Quid Nimis

Michelle Malkin's May 18 column is about the corrosive effect of inaccurate and deeply biased reporting about our military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Ever wonder about the hundreds of thousands of antiquities that were supposedly looted from the Museum of Ancient Civilizations in Baghdad?  Ever wonder what happened to the story of Al-QaQaa, the unsecured ammo dump that got 17 stories on the front page of the New York Times in the week prior to the November  election but not a single one since?  We suppose that  those munitions that were "killing American soldiers" are of no interest to the Times now that the election is over.  Ms. Malkin has links on her blog to "the rest of the story"  for these and numerous other examples.

The real toll  of the lies and inaccuracies is on the morale of our men and women in the military.  They are conducting a war under the most trying conditions, circumstances that hardly any of us can stand to think about much less  volunteer for.  And yet, every time they turn around, the press is there, like vultures, waiting for a screw up they can exploit for headlines.  Waiting for a screw up they can time to exploit for headlines to influence the election.  Sometimes the smears are screaming sexploitation headlines, like the supposed pictures of American soldiers raping Iraqi women.  Often, it's just the steady rhythm of negativity that emanates from radio in the oh-so-serious tones of All Things Considered:  "Rocked by bombs...this many dead...loud explosion...this many dead."

And yet of course, this is the point.  Interspersed now with the casualty figures are the reports of the various branches of the military not being able to meet their recruiting targets.  The media has done an excellent job overall of achieving what they want: to demilitarize the United States.  To make it impossible for the United states to project its power through the front doors of  the General Assembly Hall of the UN, nevermmind halfway around the world.  Terry Moran is right about the press and it's anti-military bias.  It is probably also true that most of the reporters that are covering the war and the military don't see what they are doing as actually being harmful; they probably see what they do as some kind of service, keeping the Pentagon honest, and so on.  But there is a substantial contingent of older, influential journalists and journalism professors who are very much opposed to the military as an institution  (you should have a mental list of at least ten of these, but we can start with Robert Jensen of the University of Texas, Walter Cronkite, Daniel Schorr, Bill Moyers, etc., etc.,).  They see little in American values that is an improvement over the way the rest of the world does things and therefore not worth projecting, even in our own defense. 

It is almost humorous when the reports of recruitment shortfalls look for an explanation: the economy is too good, pay is too low, job is too dangerous.  It's never "We in the media portray men and women in the military as a bunch of blood-thirsty, cowardly, torturing perverted screw-ups and the commanders as impulsive (or laggardly, depending), insensitive and scapegoating, so why would anyone want to join? "