I don’t like to blog about politics very often but sometimes I can’t help myself.

My father-in-law forwards me a lot of chain email, much of which is politically conservative in nature. Just for kicks, I run most of these past either TruthorFiction.com or Snopes.com and find, to absolutely no surprise, that they’re almost always complete fabrications passed off as truth. Things like blaming John Edwards for the flu vaccine shortage. To be fair, I don’t think my father-in-law reads these things and believes them; I think he just forwards them to get my goat. It works.

Anyway, he forwarded this video entitled “Iraqi Night Vision” that is (allegedly) footage taken from an aircraft as a trio of insurgents are first observed engaging in suspicious (at best) behavior and then get whacked in impressive fashion. I say allegedly because I generally don’t believe anything I see on the Internet, although I will say if I had to bet I’d put my money down, I’d say this is real. It looks authentic and doesn’t feel staged so I’m willing to believe this is the real deal.

WARNING! HERESY AHEAD!
As an admittedly staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, here are some of my observations based on the evidence provided:

• If I had to guess, I would say the guys in the video are up to no good, i.e. they don’t look like innocent Iraqi farmers
• The soldiers on the audio seem to take in the whole situation before rushing to any decisions and acted accordingly
• The believed insurgents are taken out with brutal efficiency
• I’m glad I’m not in Iraq

I’ve seen some lefty people saying that the soldiers acted cruelly in firing on the third, obviously wounded figure. Allow me to repeat, I’m against the war but I find this argument is silly. Here’s a rule: if you’re an Iraqi farmer, don’t go hiding things that look like rocket launchers next to the highway under the cover of darkness while your country is occupied by a well-equipped military force. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the whole “the wounded shall be collected and cared for” part of the Geneva Convention wouldn’t necessarily apply to a guy you’re pretty sure just hid a rocket launcher, was wounded, and now crawled somewhere out of sight. If it was your ass in Iraq, you’d want to make sure that you had eliminated the threat. “I don’t know Bob, maybe he isn’t hiding behind the truck and aiming a rocket at us. Let’s wait and find out.” The problem here is not the soldiers but the situation. It is impossible to judge these soldiers from my well-lit office from the comforts of home because it’s very easy to say they weren’t in danger when things, at the very best, seem pretty suspicious. The photos of the dudes at Abu Gharib? A little harder to justify the intention of a guy holding a leashed German Shepherd a foot away from a naked prisoner’s balls.

Apparently, some of the video clip ran on ABC but I can’t find the actual news story that accompanied it. Allegedly, ABC showed this video and (according to some) cast it in a light that the troops had done something wrong. I can neither confirm nor deny this, but a lot of the rah-rah comments on the video’s website drove me up the wall.

Stating the Obvious On…
The Nature of the War in Iraq

• Not all US soldiers are bloodthirsty ogres indiscriminantly and/or intentionally killing Iraqi civilians. Anyone who thinks so is an idiot.
• Not all US soldiers are choirboys/girls serving with compassion and restraint. I’m sure more than a couple kill at will. Anyone who thinks this isn’t the case is an idiot.
• Not all the Iraqis being killed are insurgents. Not all the Iraqis being killed are civilians. I have no idea what the numbers might be regarding this, nor does anyone else. I have no idea what estimates to trust. Neither do you.

Media Coverage of the War

• The job of the news is not to be “for” or “against” our troops or the war. If you want your media to cheer for the state, move to China.
• Having said that, you must also understand that network news is a product. If network news was not a product, we wouldn’t have commercial breaks between segments and networks wouldn’t care about their news ratings.
• If you don’t like the slant of the news on a certain channel, change the channel.
• Don’t believe the myth of the liberal media. As a party-less liberal, I have a good idea what liberal media would look like and it ain’t ABC news.
• The nature of war hasn’t changed since Vietnam, but the nature of war reporting certainly has. If you think the government doesn’t control what makes the news and what doesn’t, you’re fooling yourself.

Human beings have the ability to reason. I humbly suggest we use it. Recognize that most media has some sort of slant, left or right, and your own experiences, beliefs, and values will should help you process the information you’re receiving. “Oil companies are making record profits” is a newsworthy fact. “The president got a blowjob from an intern” is also a newsworthy fact. Whether you choose to be outraged or indifferent to these facts is up to you. Repetition of the same facts does not necessarily make an issue more or less important. It’s fact that our troops are dying and so are innocent Iraqi civilians. This is not the lead news story every night on network news. The media’s job is not to paint the war in a positive or negative light but just to tell us, truthfully, what’s going on. It just so happens that what’s going on is brutal and ugly and painful to look at.

I understand the attraction of black-and-white thinking, but I also understand the attraction of believing in Santa Claus. Just because you wish the world worked a certain way doesn’t mean it does work that way, can work that way, or even should work that way.

Current Mood - Down About the Whole Thing |
Currently Listening To - Madonna - “Ray of Light”