Sir Winston Churchill
The assorted major media outlets are all agog that combat deaths in Iraq have eclipsed the number of Americans killed on 9/11. What, exactly, one death toll has to do with the other escapes me. The argument of these esteemed, ever-so learned, honorable men and women seems to be that a war is only worth waging if it is relatively bloodless. For the most part, those bleating this news have never served, nor even know anyone who has. They inhabit a strata of society that is insulated from sacrifice, and the messy business of war. The rough men who stand ready in the night to visit violence upon our enemies are not welcome at the polite dinner parties at which the Fourth Estate holds court. Seen in that light, how these honorable men and women can persist in claiming to support the troops is beyond my limited comprehension. "Support the Troops! Bring them home!" they bellow; this despite the fact that the military is an all volunteer force. The combat troops know exactly for what they are fighting. It does not concern these valiant soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines that deaths in combat have exceeded the number murdered by Islamic extremists on 9/11. Those killed in action were their friends and brothers-in-arms, not the faceless number the press so avidly touts. The supposed rationale for marking the occasion of each warrior's death is to honor them, but it is, in fact, just the opposite. It cheapens their passing, and ignores the larger historical significance of their sacrifice.
2,117 American servicemen were killed at Pearl Harbor. During the course of our campaign to avenge that cowardly attack, 405,399 men were killed in action in the various theaters of operation. That number includes 1,465 killed on the beaches of Normandy; 6,821 killed taking the island of Iwo Jima; and an estimated 19,000 killed during The Battle of the Bulge. If we accept the current logic, we should have given up the fight for freedom sometime in 1942. Wait, wait, the respected men and women of the press will scream when confronted with these numbers. You can't compare Iraq to World War II. This despite the fact that they do just that when discussing the time we have spent fighting in Iraq. How many times have you heard some talking head say, "We have already spent more time in Iraq than we spent winning World War II." Yet, when you compare the sacrifice we expended to win that war somehow the paradigm shifts. "Iraq didn't attack us!" Neither did Germany. "Hitler declared war on us." So did bin Laden. "Al-Qaeda wasn't in Iraq when we invaded." They are now, and Saddam Hussein did have material ties to various terrorist organizations, if not operational one's. "Hussein didn't knock down the towers on 9/11." No, but he would have given any terrorist group that asked for it material and/or financial support. In fact, a November 3, 2006, New York Times article reported that as late as 2002 Hussein was still working on a nuclear weapons program, and had acquired the trigger for a nuclear device. How did they know that? It was on a website set up by the federal government. The feds had posted 48,000 boxes of documents captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and asked for help translating them. Upon being given notice that the Times intended to publish an article about the trigger, the feds took down the site. That was just another example, in a long string of actions, of the hallowed Paper of Record seeking to influence public opinion and policy. They effectively denied us another tool to fight the terrorists who would destroy us. One wonders how these same gentlemen of the press would report the D-Day, or Battle of the Bulge casualty figures today.
The Fourth Estate seeking to influence the opinion of the masses is not new. During the Civil War, newspapers routinely called for restraint, and are even credited with helping to instigate the draft riots in the Northeast. President Lincoln was excoriated by the press on a daily basis. In fact, he would probably recognize some of the rhetoric currently aimed at President Bush. It has not changed much in 142 years. What has changed is the notion of hope. By portraying the current killed in action figures almost in a vacuum, the major press outlets have undermined hope. Many people and entities deserve the ignominy of dividing us, but none more so than the press. They have reported the figures without the greater historical context they demand. Each death of an American service member pains me, but seen through the prism of history they pale in comparison. During President Lincoln's term in office more Americans were killed in combat than in all the wars the country ever fought combined; up to, and including Vietnam. Think of that in the context of the number lost during World War II. Most Americans still do not anyone killed in combat. During World War II, everyone did. That fact alone begs the question: why then does the press report on the war the way it does?
