"alleged insurging rebel militants of non-specific ideology"

Ah, Mark Steyn. He's not on my extreamly short blogroll for nothing.

Interestingly, he touches on an issue I made a few days ago about the intelligensia and wishful thinking. Steyn writes:

"I underestimated multiculturalism. After 9/11, I assumed the internal
contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain: that a
cult of "tolerance" would in the end founder against a demographic so
cheerfully upfront in their intolerance. Instead, Islamic "militants" have
become the highest repository of multicultural pieties. So you're nice about
gays and Native Americans? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant,
but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure
to the multiculti- masochists. And so Islamists who murder non-Muslims in
pursuit of explicitly Islamic goals are airbrushed into vague, generic
"rebel forces." You can't tell the players without a scorecard, and that's
just the way the Western media intend to keep it."

Indeed. Just like the academics, they have a way they want to interpret the world and they won't let the facts get in the way of that. So why is that? In this case, I think Steyn is right to attribute it to multiculturalism. People have trouble moving the particlular (metropolitan) to the general (cosmopoilitan) without becoming hostile to the parochialism of the particular. This is because people have a hard time with "and" and an easy time with "or". They don't like competing goods, and prefer a good/bad binary opposition. So when people move from metropoloitanism to cosmopolititanism, they frequently become hostile to the metropol. As such, by embracing the broader world, they become anti-American. For journalists, who aspire to be people of words and ideas, this means rejecting the American view of things, not so much that they root for the other side (such as some Leftists do - a habit picked up when there was a Soviet system to root for). So they seek neutral words in order not to take sides. Hence the "alleged insurging rebel militants of non-specific ideology."

There are two alternatives. One is the "and" position. All people are good, universalist yeah, and up with people, and America is good, wants these things in its words and deeds. Some people see the Iraq was as Americans against Iraqis, others see the Iraq war as Amerians with Iraqis against tyranny of various forms.

Another alternative is the "truth" position. In this case, you regard both American claims and other claims as just that, claims, and seek out the truth based on the best evidence. Further, you describe things as they are, regardless of who is pleased or displeased. You need a certain amount of sophistry to do this, because you need to hold all the competing ideas in your head as viable claims to be tested. To do this well you need to avoid impeaching the good evidence with the bad. For example, just because it is in figure X's advantage to say Z, doesn't mean Z isn't true. Second, you need to be able to recognize partial truths. Even if you are unwilling to say that Z is true, does X have a point? Is there some truth, a truth that may need nuance, but a truth that can't just be rejected. Too often the press reports government statements as if they were just claims absent any truth, or possessed of some unknowability. Then evidence is assembled to argue for the opposite point, even when that looks like special pleading to the informed.