Posted on 04/16/2003 7:31:53 AM PDT by Davis
That part of the press which lost thr battle to prevent the war in Iraq and prophesied catastrophe and quagmire should it be launched, the Left leaning gloom/doom press, domestic and foreign, which saw the ambushing of a maintenance company as a military defeat rivaling Cannae, and which agreed silently with Peter Arnett's proclamation that the Iraq campaign plan was ill conceived, the force commitment too light, the support train too thin, the enemy military too resolute, the citizenry sullen and opposed to the removal of Saddam Hussein ("Mr. Hussein" to toilers at the NYTimes who evidently confuse starchiness with backbone)--all these having been falsified by events--has happily clutched the straw of looting.
Yes, the looting that happened right after the toppling and topping of Saddam's statue in Baghdad (and body doubles thereof in other locales). That looting, yes. An indelible black mark against the Coalition of the Willing, although, of course, the looting was done by Iraqis--a few thousand Iraqis it seemed to me watching the TV coverage--in a country of 20 million.
A black mark so vast and so dense that it entirely obscures the brilliance of the campaign, the bravery of our troops, their dazzling machines of war, the lopsidedness of the victory, the ineptness of the enemy, their disappearing resolve, and of course the failure of the gloom/doom press to get anything important right.
Why couldn't the g/d press foresee and warn us of what did happen? Where were the human shields when we needed them? Why weren't they out there marching with signs and portents, patrolling, persuading the people to leave off taking the property of others, telling them what is self-evidently true, that a decent society must make secure the property rights of the citizenry?
Instead, the g/d press implied that the Coalition had unleashed impulses of thievery and disorder that were better kept in check by Saddam's people, the Baathist socialists whose monopoly of thievery had reigned for decades. Clearly freedom wasn't something the natives could handle. Freedom doesn't fit everyone; what's the good of freedom? It all depends on your perspective.
Their prattling about the cosmic significance of looting so tantalized the g/d press that they have been unable to see the event up close. Who would expect them to know that as the cost of an economic good declines toward zero, demand for it rises toward infinity. This simple but fecund truth forever escapes the attention of those in this society who never fail to engage in a futile search for root causes of miscreancy but are dead set against assigning a cost to that behavior--disgrace for those with a sense of shame, that is, a psychic cost, other costs to those who do not have a sense of shame. "Horrors, the jails are full. We must be doing something wrong."
Coalition forces, Brit commandos, our triumphant marines, our disciplined brave soldiers, could have cured the looting problem quite easily had they shot a few looters and adorned the corpses with admonitory signs. Tempting, when you think about it. Can you imagine the shrieks of pain that would have evoked from those paragons of principle, the gloom/doom press?
Just heard on FOX that the looting is one of the "biggest cultural catastrophes of history." I think these reporters need to go back to school and take some history classes...
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