Guest Editorial: Media Coverage of the Iran Threat

by Geoff Young, Lexington

Just as the idea of a threat from Saddam Hussein was consciously hyped by the Bush administration in 2002 and early 2003, the idea of Iran as an existential threat to the US is being hyped today. Coverage of the Iran nuclear issue over the past 6-8 months has had an impact: approximately half of the US population now fears Iranian nuclear weapons. The mainstream media (MSM) has contributed to this climate of fear by producing a stream of articles written from within the administration's frame -- "Iran is a Threat to Us"-- and leaving out the critically important context of international law.

Key facts are being omitted from almost all MSM articles and reports:
(1) Under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the legal right to enrich uranium for nuclear power plants.

(2) Israel has never signed the NPT and is widely believed to possess at least 200 advanced nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them onto Iran's cities.

(3) The US and other major nuclear powers have consistently ignored the provisions of the NPT that require the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. The Pentagon is even working to develop a new generation of smaller, "more usable," mini-nukes and "bunker-busters," an advance in the arms race that contradicts the spirit of Article VI of the NPT.

(4) The US is taking hostile actions against Iran's government. Congress has appropriated millions of dollars to "promote democracy" in Iran, and the Guardian Unlimited reports that US special forces have been operating in Iran to select sites for future air strikes and help armed opposition groups http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1750678,00.html (4/10/06).

How would Americans feel about similar actions being taken by a hostile foreign government on our soil? We would surely consider it an act of war.

(5) If Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, which has not been proven, it is probably for the purpose of deterring an attack by Israel or the US. Iran is aware of the different policies the US has taken toward Iraq as compared to North Korea.

(6) The current US administration has a proven track record of exaggerating threats and using fear in order to justify aggressive war. Has the MSM learned nothing from the Iraq experience?

(7) An attack by the US and/or Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities would constitute the war crime of international aggression (unless the UN Security Council had first authorized an attack, which is almost inconceivable given the position of Russia and China).

(8) Such an attack could lead to a much wider and longer war in the Middle East, and might even trigger a third world war between the US and much of the Muslim world. A typical example of the right-wing frame appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader on Sunday, April 16, pages A3 and A4. A full-page article by Andrew Maykuth of the Knight-Ridder News Service was titled, "Portentous Power Play: Tehran's insistence on enriching uranium could destabilize a volatile region, damage energy markets and bring nuclear weapons to an Islamic theocracy." We see a map showing the range of Iranian missiles that, if fitted with hypothetical nuclear weapons that do not now exist, could "put targets in the Middle East and Asia - and American troops in the region - at risk."

We are not shown a map of US military facilities that could threaten the security of Iran, even though it was the US, not Iran, that invaded a neighboring country (Iraq) in 2003 in an unprovoked act of aggression, has troops fighting in another neighboring country, Afghanistan, ensures that no serious pressure will be exerted against Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, and just agreed to accept the legitimacy of India's nuclear weapons. We also see the same kind of scary satellite photos of Iranian buildings that Colin Powell trotted out at the UN during the long campaign of deception designed to justify an invasion of Iraq.

The article quotes various foreign policy experts about what is at stake and what options the US government has. The Iranian government is described as "revolutionary" and an "Islamic theocracy." The entire discussion is firmly anchored within the Bush administration's frame, i.e., "Iran is a threat and what can we do about it." The issue is never framed as, "What can the countries of the world do to deter the theocratic US president from committing further acts of war and aggression?"

Likewise, the issue is never framed as, "What is the Bush administration up to now, and is it possible that they are cooking up an 'Iran Threat' in order to help themselves politically?"

By helping the Bush administration hype the "Iran Threat," the MSM is playing with fire. It is failing to exercise its journalistic responsibility to question the motives of powerful people, and it is behaving in a highly irresponsible manner, exactly as it performed during the buildup to the War in Iraq. A much more skeptical approach is urgently needed, or we may find ourselves discussing how the MSM helped George W Bush start World War Three.

Geoffrey M. Young, Lexington, KY
email: gyoung4@isp.com

A Tribute to Bill Coffin: Pastor, Prophet, Friend of the World

The Washington Post today (April 13, 2006) headlined its obituary for Bill Coffin: William Sloane Coffin Jr; Chaplain was Lifelong 'Disturber of the Peace'. They got it wrong. Bill was a disturber of complacency, of apathy, of cynicism, of syrupy sentimentality and bland religion. If you felt comfortable in any of those ways, then he disturbed your equilibrium and upset your ways of thinking about life and the Gospel. He was, rather than a disturber of the peace, an advocate for peace, the peace that passes all understanding. He believed in the reconciliation of nations and human beings. He committed himself to right the wrongs he saw that wounded people and kept us all from the truth.

It was my privilege to know Bill Coffin for over 40 years. Although I was never part of the inner circle of students from Yale Divinity School who became his close friends in the days of his chaplaincy at Yale, I was on the fringes of his ministry for over 8 years during that time in a variety of ways. I taught his children in Sunday School, although I doubt that they remember me because their lives intersected with hundreds of seminarians and students. Later, after graduation from Yale Divinity School, I served as an associate minister of one of the three churches on the New Haven Green, and there, with other colleagues, formed the New Haven Downtown Christian Ministry, an ecumenical effort at serving the poor, feeding the hungry, and in shared religious education. In that capacity, I worked as a colleague with Bill during those days when there were demonstrations about the Vietnam War and over Civil Rights issues (the Black Panther trial in New Haven). Those days during the 1960s and 1970s were formative of my entire life and ministry. I have tried to model my own preaching, teaching, pastoral style, and work for social justice on what I learned from William Sloane Coffin.

Long years passed, until we reestablished our friendship when we brought Bill to Kentucky to be our speaker for the annual assembly of the Kentucky Council of Churches, in October of 2001. He remained in Kentucky after that assembly and preached on Sunday morning at my little country church, New Union Christian Church in Woodford County. There were people who called members of my congregation to blast them for having that "radical" speak at their church.

Wherever he went and whenever he spoke, he left the people who heard him charged with a new vision of their potential to be something better than they were, and with a knowledge that they had the capacity, as ministers-as pastors, and preachers, as leaders-to change the world. His pastoral style was so personal that he connected directly to all kinds of people who may or may not have agreed with him. And he remembered them. He would, from time to time, in these last few years ask me about John David Dyche, a Louisville conservative commentator; or about Dan Rosenberg, the CEO of Three Chimneys Farm; or about Ben Chandler; or any number of other people with whom he interacted while in Kentucky. His pastoral capacity to remember people in their particularity stands in contradiction to those who say he was just a "disturber of the peace."

In his most recent book, Letters to a Young Doubter [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005], written after the time when doctors had told him he would probably be dead, he writes to "Tom", some of my favorite words about religion: "...religious faith often goes through three stages: conscious, self-conscious, and finally unconscious. That takes time. Only when you've reached the third stage are you free, and free perhaps to be really happy. Actually I would call religious life joyful rather than happy. Happiness connotes pleasure while joy is a deeper emotion that, far from excluding, can actually include pain. Joy often points to a profound sense of self-fulfillment: 'For this I was made and meant to be'-that's a joyful experience." [pp. 73-74]

In July, 2005, I pledged myself to take up the cause of nuclear disarmament. It's a crazy dream, but it is possible, and I believe it is possible because of the life and witness of a great preacher of the Christian Gospel. His intellect, his extraordinary gifts with words, music, poetry, and his faith were gigantic. I'll miss him terribly, but I know that his life and words will continue to inspire a new generation of pastors and prophets who believe in God's cause to redeem the world.