The War, The Media, and Common Sense

It seems like the headlines about Iraq alternate every day, switching from opimistic to pesimistic, hopefull to hopeless, positive to negative. The strange part is, they all use factual information (for the most part). The stories of violence are true, as true as the stories about the new government taking steps toward stability and strength. Public opinion about Iraq can no longer be affected by the latest body count, or the latest peaceful meeting between new Iraqi leaders.

The government received some intelligence that said Iraq was secretly stocking up and/or hiding large amounts of WMDs, but they also received intelligence suggested otherwise and ended up being right. The government chose to ignore the latter and only told us about the false intelligence, and led us into war based on lies.

Most people know that now, but some choose to support the war anyway because of the "good news" that comes from Iraq, like Iraq's emerging "democracy" that "we're helping to create". They don't care that it all started because of lies. They don't care how many innocent civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan (more than the amount that died in New York in 2001 on 9/11). They think that this "democracy" that we're imposing on Iraq is a good thing because it will somehow promote Peace in that region in the future, yet the violence rages on just as intensely as when the war began.

We are given news and facts and numbers everyday, but we're not reminded of the history of the U.S. presence in that region. We have to find that information ourselves. We have to be refered to it by individuals on a one-on-one basis, and after that we have to actually follow through and read up on it. If everyone had the same knowledge of the other side of American history to what they learn in public school, things would surely be different when it comes to public opinion about the so-called "War On Terrorism".

The media, according to the Constitution, has the freedom to publish information that they feel should be published. If the media were as liberal as some would have you believe, you would think that we'd see many more interviews with people like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, making their connections between U.S. foreign policy since World War II and our current Mid-Eastern dilemas more public than they are. Of course, most people have never even so much as heard of Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, and have never heard the most rational arguments against the current administration. Its obvious to me that individuals in the media are either not liberal or are truely regulated by the government more than we think they are.

We went to Iraq for one reason; we continue to occupy the country for a whole new reason. "Terrorists" from all parts of the region continue to be drawn to Iraq to fight because of the U.S. presence. Shouldn't the solution be obvious by now?