…do the terrorist butchers who ran those places really even exist…?
Looking through the comments, the answer from some on the left is that evidently they don’t — meaning that at least this representative sampling of “progressives” (who, remember, love the troops — sometimes so damn much that they create stories about how the troops commit atrocities in an effort to have those troops pulled from theater before they really do commit the atrocities, a bit of preemptive salvation, or, if you prefer, a Bush Doctrine for the Soul) believes that the terrorist presence in Fallujah and elsewhere has been rather humane.
Or at least, not terribly efficient.
Beyond that benighted idiocy, however, is the real point of the Zen puzzle: if Americans — who the press believed needed to see 60 or so days of Abu Ghraib pictures on the front pages of US papers — aren’t allowed, by our media gatekeepers, to see who and what it is we’re fighting against, does their polled opinion about support for the war really amount to much?
And is controlling the outcome of such polls not the point of highlighting American mistakes — while softpeddling (from the perspective of multimedia) the ruthless savagery of our enemies in this fight — in the first place, all while pretending to take a moral highground in which we affect an editorial position of holding ourselves to higher standards than those of our enemies?
I know how Nonie Darwish would answer that. But then, by having fled real Islamic regimes — and presuming to speak as an Americanized Muslim “moderate” — she’s lost the authenticity necessary to afford her credibility in such matters.
So we’ll just have to wait to hear what Adam Gadahn or President Achmandoieverhatejewsajad has to say.
I have proposed a means of standardizing the measures of various dissimilar types of stupidity-
The ICU, or International Corrie Unit, which is equivalent to 1000 Megastoopids.
Circulate at will.
Maybe we over rationalize these things. Maybe the press has always just been really, really smitten with cold blooded mass murderers. They haven’t exactly been really keen on confronting any of them since as far back as Stalin… so long as said murderers nihlistic, death worshipping, blood soaked philosophy had even a hint of leftism about it or in the alternative opposed the United States. In light of all this shouldn’t we at least wonder whether the press’s support for totalitarian mass murderers has been knowing and intentional for a long, long time?
a Bush Doctrine for the Soul
I love that.
What’s the Muslim equivalent of “Uncle Tom”? And can you use it on a black Muslim like Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
Wasn’t the press willfully ignoring the legion of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese atrocities during the later stages of the campaign?
Parallels: The other white meat!
Who was that CNN reporter from 2002, who was scolded by his boss for not reading Saddam’s propaganda with enough feeling?
Now, now, Mr Sanity, It was all for the greater good of continued access! and … for the ultimate protection of their workers and their families. Protecting workers and their families as well as access allowed them to continue to report the news that they self censored to insure continued access so that they could continue to provide censored news so that …
Oooooooo … so dizzy … [plop]
From the NRO link in Jeff’s post:
From Melanie Philips:
I think I can guess how the shame-culture Hamas movement views the Western peace movement.
The non-pictures of the slaughterhouses will be one of the defining historical documents of these times.
I thought the non-reporting on the Ukrainian genocide was a defining historical event, and the non reporting on the depredations of Pol Pot, and the non reporting on the crimes of Mao, and the non reporting on the crimes of Che and Fidel and the non reporting on the crimes of Saddam, and the non reporting on the crimes of Arafat, and the non reporting on the crimes of Assad, and the non reporting on the crimes of Kim Il Jong or the non reporting of the crimes of the UN. The media has taken a part in a lot of defining historical events, to the tune of tens or million of victims, most of them third worlders. Yet the same press constantly flogs western values, western governments and western civilization, all the while covering up the next pile of brown, underfed bodies. I swear, if one of the kids in my family makes a move towards journalism school I will admonish him to do something honorable by comparison… the porn industry maybe.
Drudge used to be more helpful with respect to this sort of thing.
“SUCH PEOPLE have been heavily influenced by less establishment voices purporting to be in the business of “conflict resolution.—
They will resolve conflict in the path of least resistance in order to have a “resolution” to the “conflict”. And they hope to be dead before the crocodile gets to “resolve” them. To paraphrase, ‘If you think there is nothing worth fighting for, then you have given a true measure of your own worth.’
Jeff,
Ms. Darwish fled in the at the slightest sniff of the repressionist hell we have had to endure since Bush stole Gore’s birthright.
Progressives here in the USA by stark contrast have chosen to rage against the machine by picketing the house four doors down from Nancy Pelosi’s.
So I see your cowardly faux Muslim and raise it by one courageous Code Pinkster
Oh yeah…
you are most welcome for the clam chowder…. sorry the oyster shooter thing didn’t work out so well for the laundry crew.
I’d wondered why the hazmat team had rolled out….
The facts are right, but the narrative’s all wrong.
For people so concerned about “The Facts,” they’re quite cavalier about deciding what is news for the rest of us. You could float a warship on this irony, maybe even stop a bullet with it. It’s certainly thick enough to deflect any real thought from their tiny little noggins.
You don’t need a tin-foil helmet when you’re wrapped up tightly in your own blinding narrative. Blinders? Hell, they’ve got frikkin’ brick walls attached. Bunker-quality reality impediments. Mutes the screams of the dying quite well. I can see why they have them.
Look, if we don’t ignore this type of thing we’ll lose the market for the big-budget, post-atrocity, navel gazing, oscar-worthy movie on the subject.
Think about it, if we send the troops in we’re making Rambo. If we don’t we make The Killing Fields, it’s all about ART baby.
Oh! Zen Master, Jeff! Look at the moon, not the finger pointing at the moon!
I’m disgusted by the media’s lazy daoism: the MSM is not only pointing at the “Moon” (Bush’s “Failed War” in Iraq), but they are asking us to look at the finger (their polls) which point at their “Moon,” as well as the “Moon” they’re pointing to, at the same friggin’ time.
Vely, vely unzen.
The linked JYB post was interesting and it asked some important questions, but I couldn’t help but notice that it was three years old.
I’m just saying is all.
LMC,
I rather hope to star in my own private version of “The Best Years of Our Lives” rather than “Rambo”. I’ll take the role of the banker/drunk who had been infantry in the Pacific.
Of course, sitting in the Fort Riley PX and typing comments on Jeff’s blog ain’t quite slogging across Guadalcanal. I may have to wait until I get to An-Numiniyah to get such grand thoughts about m’self.