The media fails again in Iraq
Topic: The War in Iraq
6/21/06 - As the media continues to simultaneously complain about the death of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and trumpet the deaths of American soldiers recently found dead, one thing remains clear: They have failed. But not the soldiers. The media.

The media has failed to produce an integrated worldview, giving us a twisted fantasy land where killing a ruthless enemy leader is a sign that America is losing the war, and then saying as well that our soldiers being killed is also a sign of losing.

How can a victory and casualties both be signs of losing?

Make no mistake we ARE losing the war -- not the war in Iraq, but the bigger war we have not yet begun to fight, of which Iraq is a small part, but the real players are Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, and those who equip them, such as Russia, Communist China and North Korea, who despite their bolshevik ideas will gladly open a nuclear pandora's box by selling weapons and arms to terrorist states. Russia is not included by accident; like France it has been implicated in arming our enemies even when we are at war. However unlike France it's activities are big enough of scale to make it an advarsary. France, typical of "old Europe", has opposed the U.S. and supplied our enemies as well, but largely out of fear of it's vast unassimilated and violent Muslim population. The basic difference: "old Europe" (typified by France) has opposed the U.S. based on a motley combination of short term greed, long term angst, and a philosophical opposition to Yankee self-assertion that they see as clashing with the more "refined" supposed alternative of U.N. talk shops and appeasement -- as demonstrated by Europe's "no plan" for dealing with a nuclear Iran: talk to them and hope they listen. Russia on the other hand, like North Korea and China, sees a strategic long term goal in helping our enemies. Though no longer officially communist, many old time communist leaders, like Mr. Putin, a former KGB official, are pulling Russia's strings, and openly long for the days of the Soviet empire. This puts the supposedly reformed former USSR in the same class as Norht Korea or China.

And what of Iraq?

In Iraq, the media has on one hand, hyped Iraqi civilian casualties by terrorists or Americans, then hyped American casualties by terrorists hiding amonst civilians. The result is news broadcasts and editorials screaming that we are losing the war every time Iraqi civilians or American troops get killed; but then, the moment one stray bullet goes anywhere but to a card-carrying poster thug for Islamo-terror, the media screams bloody murder that Americans are making things worse. The result is newscasts that feverishly hype the problem -- civilian and allied casualties at the hands of terrorists -- while denying the only solution, nbamely attacking the terrorists, because it may risk harm to nearby civilians and lead to more "anti-American sentiment." Really, and the anti-American sentiment from America's own newsrooms doesn't?

The news coverage following the deaths of the two latest dead U.S. soldiers is instructive. The media is still obsessing over a supposed "massacre" of civilians by American troops, which, before all the facts were in, was colored as an "outrage". The killing and torture of captured U.S. troops, by comparison, is considered a sympathetic news item, which will spurr sadness, but the outrage is lacking. This could not be further from the truth.

Even if the supposed "massacre" took place, it was not a deliberate buthcerey, but simply what sometimes happens in wars when one is fighting an enemy using unconventional tactics. Even the U.S. troops' most vehement detractors admit the incident began when a terrorist attacked U.S. troops. If, in responding to this attack, the U.S. troops killed some civilians, it is regretable, and even sad. But it is *not* cause for any outrage directed against the troops, who were not trying to kill civilians but simply get to the enemy.

The murder of captured American troops, however, *is* cause for outrage. The enemy deliberately butchered two prisoners who were on the side of right. Even the most anti-war protesters trying to characterize American detention of terrorists and terror suspects in the worst possible light, could not dream up something like this. America has been accused of wrongfully detaining terrorists by the activists and anti-war sect. Thye U.S. has even been accused by some of torture, though most the supposed torture hardly rises beyond the level of what most college fraternity pledges are sudjected to. However, even amongst these vehement anti-war voices, no one has accused the U.S. of torturing peopel to death and cutting off heads simply to "make a point".

The terrorists, by contrast, are known to do just that. From Afghanistan, where an American soldier was killed after being captured in the beginning of the war, to Wall Street Journalist Daniel Pearl, to Nick Berg and other Americans in Iraq, the enemy in this war -- the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists -- is notorious for gratuitous violence.

Unlike the alleged massacre, or the earlier "prison scandal" in Iraq, these acts are not things trumped up by media to score political talking points. They are fact and they happen every day. But they are not somethign else, either: they are not violations of rules or laws or social conventions either. They are the norm for the enemy. And it isn't limited to cutting westerners' heads off.

And who can forget the Palestinian summer camps and music videos that teach young Arab children to hate the West and worship "suicide bombers" and "martyrs"? Even Saddam Hussein, whose government seemed more like an old Soviet Block type of dictatorship, and only appealed to Islam when it served his purposes, was known to put people through wood shredders. Alive. This is somethign anybody should keep in mind when they argue that things in Iraq are worse now for the Iraqi people now that Saddan is gone, because they don't have the stability of his dictatorship. Of coruse, the altruistic goal of helping "the Iraqi people" isn't our underlying motive, or goal: That goal is self defense against a ruthless terroristic, Islamic threat. But the fact that in helping ourselves we help others, should not be surprising. We didn't set out to liberate Germans or Japanese in World War II either, but that was the result. Freedom begets freedom; our freedom to survive, their freedom from tyranny.

The media, however, forgets too easily. It wasn't them got put through a woodchipper, ancd most of them can't recall any war prior to Vietnam, even if they are old enough. So they ignore this picture.

The results are negative in the extreme. Politicians in the West, unlike dictators, are impacted by public opinion. That the public opinion is built on the alternate universe projected by a mislead, and misleading, press, is unfortunate and despicable, but doesn't change this fact: It alters the political climate.

Suddenly, after long trying, the media has manufactured their Iraqi "Vietnam", complete with a massacre, the very suggestion of which is greeted harshly by most Americans, for the reason that despite the media's projections, the vast majority of American citizens, like her soldiers and unlike the enemy, are not brutes.

In the meantime, the threat grows. Fighting a war is not a "massacre". Yet, without risking those oft-feared civilian casualties, and thereby risking the title "massacre", there is no way to fight a war. Any war. In Iraq, or anywhere else. But the media probably know that. The question is, have they bothered to examine what will happen to us -- and them -- if we lose?