WHY MEDIA IS WRONG ON THE WAR

Andrew Sullivan makes a case today that many are making:
The reporters who report for big media are afflicted with Viet Nam syndrome; that they have been scarred by this horrible experience.

Hey! Andrew! You want to see people horribly scarred from Viet Nam? Drop by a VA Hospital and take a look at the guys with missing limbs, scarred faces, or just sitting in wheel chairs staring out at what might have been their lives.

You'd almost think these reporters had actually served in the armed forces in Viet Nam. What we have are a sorry bunch of people who have spent their adult lives spinning Orwellian fantasies in which bravery is cowardice and cowardice is bravery.......because they say so. Because they must say so.

For the most part these reporters are the draft dodgers of the Viet Nam period. Scarred only by their cowardice, their deal making to "beat the draft" and send somebody else in their place, or their flight and hiding til the war was over. Today they writhe in guilt over what they have done, and what they did not do.

These guilt-ridden phoney moralists only see evil in the U.S. Government because to see anything else would mean they have to face their cowardice, as well as their murder by-proxy of their peers. It was they who sent the sons of mostly working class families not "smart enough" to go to Berkeley, Yale, or Columbia into terrible combat; and it was they who then called these brave guys who were serving in their places "baby killers," murderers, war criminals and the like in order to make their own cowardice look like acts of bravery. These reporters and their sons and daughters will continue to seek justification for their lily-livered perversions of duty, honor, country. Never forget that they ran their brave evasions from the life threatening halls of whatever university was sponsoring the anti-war line at the time. Something that explains our anti-Semitic, fascist leaning, gutless faculties today.

This crowd of draft dodgers would have all of us believe that somehow lying to draft boards, hiring lawyers to play games for them and fleeing to foreign countries is somehow brave. They try to make the case that somehow risking life for country is somehow cowardly, evil, and criminal. They have to. "They can't handle the truth."

Much has been said of Red Diaper Babies, referring to the sons and daughters of the 1930's Communists who were among the principal leaders of the Viet Nam protests. We have in the American arts and media many of the sons and daughters of that slithery mob. We have tended to label them The Hate America Left. That is wrong. They hate themselves; for what they have done; for what their parents once did; and because keeping the fires of hate burning bright make thinking of the past impossible. Both for them, and most especially for us.

It is probable that the "embedded reporters" will bring back a different set of values about their war experiences. That they will have enormous respect for the sons and daughters of the mostly working class families we see fighting this war. We can hope that they emulate what a lot of us have done in relation to our parents, which is to reject their parent's ideas and develop new ones. I hope I'm not just lighting matches at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier hoping the fire of truth will somehow start but it is a possibility. Tales of bravery will do that to people.

Anyhow, so much for the reporters being "scarred" by Viet Nam. You want to see "scarred by Viet Nam"? Drop by the nearest VA Hospital or Veterans grave yard. Don't look to big media reporters.

For a lighter view of the discovery of WMDs