The Inconvenient American

by Jim Washburn

I wrote a letter to the L.A. Times. I do that two or three times a year, and just as often the Times deigns not to print them. Perhaps they have a policy of not running letters by people who have written for the Times, or maybe it’s just a policy against running letters that make them look stupid.

That’s a recurring theme to my letters; that the Times has printed something that makes the good people there look like stupidheads, or, worse, seems to presume that their readers are stupidheads.

Since you won’t see it in the Times, here is my most recent letter:

Why is it headline news for weeks in the Times when an American citizen is held captive by Iran or North Korea, yet when 19-year-old student and US citizen Furkan Dogan is killed in international waters by Israeli commandos, it passes nearly without mention in the Times?

It is a far more grave and irremediable thing to be shot five times—with four of the bullets delivered at close range to the head—by agents of a foreign power than to be confined, yet the Times' already thin coverage of the flotilla raid had made only three brief references to Dogan (who held dual US/Turkish citizenship), and now (June 7, Israel rejects any external raid inquiry) the paper's article neither names him nor mentions his dual nationality, saying only that all of the nine who were killed were from Turkey.

To all appearances, it looks like the place and manner of Dogan's death has made him such an inconvenient American that he is undeserving of the respect and attention the Times would accord other US citizens in such a tragic situation. It says a lot for the health of Israeli democracy that that you will find more complete coverage of the flotilla raid, and a more robust argument as to its morality, going on in the Israeli press than seems possible here.

Jim Washburn
Costa Mesa

That’s right, I’m still bugged about Israel’s raid on the Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla last week. Why? Because Israel’s military might is funded in good portion by the United States. If we paid for some of Israel’s bullets, we are in part responsible for where they end up. If that “where” happens to be in the skull of an American citizen, fired at a range of less than 18 inches by agents of a foreign power, then both governments require the full scrutiny of the press to compel them to justify the extrajudicial taking of life. And if the justification doesn’t bear up, the scrutiny needs to be maintained until the policies that allowed such an injustice are changed.

(A correction: In the letter I said that Dogan was shot four times in the head, echoing initial reports. The forensic report said he was shot once in the face, once in the back of the head, once in the back and twice in the legs. The nine people killed were hit by a total of 30 rounds.)

Let’s change a couple of names: How would you feel if, in international waters, masked Sudanese commandos raided a vessel of humanitarian aid headed for Darfur, killing nine unarmed persons, and one was a U.S. citizen living abroad, but with a more typically American name like Ellie May Poundcake or George Clooney? If the Sudanese government told us to bug out, and that we could trust them to investigate themselves, would you shrug and say, “Well, the Sudanese must have had a good reason. They have their national security to think of.” Or would you think, “Who the fuck are they to be killing an American on the high seas? Where’s Teddy Roosevelt when we need him?”

Some will say that Dogan wasn’t much of an American, since he hadn’t lived in the United States since the age of two. But lots of other Americans live abroad and are still considered Americans. For instance, there’s a young woman living in Italy named Amanda Cox. Perhaps you’ve heard of her, since her ex-pat ass was in the news constantly for months, and as recently as last Friday she grabbed a big headline on CNN’s website because there was possible new evidence in her case.

Aww, but of course that’s going to be news, some would argue, because her trial was so unfair. Maybe so, but it was a hell of a lot more fair than the one Furkan Dogan got, and, scarcely a week dead, the Times has already forgotten him. If it’s new evidence our press wants, how about the evidence inside the video cameras and cell phones that were seized from all the passengers on the flotilla ships, which the Israeli military is keeping under wraps? (They’d also blocked communications from the ships during the raid, so that their edit of events would be the only version people saw.)

We should mourn all unnecessary loss of life, but the U.S. press should pay extra attention when it’s a U.S. citizen, because we’re the guys who invented that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness stuff. If a foreign government we’re deeply partnered with can so glibly deprive to a U.S. citizen of his life, we are all of us a little more alienated from our inalienable rights.

