The media seem to have come up with a formula that would make any war in history unwinnable and unbearable: They simply emphasize the enemy's victories and our losses.
Losses suffered by the enemy are not news, no matter how large, how persistent, or how clearly they indicate the enemy's declining strength.
What are the enemy's victories in Iraq? The killing of Americans and the killing of Iraqi civilians. Both are big news in the mainstream media, day in and day out, around the clock.
On the contrary, the American deaths in Iraqi are a fraction of what they have been in other wars in our history.
Utter ignorance of history enables any war with any casualties to be depicted in the media as an unmitigated disaster.
Even after Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of World War II, die-hard Nazi guerrilla units terrorized and assassinated both German officials and German civilians who cooperated with Allied occupation authorities.
But nobody suggested that we abandon the country. Nobody was foolish enough to think that you could say in advance when you would pull out or that you should encourage your enemies by announcing a timetable.
There has never been the slightest doubt that we would begin pulling troops out of Iraq when it was feasible. Only time and circumstances can tell when that will be. And only irresponsible politicians and the media think otherwise.
I had this same conversation at a poker game a few months ago and again last night at a Christmas Party. Many smart people I know haven't considered war historically and how one-sided our victory in Iraq has been.
They seem to be hung up on the causalities, but none of them can name an amount of casualties that are acceptable for this particular mission, though they all imply that some level of casualties are acceptable, because Clinton's Bosnia action was justifiable and we lost men there.
It takes five minutes for them to get around to Vietnam, but they don’t know the amount of men that died there in comparison. Ultimately, the war is a disaster not because we haven’t achieved anything, but because the media decided the WMD issue was important instead of Saddam violating the Cease Fire of 1991 and breaking the 17 U.N. Resolutions.
It would be fun to write a series of articles framed as news reports about the 1940s in which we took nothing but facts and made Roosevelt look like some sort of blood thirsty conqueror. It would be a snap.
1 comment:
What's even more obscene is how the objectors have never had anything to say about what they would have done differently. They are waiting until all is said and done to say what they would have done differently. When 4+ years of hindsight doesn't make you any smarter, you are just not very smart.
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