Posted on 10/22/2007 5:17:47 AM PDT by shrinkermd
All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq. Knowing this disconnect exists and experiencing it directly are two separate matters. It’s like the difference between holding the remote control during the telecast of a volcanic eruption on some distant island (and then flipping the channel), versus running for survival from a wretch of molten lava that just engulfed your car.
I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.
Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.
Indeed.
We are still losing some of the finest this generation has to offer:
http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/
Mr. Yon is doing a tremendous job - All the support (financial and just as importantly ‘word of mouth’ to his site/work) has to be encouraged.
Those who said that losing in Iraq was inevitable were wrong.
Democrats were wrong on Iraq.
The media will not let the sheeple know about this, it could be dangerous.
PING for Iraqi turning point.
God speed!
Lame stream media motto: Nothing good reported in Iraq since Saddam was in power.
I think that the President, and the Republicans in Congress could do more to “get the word out”, and to challenge the Drive-By-Media to disprove the contention that things are looking up in Iraq. Sadly, the Republicans are so “snake bit”, and so terrified of some sort of al Qaeda “Tet Offensive” or Battle of the Bulge that they will say little or nothing to help dispel the MSM-fostered public predisposition.
Fantastic article!
He never disappoints.
I’m going to email this column to all I know.
Some will flip their lids, I’m sure. ;o)
Thank you for the post and ping!
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