Posted by aogSunday, 07 October 2007 at 09:50 TrackBack Ping URL

Among the fallout from the Haditha incident is yet another example of how the NY Times is completely unable to conceptualize the USA at war except via atrocities committed by American troops. It is a fact of human cognition that one can rarely think of an abstract concept like “war”, but instead thinks of various reified archetypes of the concept. People with clue have a set of archetypes that contrast in order to better illuminate the essence of the concept. For example, the concept “color” would have archetypes in various colors, rather than just a particular shade of red.

On the other hand, there is the NY Times staff. Its members seemsto have as theid set of archetypes for the “America at War” concept just one — My Lai. It does take much imagination (but apparently more thanthe NY Times staff can muster) to see how limited and distorting that is. But it does explain why that staff latches on to incidents like Haditha because it seems to be the only way they can actually think about the war. The one bright side is that this shows that no matter how disparaging one is about the NY Times, they can still manage to render it not hyperbole.

Sources —

Gateway Pundit has a good selection of quotes from the NY Times illustrating this narrow thinking focused on selecting the “defining atrocity” of the Iraq invasion. Of course, a “defining instance” is simply the single archetype that represents the concept and only an American committed atrocity can do that for the Times. The near endless series of atrocities committed by the Caliphascists is, for the Times, simply irrelevant background, not defining of anything.

The Democracy Project has this indicting quote about Investigating Officer Ware

Mr. Solis said, “we’re left with what appear to be very reduced charges.” He added: “He’s aggressive, and he seems to make his judgments without regard for anything but the law.

As the author notes, the Times treats this as an indictment, rather than praise. I agree that it ends up being an indictment, not of Ware but of the NY Times.