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June 01, 2006
The Media's Got A Feveh, And The Only Cure Is... More Haditha!I had a conversation the other day about why this seems to be one of the first wars in American history without heroes. Of course I know there are heroes in this war. Tens of thousands of them. But it seems strange that the media doesn't note the heroism of particular soldiers in particular engagements. It's as if non-covert military missions are the only secrets the media is willing to keep. They only seem interested in stories about soldiers-as-victims. Those who died; those who lost limbs. Important stories, I admit. But what about stories about soldiers-as-heroes, or at least soldiers-as-soldiers? I sort of embargoed the whole story about the CBS newscrew being attacked because I was damned if I was going to write about their bravery and sacrifice when CBS refused to do the same for soldiers. Those reporters were brave. But you know what? There are 150,000 plus Americans who are brave, too, plus a lot of Iraqi soldiers. Get in line. On the other hand, there's Abu Ghraib and now Haditha, the two most famous "battles" of the War on Terror. Isn't that strange? If the media's core mission is to report the truth -- good, bad, and indifferent -- why is it that we know so much about Abu Ghraib and Haditha and so little about... well, the thousand or so victorious operations that did not result in criminal charges being brought against American servicemen? Meanwhile, there's this. Which you won't be hearing about, except on the Internet. The terrorists, members of Fatah’s own Al Aqsa Brigades, took it upon themselves to make a favorable impression and today was the day they kicked off their public relations campaign. It gets better. See, the wife of the killed terrorist was said to be a lover of this alleged informant, so the Brigades killed her too. Wait-- no they didn't. Her family pleaded with the brigades to spare her life... so that they, her family, could kill her. The woman's own brother put a bullet through his head. The old schtick is that stories like this aren't publicized, and stories like Haditha are, because we have "higher standards" for ourselves than we do for others. Well, for one thing, I didn't vote for that proposition. For another thing, even if it's true that Americans should hold America to a higher standard, I don't think the majority of Americans would agree that America is to be excortiated constantly for Abu Ghraib and Haditha -- despite the fact that the guilty have been/will be charged and punished -- and yet we don't even discuss the outrages of the Palestinians. There is a "higher standard," and then there is an absurdly anti-American double-standard. This old Weekly Standard piece has much to say on the subject. It's called "Punitive Liberalism," and the subhed is "What Reagan Vanquished." I think we can safely throw a question-mark up after that subhed, as a B-movie does after "The End" title to show that the vanquished villain may not be quite dead yet.
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