Israelis in support of aid flotilla

Even closer to home is the matter of Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been targeted for killing by our government. He is almost for sure an asshole, but is also a U.S. citizen, born and raised in New Mexico. Al-Aulaqi is suspected of having prior knowledge of the 9-11 attacks; of having corresponded, though not necessarily inspiring, accused Ft. Hood murderer Nidal Hasan; of being complicit in the attempted underwear bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner; and of taking cuts in line to see The Lion King. The thing is, he’s suspected; nothing’s been proven in court, which is the difficult but diligent way we used to do things in this nation of laws. Courts do have a handy function of establishing guilt, and one need look no further than the cells of Guantanamo to see what happens when we bypass the courts: we wound up locking up innocent goatherds, village idiots and anyone else our allies could sell us.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t whack al-Aulaqi, just that if the United States is going to make such a radical departure from 234 years of policy (yeah, yeah, of course we’ve killed lots of folks on the sly; I’m talking about official policy) it shouldn’t happen without substantial soul searching and public discussion.

It’s the same thing with our using laser-guided missiles from drone planes remotely controlled by people in air-conditioned rooms in Nevada to kill Afghans and Pakistanis who’ve never seen indoor plumbing. The program slid in among Bush’s many perfidies, and has been vastly expanded under Obama. It constitutes an immense shift in both our procedural and moral approach to warfare, as well as to international law, yet it has never really been subjected to public debate.

“Oh, but we shouldn’t be questioning our leaders in the thick of war!” Yes we should, unless you want us to keep invading the wrong countries, with thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted. We’re all in this. When our bombs kill some Afghani’s kid, he’s going to rightly blame all Americans, and when the kid’s siblings hate us for life, it’ll be hard to blame them.

Sure, modern terrorism confronts us with a new kind of enemy and a new kind of warfare, but that’s no reason to throw our rights and responsibilities away. Look at Israel: The era of suicide bombers and IEDs is nothing new to them, yet you’ll find a passionate debate in its press about the merits and morals of its government’s actions.

It is because of that internal debate (which last week included a group of Israeli Navy reserve officers criticizing the attack), abetted by the persistence of the non-U.S. international press, that, at this writing, it appears the Israeli government has been pressured into accepting an independent international investigation of the flotilla attack. It is also thanks to Israeli activists that a document was released last week revealing that Israel’s embargo of the Gaza was not undertaken for its previously claimed security reasons, but as “economic warfare” against Gaza’s Hamas leadership. I didn’t read about that in the Times, either, but you can read it here.

I know people who think there is a conspiracy to keep our news dumb and flowing along predetermined lines. Having worked in the newsrooms of two major papers, I very much doubt that. It’s just a lot of individual editors running scared. No one wants to break a story that runs too counter to the orthodoxy, tells people truths they don’t want to hear, or that takes too many words to explain.

I came to recognize there’s what I call an editor’s Braille: When they’re reading an article, it’s not the words they’re concentrating on so much as little bumps they might contain that could derail their careers. If they miss any bumps, they’ll likely get an earful about from the advertising department about driving away advertisers, now that the lines between news and advertising at papers have become so blurred.

Speaking of advertisers, my final observation about the Times today is, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH DONALD T. STERLING? He’s the guy who seems to be in every other Times ad, either celebrating himself for his philanthropy or trying to lease you a luxurious apartment. That’s all well and good: What’s the point in being rich if you can’t gloat?

But last week he ran a half-page ad hawking his Sterling Long Beach Ocean Towers, the implied message of which seemed to be that if you move there you are going to get laid like crazy. Seven women are pictured in the ad: one in a bathrobe; one getting a topless massage; and five who appear to have their hands full keeping their breasts from bursting out of their confining bikini tops. Won’t someone help them?

There’s one woman—windblown blonde hair, thumb crooked in her red bikini bottom to inch it down enough to show that she probably doesn’t have lice—and the way she’s Photoshopped overlarge into a photo of the towers, it looks like her cameltoe is as commodious as the foyer. They’ve also got the ocean swell Photoshopped in behind her, looking like it’s about to wash both her and the tower away. Lease today. Life is fleeting, my friends.

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