One of my primary motivations to begin blogging was to provide another voice, however meek or hushed, as a counter to the defeatism and anti-military nature I saw in our mainstream media. Few may hear me and, of those that do, some may dismiss me as a paranoid hawk. I’ll accept the hawk title, though you can keep the oft-attached neocon garbage — the history of that word does not apply to my beliefs. I sharply renounce the paranoid aspect, however, as history is on my side. The media have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory before, specifically during and after the Tet offensive of early 1968. My study of Tet and the subsequent media fallout sickened me back in college during a survey-level military history course, and that feeling has certainly continued and seeped over into this blog. One might say Tet has almost become a central theme here at Target Centermass.
It’s my continued hope that the blogosphere, through such efforts as Chrenkoff‘s regular “Good News from Iraq” features and especially the MilBloggers, can provide enough of a counterweight against the media to allow American efforts to prevail. Sometimes, that hope is bouyed.
Greyhawk: Americans Dissatisfied With Press Coverage of the Military.
In his very next post, Greyhawk points us to two other MilBloggers, one of which previously unknown to me, who clearly demonstrate why sometimes my hopes wane.
I’ll be honest: I understand what the media, as a whole, is trying to do but, for the life of me, I cannot understand why. There is no way that a victory for the jihadists currently carrying much of the weight of the onslaught against a free Iraq, a defeat for America, and a dooming of a fledgling Arab democracy could spell a better world. Such a result could only lead us down one of two paths — either the resulting next war is fought by us in a far less humane manner or the next war isn’t fought at all, much to our future detriment. And we retreat. And the radical Islamists spread. I really don’t understand the hopes of the members of today’s media when, truly, the lives and freedoms of their grandchildren hang in the balance.
As for me, I’ll keep working and hoping to add to the chorus of counter-voices. Or maybe I’ll go back to work another way. Hey, I hope to have grandchildren, too.