Upper Left Coast

Thoughts on politics, faith, sports and other random topics from a red state sympathizer in indigo-blue Portland, Oregon.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Hitchens: the media helps terrorists

I've been meaning to post this since I heard it yesterday on the Hugh Hewitt show, but forgot. Christopher Hitchens -- who is much smarter than me, and certainly no conservative -- was on Hewitt's show, and he wrapped up the interview by relating a conversation he recently had with "a very senior person at a well-known network."

This person was talking with Hitchens about the media's coverage of Iraq, and specifically how that affects the terrorists who are fighting against democracy:
He called me the other day. This is not a guy who's in any way a conservative, and said you know, we've known each other for a bit. He said you know, I'm beginning to think you must be right, because it really worries me what we're doing, when we are giving the other side the impression that all they need to do is hang on until the end of this administration. Do people know what they're doing when they're doing this? One doesn't have to make any allegation of disloyalty, but just...if it worries him, as it really does, I think it should worry other people, too, and it certainly worries me.
He also described the Democratic Party's attitude toward the war as "a sort of fatalism, the feeling that if you can say a war is unwinnable, you've also said it's wrong. In other words, that you would desert the side you were on if you thought things were going badly. That's a moral degeneracy of a different kind."

1 Comments:

  • At 3/26/2006 11:58 AM, Blogger Instructor said…

    A few random thoughts...

    There is a flip-side to this attitude: Once "we" are committed to a course of action, "we" become a runaway locomotive missing a brake. Right or wrong, good or ill, profitable or ruinous, "we" won't quit...

    Which is to suggest the current President, whoever that might be, is infallable.

    The Constitution clearly intended the army to be used in the defense ofthe Nation only, not for military adventures all over the world serving whatever whim or agenda currently attached to hte White House. a Constitutionalist would oppose these actions on that ground alone...

    And the final premise - that we are encouraging "the enemy" to wait out the electorate - is hectoring and nothing more, pure and simple. The Iraqi opposition doesn't need the MSM to tell them that. They can figure it out for themselves. It worked [against us] in vietnam, it'll work this time. "We" aren't going to keep doing the wrong thing just because GWB set us to it.

    Oh well. This fool's errand is probably going to cost the GOP their governing majority, so at least the war will have served some useful purpose.

    Maybe the system still works better than some of us think...

     

Post a Comment

<< Home

|
 
Google