Detailed Recruiter had some things to say after reading my If It Bleeds, It Leads post from a few days ago.

I could go on for days talking about the media so I will indulge myself again by responding to some of the things he said. Some of this goes a little off-track but I’ve been meaning to say it for awhile so I fit it in anyway, because there’s a lot of media-bashing in the military.

Detailed Recruiter:

All I want is balance and perspective. I’d be glad to read about this awful crime in my neighborhood, and grateful to the Hometown Gazette for informing me. However I’m also assuming that the Hometown Gazette’s reporter isn’t hoping that the murderer escapes. I’m also assuming that there isn’t an accompanying editorial in the Hometown Gazette where they blame the mayor for the murderer’s actions. I’m also assuming that the reporter won’t publish any material provided by the murderer without running it by the cops first. Basically, I’m assuming that the reporter from the Hometown Gazette is not rooting for the murderer.

I do not believe that the media (assuming DR is talking about the current war via analogy) wants the murderer (terrorists?) to escape. I also do not believe that the media directly blames the victim (USA, president?) for the crimes of the terrorists. Terrorists may be partially motivated by some of our country’s actions (I mean, they did say that, after all) but I don’t think the media believes we deserved to get blown up. Also, you can hope reporters provide relevant information they may find to the police but the media cannot be expected to report to the government nor is it, or should be, supervised by it. I also do not believe the media is “rooting” for the terrorists.

Part of the reason the media gets a bad rap is because people don’t understand its purposes. Yes, the media exists so you can find out what’s going on in the world or in your town. But I think its most crucial and vital purpose is to question. Specifically, question the government. We NEED the media to question everything the government says, does, or wants to do. A country without a free press to monitor the leaders is not a free country.

Any nation whose media is straight-up run by the government, strong-armed by or under government threats, or simply blows kisses and tosses flowers at the powers-that-be, is also not a free country. If the government is doing a good job with, for example, appointing competent judges, the media doesn’t need to talk about that. Everything’s going fine. If the government is doing a crappy job with say, educating its kids, than the media should be all over it.

The media didn’t brainwash Americans into thinking the war was a mess because the media didn’t make a war that was supposed to be over in months drag on four years, the media isn’t spending billions of dollars on the war instead of projects at home, the media didn’t turn the Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites into enemies, the media didn’t send millions of refugees pouring into Iraq’s annoyed neighbours’ territory. They just told us it was happening, because it wasn’t what was supposed to happen and because it’s making the situation worse.

The media didn’t cause the gap between the government’s terrorist fears and war desires and the American population’s lack of fear and war support because that as much as people like to talk about the terrorist threat, there is virtually no threat on American soil. The vast majority of the wackos who would like to see us die have no chance of making it across the ocean to blow themselves up in our grocery stores. Americans go about their daily lives as they always have because they still feel safe.

No, the media isn’t perfect, nobody is. But the burden of justifying, drumming up support for, and cheering on a war is on the government, not the media. As Ron Steinman said: “Pencils do not win or lose wars. Governments and armies win and lose.”

At that leads us back to the current war. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who can breathe that the war didn’t go as planned and wasn’t planned well in the first place. But from all my dealings with the media and from reading “anti-war” writings, I’ve never run across a reporter who thought the terrorists should win and very rarely a person who thought badly of the troops. (And they were just asses to begin with)

When the New York Times asked me to write an essay for their Christmas column, I talked to the editor I was dealing with about this very subject, the supposed “media vs military” battle. Not only was she angry that people actually believed the media was out to get us, she herself turned out to be prior service Army, so she could see from both viewpoints at once.

I do not understand the “you’re anti-war so you must be a troop-hater!” mindset. It just doesn’t make sense. The anti-war folks believe the war is wrong and that the troops should be brought home immediately to avoid any further casualties.

Hello…they don’t want us to be killed for a lost cause! How is that “not supporting the troops”? All the parents I’ve read about who lost a child and are anti-war want the war to end so other people’s kids don’t die too. You can be a peace freak and love servicemembers at the same time.

If people really didn’t give a rat’s butt about the military, they wouldn’t care if we went to war or not. Why would they protest against something involving the deaths of people they couldn’t care less about?

Now some will say that you should always support a war your troops are fighting or that declaring it a lost cause will mean the first 3000 deaths were for nothing. Even if they did die for nothing, that does not mean we should continue letting MORE troops die in an attempt to validate the previous deaths, unless of course there is a very real chance of succeeding with the original mission. (And that’s the whole debate now, isn’t it?)

But more importantly, we should not expect people to cheer on a war just to support the troops. If that were the case, the government could wage war whenever it pleased, for whatever reason, and expect to get away with it knowing the citizenry would back their troops no matter what. And that’s a scary thought.

If terrorists had truly made our country so unsafe that you couldn’t go shopping or to school without really fearing that you might get blown up in the process, like people in Baghdad do every day, then you wouldn’t have this problem with a war and troops whose status in America’s daily life is just above background noise.

When the media questions the purpose, scope, funding, direction, and leadership of the war, it doesn’t mean they are supporting the enemy or unpatriotic or harbouring uncaring feelings towards servicemembers. They are doing the job our democracy requires, and should demand, of them. Only kings and tyrants lead wars that no one questions.

And if a war is truly a just and vital war, the country wouldn’t need convincing in the first place.