« Mrs. Huffington, you're 15 minutes were up years ago | Main | I got your desecration right here pal »

Jungle Drums

It has been said by many historians that during the early days of World War II that the most effective General in the Soviet Army was “General Winter”. This week with the worldwide rioting in Islamic countries thanks to a erroneous report in Newsweek of US Army interrogators in Guantanamo Bay Cuba desecrating the holy Islamic text, we’ve seen an indication that the most effective remaining General in Al-Queda is “General Media”.

Does it strike anyone else as being interesting that the only time the vaunted “Arab Street” came out to fight was because of a story reported in the western media? What does this say about their view of their own media who have regularly and repeatedly made the same charges?

Anyone who still thinks that “Main Stream Media” doesn’t have an leftist agenda in its reporting is simply not paying attention, but what most people seem to ignore is how that agenda is now getting us killed, both in our news coverage and by the biased portrayal of our country and its culture in the movies. During the 1960’s it may have been cool for an up-and-coming member of the reporter class to be ‘anti-establishment’ meaning “anti-capitalist, anti-western civilization", but today holding an anti-establishment bias in your reporting is feeding the very people who are trying to kill us and enslave the other half the worlds population, and its most recent graphic evidence is seen in the riots over the past two weeks.

Its important to remember, that al-queda could be a pack of complete idiots with all the capability of a big city street gang, but if they are portrayed in our media as “insurgent holy warriors”, underdogs just fighting for their country the way our forefathers fought the British, then al-queda gets covered with a veneer of legitimacy. They end up being perceived as bigger than they really are, and in the end the very people who would be the first up against the wall if al-queada and the rest of the islamo-fascists gangs were to succeed are actually furthering al-quedas purposes.

But the other direction is also true, but just as often ignored. If reporters are constantly going to chase the seemingly never ending story of “ big decadent evil Americans of the military-industrial complex who are clearly run out of Karl Roves office, who are once again attacking without provocation the little brown people of the world” can we be surprised when people in the third world often assume the worst about even the most basic altrisitc American motive such as what we saw in reaction to our attempts to help with the Tsunami disaster?

The world is now a very small place. It terms of time rather than distance, we can think of the planet Earth being 14 hours wide at its widest point. The world is covered with Telephones, radio, television and DVD players. The world is covered with media coverage of news from every continent. However, the vast majority of it is not a ‘free press’ the way you and I in the United States understand, but are largely government owned and sponsored organizations that, like it or not, are arms of the government in which they serve and to which they obliged to do its bidding. Most people around the world assume the same is true of our media and assume that our media is an arm of the government and are quite aghast whenever you discuss the ways things are done here.

It is important for both media and consumers of the media to remember that it is no longer possible to talk about ourselves and think that what we say will stay just "in the family". The messages we send to the third world are received and interpreted locally whether it is a message we intend to send or not. Newsweek made what they see as a simple report that once again documented the ‘horrors of guantanamo’ for a largely American audience, who I’m sure they felt, was sophisticated enough to understand the message being sent (which was something like “ The Bush regime is evil and here’s more proof”). I’m sure that they were horrified that their reporting as resulted in the deaths of so many innocent people when it was such a simple story of American malfeasance.

When this war started, I knew it was time to put petty politics aside because to me there was only one side to be on in this war, and that was the side of civilization. From September 11th onward, you had to give the benefit of the doubt to the President, this goes against everything we are taught in civics class, but it had to be done. When World War II got started my grandfather hated FDR, but on December 8th, he set it aside and supported everything the ‘old man’ had to say about the execution of the war and politics in general. It wasn’t until decades later that many people in the family were reminded of how much he hated the “old man” before the war was underway. When we asked him why he had dropped so much of his opposition to FDR, he reminded us of a thing that happened at the battle of midway and how someone’s blind political hatred had nearly cost thousands of American lives.

Robert McCormick was the publisher of the Chicago Tribune during the war, he was a rabid hater of FDR and his polices. During the Battle of Midway, one of his reporters uncovered the fact that it was the cracking of the Japanese codes that had lead to the victory. So, what did he do? He published the story, page one -large type! Luckily, Japanese Imperial hubris kept them from accepting the story as true and they did not change their codes. They didn’t know the that the story was true until after the war, but had they been paying attention at the time, it could have lead directly to the deaths of thousands of Americans.

The message should be clear but its not. You see, You can "hate Bush" all you want but if your actions lead to the deaths of people, Americans or people in other countries, is it really worth it? Is your cause really served by the extention of the war? Do you need to win so bad that you are willing to lose the very civilization in which you live? Is it that they "hate Bush" so much or that they loathe themselves so much that has lead them to be so self-distructive?

How much faster had this war been over had the press not leaped to tell the story that we could trace Osamas Satellite telephone conversations? How much faster could this war be over if our own press and media would stop fighting against America, feeding the anti-western bias that has placed so many of Islam into the hands of local warloads?

Do they really want to “Beat Bush” so bad that they are willing to see thousands of innocents killed as a consequence of their actions?

It’s a question they need to start asking themselves.

Posted @ May 15, 2005 01:40 PM | Current Affairs

Posted by: Janette Stripling at May 15, 2005 07:35 PM

Posted by: varifrank at May 15, 2005 07:48 PM

Posted by: SquareSlant at May 15, 2005 08:36 PM

Posted by: varifrank at May 15, 2005 08:51 PM

Posted by: tnt at May 16, 2005 05:37 PM