Wars

Power Line posted:

Douglas Wood, who was freed by Iraqi and American soldiers after being held as a hostage by Iraqi terrorists for nearly seven weeks, has apologized to President Bush and Prime Minister John Howard for his coerced plea that coalition troops be withdrawn from Iraq:

"Frankly, I'd like to apologize to both President Bush and Prime Minister [John] Howard for the things I said under duress," said Mr. Wood, with his American wife, Yvonne Given, and his brothers, Vernon and Malcolm, and their wives by his side.

"I actually believe that I am proof positive that the current policy of training the Iraqi army ... works because it was Iraqis that got me out," he said.

Howard said that no apology was necessary, a sentiment that President Bush would undoubtedly echo. It reminds me, though, of how many times the news media have breathlessly repeated such calls for withdrawal by terrified hostages. As though they meant something.

But, Powerline, to the media they DO mean something. They mean an opportunity to put our effort in Iraq in the worst light possible, without serious analysis or context, and with lots of emotion attached. It's why they fought so hard to show pictures of those flag-draped caskets, why ABC's Nightline promoted their show given over entirely to the somber reading of the names of our war dead, and so on.

The terrorists produce their tapes of weeping hostages pleading that we stop killing innocent Iraqis and withdraw our forces, in the certain knowledge that our media will rush to display that garbage to the world. By any accounting, this is doing propaganda work for the enemy.

But there is no contradiction involved for our liberal media, because for them the enemy that must be defeated is Bush. Declaring defeat in Iraq, and then working to make that a perceptual reality, is a key strategy in their war against this administration. There is no other conceivable rationale for the NYT to put Abu Ghraib on its front page for 33 straight days.

Finally, they are able to report that public support for the war is falling. Given the relentless media jihad, it's slightly puzzling that it hasn't fallen to zero. But they're working on it. One US officer in Iraq wrote that he had $130 million in development projects going in his sector, but was frustrated that couldn't find any reporter interested in covering any of it. How very naive of him. A development project will get media coverage when a terrorist kills its Iraqi administrator or destroys it completely with a car bomb, not otherwise. Images of futility and defeat are the currency of value. The officer has his war to fight, the media have theirs.

Byron

Enemies

Power Line posted:

Durbin's comments last week [comparing American soldiers to Nazis] represent "an escalation in the political rhetoric of the left, which is designed to undermine the public's confidence in the military, the administration, and the war."

Well, it's just that the left is fighting a different war. They're more than willing to sacrifice the war on terror if that's what it takes to bring down Bush. These people are, in effect, fighting for the other side. Contemptible as that sounds, second-ranking Democrat Durbin's absurd ravings, Conyers' mock impeachment farce, and the NYT putting Abu Ghraib on its front page for 33 straight days clearly show that it's become their primary political strategy. Bush will be discredited if the war on terrorism is a failure, with other consequences of that failure being merely collateral damage in a more important war of ideology. If things have to get much worse in order to get better, then so be it.

That sort of thinking historically has been associated with extremist third parties and theoreticians on the fringe, not practical, mainstream electoral politics. But this detachment from reality may be an inevitable result of getting your money from the likes of George Soros, your talking points from Michael Moore, and your political strategy from Democratic Underground. The like-minded mainstream media have been, and continue to be, by far their most important allies and enablers, although I see the Washington Post couldn't quite stomach the vicious anti-Semitism that surfaced in the Conyers embarrassment. But, hey, hatred of Israel is part of the package.

The Democrats appear to believe that this kind of stuff is going to translate into success at the ballot box. (Perhaps they have a plan to allow Europeans to vote in US elections.) This is a political party that is disintegrating in front of our eyes. Major screw-ups by the GOP can save the Democrats and, unfortunately, the weaker and more unhinged the Democrats become, the more space there will be for the GOP to get arrogant and intellectually lazy, to overreach and blunder. Far from being a good thing for the country, the increasingly sad state of the Democratic Party is dangerous to our democracy, which needs the competition of two strong parties.

Byron

NYT Culture Warriors

The culture warriors at the NYT found a way to put an Abu Ghraib story on their front page for 32 straight days, an accomplishment that must have al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya green with envy.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145998/posts

Never let it be said that the folks at the NYT don't know how to wage war. It merely depends on who the enemy is.

U.S. public opinion, they are now pleased to report, shows decreasing support for Bushitler's senseless Christian Crusade against innocent Muslims which has made us less safe and which was approved by neither the UN nor France.

Mission accomplished, guys, and thanks very much.

Byron