Getting our Bearings Straight

Fire of Liberty

Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, has a wonderful piece on how the press seems to find it convienant to publish banner headlines about international groups condemning the actions of the US but seem to be very silent when these groups cast their focus on the terrorists and the people who wave their banners of death. While the folks at CNN, NBC News, ABC News, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and various media outlets seem to publish this daily, few if any of the American or world public are even remotely aware that Amnesty International has released a report that has condemned the horrific nature of the terrorists within Iraq. Thanks to the good work of Lopez, we can finally find out what the "Gotcha" media seems to think is unimportant for the "folks" to see. Just take a peek:

If they did, wouldn't Amnesty International's report on the Iraqi terrorists be at least as well-covered as their criticisms of American treatment of detainees at Gitmo? Wouldn't we all know that, as Amnesty reports, that the bad guys in Iraq say that "every Iraqi or foreigner who works with the coalition is a target. Ministries, mercenaries, translators, businessmen, cooks or maids, it doesn't matter the degree of collaboration." Wouldn't there be some collective sense of perspective?

Describing the foreign jihadist fighters who kill in Iraq, Amnesty writes, "those who order or commit such atrocities place themselves totally beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. There is no honour (or) heroism in blowing up people going to pray or murdering a terrified hostage. Those carrying out such acts are criminals, nothing less, whose actions undermine any claim they may have to be pursuing a legitimate cause."

Those who are lethally anxious to stop democracy (and who, by the way, want most of us — you and I — dead) from happening are different than us. Intentionally or not, that becomes clear from reading this recent Amnesty report, even if you're not hearing too much about it.

While this is a clear demonstration of the media pushingng an agenda it is also a sign of how much our culture has declined. We can see this decline when certain sectors of the American public and the world in general are unable to differentiate between the horrific acts of Saddam Hussein or al Qaeda from the actions of the United States. Throughout our epic battle against the double scourge of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism, you didn't have to ask too many people or dig through countless articles of "FDR Lied," to discover that the armies of Japan and Germany as well as their deadly ideolegies were the true enemy of the United States. One could only imagine what a person being magically transported from 1943 to today would garner from looking at what the press serves up daily. If we don't return to a more united atmosphere that can clearly identify the evil that we face in the Global War on Terrorism much like the WWII generation, then our ship is clearly destined to crash into the rocky coastline before us.