NY Times Attacks Machetes and Validates Bombs

The New York Times article, U.S. Aided a Failed Plan to Rout Ugandan Rebels tells yet another tale of U.S. folly in Foreign Policy. The U.S. helped pay for the Ugandan government to wage an attack on the Lord's Resistance Army, a 20 year old group of insurgents who originally formed to overthrow the official government. When the attack failed, the rebels dispersed and ran from town to town killing, raping, and slaughtering people. Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, and other international aid organizations have criticized the violence of Uganda.

The trouble is that the New York times plays out a misguided line: people who kill with bombs are humane and people who rape and kill with machetes are monsters. As the New York times has failed to tell the limb severed, skin peopled, children raped accounts of the U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems strange that they focus on the specific acts of violence committed by the Lords Resistance Army?

From the testimonies of soldiers coming back to the United States at the Winter Soldier Hearings, U.S. violence has been as atrocious, only the media failed to report on it.

The Times insistence on focusing on the brutality of Ugandans and failure to note the incredibly barbaric violence of our own government is a testament to its role in concealing U.S. violence and demonizing Africans with less expensive and destructive weapons.

Categorically separating the violence of the Lords Resistance Army from the violence of the American Army, the NY Times aids and abets white supremacist, American terrorism and maintains the racist illusion that Africans are "more" violent than Americans. I have no doubt that in the last 20 years the U.S. Government has more blood, rape, and incarceration on its hands than any insurgent group in Africa. The difference is that the American Army is validated by the New York Times.

Above, I have included Nick Ut's classic photograph taken in June 1972 of Kim Phuc, a young girl running from her village after it was attacked by U.S. napalm. Ut's photograph
represents the most powerful of journalism, an image that has spread around the world. Rather than censoring the impact of American violence, the photo reveals it.

If only the Times maintained this standard of journalism today.

What are your thoughts on the situation in Uganda, Iraq, and Afghanistan? What are your feelings about the New York Times coverage?