They Don't Get It

PostWatch is mainly concerned with liberal bias in mainstream media, starting at the Washington Post and expanding outward to the target-rich environment that includes other major papers, wire services and broadcast television.

So with that narrow focus in mind, on this day...

I was driving home recently when one of the local radio stations was broadcasting the evening news with Katie Couric at CBS. I think this was her second night. Couric led with one of President Bush's speeches about fighting terrorism, which she immediately contrasted with what she called an "in-your-face" tape issued by al-Qaeda.  Aside from the routine sneering about Bush, what struck me was Couric's sense of being above the fray. This might have been a report about a football game, or an election in a foreign country where you don't care who wins.

It's a war, there are sides. That's what these folks don't get. The war against terrorism is often described as "Bush's war," and that's the fatal error. The war is being fought to defend the civilization that, heaven help us, makes Katie Couric possible. For anyone with sense about what's going on in the world, it must be difficult to personally dislike Bush, to have voted against him with all due conviction, and to hope from the bottom of your heart for stunning and decisive victories in Iraq that incidentally would vindicate a man and a party and really an entire system you sincerely detest.

But I don't have the impression that most mainstream reporters struggle with that dilemma.

So here we are on Sept. 11, 2006, and at least half the country not only wants the war to just quietly go away, but thinks that's actually possible. It isn't. A military correspondent wrote to NRO's Jonah Goldberg and put it exceptionally well:

...people continually refuse to understand that some fights are just hard. ...We face a fanatical and cunning enemy who is unafraid to blend into our society indiscriminately kill civilians, is numerous, well funded and like the Germans [in Word War 1] will not give up. There is no good way out of this. The United States is going to spend the next generation or more under the threat of terrorism.  It will have to change its society and its notions of civil liberties and privacy and will probably have to invade and occupy the odd country every few years for the foreseeable future. All of the arm chair strategizing about more troops in Iraq and Special Forces and diplomacy and working with our allies is not going to change that.  People just refuse to face a bad reality.  A bad situation is always someone’s fault for not pursuing the easy solution.  People refuse to accept that sometimes there are no easy solutions....

The journalists who share the same basic outlook as other Democrats and liberals have the intellectual luxury of ignoring unpleasant reality because the United States hasn't suffered another catastrophic attack. So the Iraq war can be viewed as senseless bloodletting, from which U.S. troops should withdraw so they can all come home, and be safe, and stop antagonizing otherwise harmless and remote Islamists.

But they won't become harmless if we retreat, and they aren't really remote, and all of this will become exceptionally clear again, unfortunately.

Comments

[just a wanderer]

Support of the global war on terrorism should not auotmatically equate to support for the resources (both human and materiel) that are being sent to Iraq. Your point of view makes the assumption that Bush is fighting terrorism in the best and most efficient ('efficient' being a very broad term) way possible. If the point behind the US's invasion into Iraq was to protect us from terrorism, it is a reasonable question whether the amount that has, and continues to be, spent on this effort would have been better spent doing something else- improving defense of our borders, intelligence gathering, etc. Let's face it- we will never eliminate ALL the terrorists- it's just not feasible or realistic. Is Bush's approach the best way to minimize the danger and risks? After all the money that has been spent and the lives lost, are we safer than if we had taken another approach that cost just as much money but fewer lives? One wonders.

[Christopher Fotos]

Support of the global war on terrorism should not auotmatically equate to support for the resources (both human and materiel) that are being sent to Iraq. Your point of view makes the assumption that Bush is fighting terrorism in the best and most efficient ('efficient' being a very broad term) way possible....

I don't think I'm assuming that at all. I'm talking about a more general attitude that goes far beyond Iraq. Stories about the broader war, including most of what I read concerning terrorist surveillance, Guantanamo Bay, descriptions of Islamist terrorist (sorry, militant) movements, internal American security--virtually none of it communicates any awareness of a rather large subculture committed to making us submit, convert, or die.

[Nancy]

I really liked this post and had some brilliant insights to add and I just couldn't put it together before duty called, but I want to hastily add that patriotism isn't about loving or hating elected leaders; it's about respecting the process that got those leaders elected, and that's why journalists (or anyone) should want us to win more than they want Bush to lose. (Unless and until they can come up with a better process.)

Bushphiles would do well to keep that in mind too. Next presidential election may see a Democrat in office.