Nearly all of the Sunday morning talk shows on this anniversary of Pearl Harbor featured a lengthy appearence by Hillary. They also featured the recent assessment by Newt Gingrich that we're confronting a dismal situation in Iraq. I have no problem with the assessments made by Hillary and Newt in terms of their specific recommendations. I'm sure we need to consider the role of the coincidence between the upcoming Hajj and troop rotations. I'm glad Hillary is knowledgable about such nitty gritty. But I see no reason to regard their assessments of the general situation as any more valid or coherent than anyone else's. What all of the Sunday talk shows are missing, and especially the Chris Matthews Show, which will find some sort of mustard seed for faith in the Democrat ancien regime no matter how furiously it has to dig, is the fact that we are winning, not losing, the war against the insurgents in Iraq. That is what an article in WaPo highlighting input from field commanders makes clear: A key graf from Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a commander in Tikrit:
What we see is the enemy getting weaker and fewer in number in Tikrit. When he shows his hand, he pays for it. He has been unable to recruit effectively. The numbers of Iraqi men joining the police force, the civil defense forces and legitimate government jobs by comparison is telling. They obviously are voting by their actions for the new Iraq and they are showing confidence in their government and police forces unlike before. The cooperation we are now getting from the average citizen exceeds that which the terrorists receive.
Now, why the devil is the primary TV media completely discounting the assessments of the few people in this debate that are in a position to actually know something? Is it the same as Jack Shafer's "calico cat" explanation for why they discount a pretty good argument by Jay Epstein that Saddam was involved in 9/11, or an even better argument by Stephen Hayes that Saddam had longstanding ties to al Qaeda? Is it just plain laziness? This really could have longer range implications for the health of our open society than the misnamed "War on Terrorism." (We aren't at war with a strategic method, but with the ideological movements that employ it.) What in the world do we do about this? Stop watching TV news? Have things always been this screwed up, and we just didn't notice it because there was no spin-cancelling blogosphere?
Posted by Demosophist at December 7, 2003 01:33 PM | TrackBack