Newsweek Discovers 'Criminals' Exist, Just Not in Washington
When Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei labels Donald Trump a 'criminal,' claiming 'thousands' died in Iranian protests, Newsweek dutifully reports it. Curiously, this same journalistic rigor rarely applies to the revolving door of US officials, actual architects of wars leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Remember George W. Bush? He's a painter
now. Newsweek's enthusiasm for quoting 'thousands' dead in Iran contrasts sharply with its historical reluctance to critically examine, say, the nearly 400,000 direct war deaths from the post-9/11 wars, or the 3.7 million indirect deaths, as documented by the Costs of War Project at Brown University. It appears that 'criminal' is a title reserved for foreign adversaries, while US leaders,
regardless of their actions, are simply 'former presidents' or 'statesmen.' One might wonder how many 'war on terror' lives, ( actual, documented lives, unlike the unverified 'thousands' cited by Khamenei and echoed by Western media to demonize Iran), would need to be lost before a US president earned such a headline in Newsweek. A million? Two? Or is the threshold simply non-existent when the
'criminals' are domestic?