All Americans, regardless of social position, or political stripe, have opinions and will, in the right circumstance, act in their own best interests. This is not always a bad thing, but in the case of a supposedly objective press it is anathema to our principles and ideals. At some point, the major media outlets became brazenly convinced of their own importance. They ceased reporting the who, what, where, when, and how of news, and concentrated all their energies on the why. The front page of nearly every newspaper has become a repository for what the editors believe we should think. This has come about not through some nefarious cabal of media moguls, but rather through the reporters all being graduated from the same type of school. Gone is the hard-boiled, ham-fisted, hard-drinking newsman who wanted to get the scoop. He has been replaced by the perfectly coiffed, impeccably tailored celebrity who wants to "make a difference." These journalists are, for the most part, left leaning; never mind that they are all registered independents. Poll after poll has shown that they vote in favor of democrats disproportionately, and at all levels of government. From that set of ideals comes the mindset that American military force should not ever be utilized beyond humanitarian relief, and the very occasional limited show of force. Overwhelmingly, today's working journalists believe the United States is deserving of international disdain and scorn due to our "imperialist" transgressions. Forget that we have never set up an empire that even remotely resembles the world's previous super-powers. Over a hundred years ago, with limited forays into the Far East and the Caribbean we conquered the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Subsequently we gave those lands back to the inhabitants; to our own detriment some would suggest.
At the conclusion of World War II, the United States stood poised around the globe with the greatest armed force the world had ever seen. Over a million soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines could have been strategically deployed to annex large swaths of the world. We could have, some would argue should have, challenged the USSR for immediate supremacy. Instead, as is the nature of great democracies, we disbanded our citizen soldiery and went home. The United States is now, and has always been, the shining city on the hill, which serves as a beacon of hope for the rest of the freedom loving world. It is our responsibility not only to defend ourselves wherever and whenever the need arises, but also to defend those, whenever possible, who cannot defend themselves when the forces of oppression would subjugate them. The Founding fathers envisioned us as a nation where good, hopeful men and women could make their way in the world. They cautioned against needless involvement in foreign affairs because they all came from a continent which had always fought needless wars for Empire. The brave men who stood against the mightiest nation on Earth did not see the United States of America as a place where we would isolate ourselves from the world. Those brave Founding Fathers saw us as a place where freedom could emanate to encompass the entire world; not through force of arms, but rather, through force of ideals. They would not have shied away from combating evil wherever it arose. They saw us as a nation "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." They also envisioned a free press as one of the bulwarks against tyranny. They did not see freedom of the press as absolute, nor did they see it as means to determine opinion. Instead, they saw the right of freedom of the press as a means for the common man to acquire knowledge by which he might draw his own conclusions. I am not for limiting the scope or breadth of the press, far from it. I proudly wore the uniform of the US Army as an infantryman because I cherish that right, as well as it's attendants. What I am for though, is a free press which returns to what the Constitutional framers considered of paramount importance: report the news, not your personal, or institutional bias. I honor the hard-working men and women of the press who braved hardship, combat and strife so that we, the public, could be informed. All I ask is that they remember that they are not the intelligentsia tasked with telling us, the proletariat, how and what to think. I would further ask that their reporting be given the historical context it deserves. No historical event exists in a vacuum, and Iraq, as well as the larger war on Islamic extremism, does not either. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, with rights and privileges comes responsibility. That responsibility is not to your personal ideology, nor your agency's bottom line. It is to those whom you serve: the American public. Reporting events to political advantage damages us collectively, and you would be well served to remember that. Islamic terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans in under an hour on 9/11. In five years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq they have only just barely matched that feat. Civilians were murdered indiscriminately on 9/11, but volunteer warriors have died since then battling Islamic extremists; both to avenge their murdered countrymen, and to secure our blessings of freedom. No matter what your personal opinion is on this war, or any other, the historical context and significance of our combat deaths belongs to those last three sentences, and those sentences alone.
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