Chris Hedges on the Role of the Media in Perpetuating ‘Endless War in the Middle East’

Over the weekend, possible terrorist attacks in Manhattan, Minnesota and New Jersey startled the nation and renewed the political debate on national security and foreign policy. Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges, who has years of experience reporting on the Middle East, joined Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network for an interview to discuss the political reactions to this recent spate of violent events.

At the beginning of the interview, Noor asks Hedges how the presidential nominees should respond to these types of attacks. “Their response should be the end of the occupation in the Middle East and the cessation of saturation bombing by drones and military aircrafts and missiles in parts of Iraq and Syria and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia,” Hedges responds. He goes on to explain how decades of foreign policy decisions made by both parties have created the circumstances for terrorist attacks:

The Clintons, along with Barack Obama, along with George W. Bush, are the people who created this process of endless war in the Middle East. … The rhetoric of a Trump, the rhetoric of a Clinton is largely irrelevant to [Islamic State]. They don’t need it. People in cities like Raqqah are being attacked by sorties of U.S. jets almost on a daily basis. Militarized drones are terrorizing people in whole parts of the Middle East. Cruise missiles [are being] launched primarily from ships onto Libya and other parts of Iraq and Syria. The rhetoric is the least of it. The kind of widespread killing that’s been going on now for 15 years has radicalized whole segments and is kind of the most potent recruiting weapon that the jihadists have.

But, Hedges argues, the past several decades of U.S. foreign policy are not the only factor behind the increase in domestic terrorist attacks; he says that the media are also to blame. “I think that we’re woefully unaware, and it’s not our fault—it’s the fault of the press,” he says, before arguing that “people who would critique our military adventurism abroad” are “just not heard.”

Watch the entire interview below:

—Posted by Emma Niles