More on the Newsweek Gaffe by tgirsch

First, this sums it up nicely:

I have no interest either in defending Newsweek or in justifying interrogators’ methods, but let’s be blunt: Those rampaging in Afghanistan didn’t need a reason to riot; they needed an excuse. That the media provided one is regrettable, but that regret needs to be tempered by perspective and objectivity.

Instead, much of the anger the past several days has been directed not at the Islamist extremists who went berserk, but at the reporters who apparently got the story wrong. What if they’d been right? Should Newsweek not have reported it? Would the riots have been justified if someone had flushed a Quran?

This mirrors what I’ve been saying since this story broke: the people who blame the riots on the Newsweek story don’t care whether or not the story was true, although they take great pleasure in ridiculing the fact that it turns out not to be. If they had their way, we’d never print anything critical of US actions, or the actions of troops, because this would “endager” someone or something.

Some have even called for news sources to stop relying on single, unnamed sources. Except that if we did that, we may never have found out about Watergate (which would probably suit conservatives just fine).

Unfortunately, the above-linked article also makes this claim:

Without disrespecting true believers of Islam, one also could debate the relative miseries of seeing our favorite scripture disappear into the plumbing versus, say, watching airplanes fly into buildings, killing thousands of innocents. Remember, these are terrorist suspects captured after 9-11, not kidnapped members of an Afghan boys choir.

This is wrong on a number of levels. First, if our alleged Qu’ran flushing was the only thing we’d ever done, even recently, to offend Muslims, she might have a point, but that’s simply not the case. Right or wrong, we’ve invaded two sovereign Muslim nations (so far), resulting in far more Muslim deaths than 9/11. Secondly, to refer to the people detained at Guantanamo Bay as “terrorist suspects” is to use a pretty vague definition of the terms “terrorist” and “suspects.” Unless I’m mistaken (always possible), most of the detainees are “enemy combatants” captured in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, not terrorist suspects.

As an added note, it should come as no surprise that despite all the right-wing rhetoric and vitriol, the riots were not related to the Newsweek article:

According to initial reports, the situation in Jalalabad began on May 10 with peaceful student protests reacting to a report in Newsweek magazine that U.S. military interrogators questioning Muslim detainees at the Guantanamo detention center “had placed Quran s on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book.” By the following day the protests in the city had turned violent with reports of several individuals killed, dozens wounded, and widespread looting of government, diplomatic and nongovernmental assets.

However, Myers said an after-action report provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, indicated that the political violence was not, in fact, connected to the magazine report.

[Emphasis Added.]