Journalists Also Need to Support the American People (a rewrite, no thanks necessary Bill)
I've been mulling over a Washington Post editorial by William Arkin about an NBC Nightly News report from Iraq last Friday in which a number of soldiers expressed frustration with opposition to war in the United States.
I'm sure the journalist was expressing a majority opinion common amongst leftists - that's why it is news - and I'm also sure no one in the Washington Post editor's office put the writer up to expressing their views, nor steered Arkin to the story.
I'm all for everyone expressing their opinion, even psuedo intellectuals who pretend to understand those in the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that Washington Post editors took Arkin aside after this story blighted the paper and explained to him why it wasn't for him to disapprove of the American soldiers.
Friday's NBC Nightly News included a story from Arkin's colleague and friend Richard Engel, who was embedded with an active duty Army infantry battalion from Fort Lewis, Washington.
Engel relayed how "troops here say they are increasingly frustrated by American criticism of the war. Many take it personally, believing it is also criticism of what they've been fighting for."
First up was 21 year old junior enlisted man Tyler Johnson, whom Engel said was frustrated about war skepticism and thinks that critics "should come over and see what it's like firsthand before criticizing."
"You may support or say we support the troops, but, so you're not supporting what they do, what they're here sweating for, what we bleed for, what we die for. It just don't make sense to me," Johnson said.
Next up was Staff Sergeant Manuel Sahagun, who is on his second tour in Iraq. He complained that "one thing I don't like is when people back home say they support the troops, but they don't support the war. If they're going to support us, support us all the way."
Next was Specialist Peter Manna: "If they don't think we're doing a good job, everything that we've done here is all in vain," he said.
Arkin's disdain for the American military is apparent as he derides them as spoiled and ungrateful. I doubt their blood spilled and limb lost, impress him, but the fact that these patriots go into harm's way on behalf of journalists as well as honorable citizens, should be the real point of discussion.
Arkin should be grateful that the American military has defended his right to write drivel in spite of the fact that the public overwhelmingly recognizes his editorializing as pure manure.
Through every word and line, through every slur and insinuation, the American military still willingly stands between the tyranny that would silence critics, even admitted imbeciles like Arkin, and the fragile freedom upon which American life is balanced, accepting along the way a myriad of personal attacks and propagandistic hit pieces thinly disguised as editorialism.
Even when Arkin produces deceptive statements for which there is incontrovertible evidence to the contrary such as the following: "Sure it is the junior enlisted men who go to jail, but even at anti-war protests, the focus is firmly on the White House and the policy. We just don't see very man[y] "baby killer" epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon." Our servicemen and women still bear the burden of his freedom to be a loudmouthed bore.
So, we pay journalists a decent wage, allow them to spew slanderous untruths, provide them with Washingtonian idiots who are easily swayed with poll numbers and poor analysis and enough village idiots to hang on their every word, we die for their freedom, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the written words of people who don't live life, but merely write about it? We should give up our rights and responsibilities to defend the defenseless and spread the cause of human freedom because it's just too damn messy?
I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the propoganda and lies and those in the computer rooms and dens of America feel the frustrations caused by the pen laden psuedo-intellectuals. In my little parable, those in pajamas and flip flops shake their heads that the journalists don't get it, that they don't understand that the threat from fools with Microsoft Word, an 8th grade vocabulary and a desk in a newsroom, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those in the new media will use their keyboards as sophisticated weapons against the real enemy. If I weren't the United States, I'd say the story ends with a blogger led coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the journalistic elite.
But it is the United States and instead this William Arkin and a Washington Post editorial and they are just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for freedom to hear oneself speak - oops sorry, freedom of the press - led by a press corp force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.
The notion of dirty work is that, like laundry, it is something that has to be done but no one else wants to do it. But editorializing is not dirty work: it is not some necessary endeavor; the people just don't believe that anymore.
I'll accept that the journalists, in order to sleep at night, have to believe that they are manning the parapet, and that's where their frustrations come in. I'll accept as well that they are anti-American and unable to get a real job where they have to actually do something for a living instead of reporting on the doings of others and are frustrated with their own lack of progress and the ever changing situation in America where an increasing number of citizens are becoming aware of just how little journalists really matter. Cut off from society and constantly told that everyone supports them, no wonder the debate confuses them.
America needs to ponder what it is we really owe those in newsrooms. I believe that America needs mandatory critical thinking courses in middle and high school and I imagine we'd be having a different discussion if we had some.
