Lando 
Posted on 05/22/2004 8:05:51 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
ARE SOME Americans, including journalists, rooting for the enemy while their country is at war? This question is coming up with increasing frequency as the troubles in Iraq continue.
The May 15 issue of the British magazine The Spectator published an article by Daily Telegraph correspondent Tony Hamden, recounting a conversation he had with an unnamed "American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials."
According to Hamden, "Not only had she `known' the Iraq war would fail, but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the `evil' George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. `Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.' " Hamden goes on to say that when he asked the woman if "thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing," her answer was, essentially, yes.
If this story -- tailor-made to confirm every conservative's worst suspicions about the media establishment -- is true, it illustrates a repugnant mentality. But some of those criticizing such attitudes reveal a mindset that, in some ways, is equally misguided. On the widely read
Instapundit.com weblog, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds writes, "To explain things in words of few syllables: It's wrong to root for your country's defeat." Reynolds adds that it's especially wrong "when that defeat would mean the death of innocents" and "when it's merely for domestic political advantage." It's hard to disagree with the last two statements. But what about the sweeping assertion that rooting for your country's defeat is wrong?
This view is hardly limited to Reynolds alone. The other day on the Fox News Channel news show "From the Heartland," while interviewing left-wing cartoonist Ted Rall, host and former congressman John Kasich expressed dismay and shock that anyone could root against their own country in a war.
Yet what if your country, or your government, is engaged in a war that is unjust and immoral? What if it's your country that is wantonly killing innocents, as well as sacrificing the lives of its own soldiers for no good reason?
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Lando
Yes, and many are employed at the Boston Globe.
But if John Kerry does the highly improbable and becomes the next CIC most of these same anti-war journalists will do a quick 180 and start rooting like hell for us. .....So they're not so much anti-war as their are anti-Bush.
The cheering section in the U.S. media for Clinton's Balkans bombing campaign (where thousands of innocent Christian Serbs met their deaths) convinced me that partisan politics is the primary determining factor in the media's attitude toward any particular war. .....apparently even wars where our very lives are at stake.
Interesting BUMP!
And to be clear, I'm talking about the WOT here, not the Kosovo War.
This comes from the Boston Globe? My feet are cold!
Giggling and dancing on the graves of people far greater than they could ever even dream of becoming.
Yes.
I am so angry at those who want to get Bush so badly that they had rather win an election than win the war, I am sick of the European or American anti Americanism, people who care not if we are right or wrong...only that we are humiliated or suffer. Blame Bush or America First crowd.
I am sick of a press who ignores the good things happening and gets hysterical 24/7 over the setbacks or bad things happening. They are our fifth column. We are at war...our nation needs to be more evenhanded and love their nation more than they hate Bush...Isolationists need to face which century we are in.
Any one who wishes for more innocent Iraqi deaths or more American deaths to get Bush are simply evil. They want to prove they were right..no matter what the human cost.
God bless our armed forces...
The same is true here. If this were Gore's war, how many erstwhile pro-invasion Conservatives would then be trashing American efforts in Iraq? The key is to think for one's self, a difficult exersize for many.
Lando
And therein lies the difference! If Gore were president, this wouldn't be an issue because we wouldn't be at war!
#9
Trashing strategy is one thing, rooting for the other side to win is quite another. Regarding the former, there are quite a few pro-Bush Freepers (including yours truly) who indeed occasionally criticize the administration's strategy in Iraq. But every last one of us (obviously) roots enthusiastically for us to win the war. If Gore were Prez I honestly don't see how things would be different: Freepers would call it as they see it, criticizing strategy (when need be) and at the same time rooting for victory. Conservatives are much more patriotic than liberals, so we're much more likely to put partisan politics aside when we're at war. .....especially a war for our very survival.
This is happening all over the world. President Bush must put a stop to this before it's too late. The media and the liberals are having themselves a field day!!
Actually, not many conservatives would be acting like the journalists and liberals are currently acting. You just have to go back to Kosovo and Bosnia to see. While many conservatives did voice some concerns, one can check the archives for articles, editorials, op-eds, etc long and hard and will not find a steady drumbeat of negativity and anti-Americanism in teh 90's against our military and thier efforts that we are seeing today from the media, liberals, and academia (is that redundent?) in our own country.
Probably true. We would be holding focus group sessions with terrorists to see what we could do for them so they would not be so angry at us....
When to publish a conservative column?
On the Globe's lowest circulation day: Saturday.
Not that Peter, Tom, Dan and the rest are any better.
Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw were hanged after WW2. Today Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw broadcast from NY instead of Berlin or Tokyo.
They are still traitors.
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