This will be, in the proper Kossack vernacular, a short diary.
Simply put, I DEMAND media coverage of America's wars NOW!
If these wars are NOT worth media coverage, they are not worth fighting. If the threat America faces from it's enemies is so great that it is absolutely necessary that we go to war, than it is absolutely necessary that the "free" press gives it ample coverage.
Since the Presidential Primaries back in the Spring of 2008 coverage of America's wars have almost entirely disappeared from the traditional media. With the exception of a few intrepid journalists the traditional media has given us NOTHING as far as details of what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan except for the times when Dick Cheney emerges from his crypt, when President Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at George Bush's idiot of a son and when Rudy "9/11,9/11,9/11" shows up to collect his royalty fee.
In short, I want DETAILS, and if you're not in the mood you better GET IN THE MOOD, Mister.
There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
~ Sun Tzu on The Art of War
I address this to the Traditional Media at large, but specifically to those liberals and progressives in the media who have some influence over the content of their coverage. America needs to see these wars. America needs to see these bodies coming home. America needs to see the costs of these wars in terms of HUMAN LIVES.
How much are these wars costing America? What are we achieving? If you are a professional journalist, THIS IS YOUR JOB.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.
~ Sun Tzu on The Art of War
It's been TEN YEARS. Even Odysseus came home after ten years, and he fought the fucking cyclops. Unless Calypso lives in Kandahar the American media should be able to find there way out and give us a story once a month or two, no?
If it is absolutely necessary for America to spend the invaluable lives of our sons and daughters and an ever increasing 1/4 of our national budget on our military, despite facing an enemy with no army, navy or airforce that can compete with ours, than it is absolutely necessary that the media informs the American people on what our military is doing overseas on a daily basis.
Dear media, especially Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann and all the other journalists who opposed these wars when they were mismanaged and forgotten, please, tell America what is happening. Anything less is a disservice to the men and women fighting these all important wars and the American public to whom our "free" press is supposed to inform.
Otherwise, we face a world where war is even more the norm, a world where war has no goal, no objective, and no purpose, other than maintaining the military budget, which is not the purpose of progress, My goal is progress. If war has no other purpose than destruction and it isn't even worth reporting it isn't worth fighting, and then it is the opposite of progress, and something my namesake would be more suited to comment on.
"Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain."
~ George Orwell, 1984
alternativereel.com
Bold text added by the diarist
Crossposted at ProgressiveElectorate.com and Docudharma.com
