Webloggin » The Art of Interviewing an Anti-War Expert

Today, in my mail, I found our local free paper, the Pacific Sun. This week’s cover story is on the cover as “A Farewell to Arms : Iraq war veterans reject their mission– and now may have to fight for their own freedom.” In the body of the magazine, it gets the title “Why We Won’t Fight” : Fairfax author’s book spotlights Iraq soldiers who refused to return to ‘a terrible mistake.’

The cooing story profiles a book by Peter Laufer, whose made a job of being an anti-War activist since the 1960s. His current effort is a book entitled
“Mission Rejected : U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq“. It’s a love fest between Laufer and Jill Kramer, the interviewer, in which she throws him a series of softball questions that give him ample opportunity to expound on his favorite anti-War subjects.
Kramer gives her game away quickly, showing that she does not intend to challenge any of Laufer’s assumptions, when she poses this question:

It struck me as I was reading your book that the issues raised by the conscientious objectors are not just the immorality of wars in general or of killing in general, but specifically the illegality of this war that’s been based on lies. [Emphasis mine.]

Now, I don’t know about you, but when an interviewer asks a question like that, I’m going to assume that the interviewer believes that the Iraq war is an illegal war based on lies — a premise that, in her own mind, removes from her any obligation actually to challenge the subject of her interview. Kramer, playing the role of intrepid reporter, later lobbed this softball to Laufer:

I was very moved by the bravery of these soldiers. And it’s ironic because they’re being accused by war supporters of cowardice. I remember one of the men in the book who, despite his disgust with the war, chose to sign up as a sniper because he felt he’d be better able than somebody else to make moral decisions about whom to shoot.

With questions like that, the interview has all the credibility of those hagiographic star interviews in People Magazine or Vanity Fair.

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