it might well have been called the summer of blood.  First there were the sharks, on the prowl in the warm August oceans, and then there was Gary Condit, a bloodthirsty little man who became big because we were bored and in search of a big subject.

Well, we got it in spades on 9/11.  And the blood ran and ran.  It ran in raging rivers down Church Street and Liberty, down Vesey and West.  It ran in the green fields of Pennsylvania, and in twisted rivulets down the Pentagon’s charred walls.  Blood, sweat, and tears together formed torrents.  The summer of blood bled into the fall of our fear.

And on September 14, 2001, George W. Bush, a simple man, sweaty and blear-eyed and utterly unafraid, stepped atop that bloody rubble in lower Manhattan and took the bullhorn of fate firmly in hand.  He rose to his destiny.  And he became great.  And he did big things.

And History, which needs not The New York Times, will record them.

 

Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.

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