Compare And Contrast

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I really should have caught and posted this one months ago.

[[ War-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make of each.

As a fifth-generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in California — yesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about “Nearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this month!”

How about a monthly media dose of “600 women raped in February alone!” Or try, “Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!” Those do not even make up all of the state’s yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about. ]]

The point Professor Hanson is making is a vital one. He is not making light of our troubles in Iraq... not at all. Instead, he is showing that the spin the media/liberal machine has put on Iraq has made the awful into something much worse. They have portrayed it as devoid of any good or purpose at all.

To me, war is an evil, evil, evil thing. I cringe inside and part of me dies every time I see or hear of another casualty. In fact, I don't know how I would be able to go on if I didn't also see the reason for the war... and the good that is happening, along with the bad, in Iraq.

How, then, can I blame ordinary, ignorant Americans of turning against this war? The only picture the media and the democrats will show them is the bad picture... the picture that makes me cringe and die inside. No one could be expected to continue to support something that bad. In fact, World War II would have been lost early on if the media had behaved as they are now. My God, we lost over one thousand Marines in seventy-two hours at Tarawa alone, for example.

Anyway, please read it all here:

Eye Of The Beholder

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