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Lileks: "This war is ours to lose if we want to."
Excerpted from todayâs Bleat.Time magazine had a Brad-Holland-style cover illo of the prisoner in the Klan hat, and over the magazineâs logo the editors deployed this plaintive cry: How did it come to this? The crucial word in that sentence is âIt.â What is âit,â exactly? The Iraqi campaign? The world birthed on 9/11? The American experience? Us? Them? I suspect itâs intended to be all of the above. It is the promise and glory of America that took a horrid wrong turn and ended up with âthis.â Thatâs the sum total of the planet, right there, a man in a pointy hood. The potential: it. The result: this. The postlapsarian dialectic, as the academics might say, if they wanted to impress their tenured peers. The story of the prison abuse might have had a different impact if the media had chosen a different tack. The only news that hits the front page is bad news; the innumerable small fragments of good news donât make A1 because papers have their standards, you see. We are expected to repair Iraqâs dilapidated electrical grid, so replacing an old generator and turning on the power to a neighborhood thatâs had brown-outs for ten years is not news. Two Marines dead in an ambush is news because A) death leads, and B) that âmission accomplishedâ aircraft carrier photo op needs to be debunked, however subtly, as often as possible. The media has come to believe that reporting more good than bad somehow makes them suspect; it goes contrary to The Mission, which is to find out whatâs wrong. I had the idea before Jarvis, but he was first to float it: a rebuilding beat. Every day, a story about whatâs being accomplished large and small. Iâd also pump for the occasional story of heroism, but I suspect that this would make editors uncomfortable. It might be true but itâs not . . . helpful. It would seem like cheerleading. And we canât have that. This smothering gloom, this suppurating corrosion â this isnât us. This isnât who we are. If it is, well, weâre lost, because it contains such potent self-hatred that weâll shrink from defending ourselves, because what we have built isnât worth defending. Thanks for the push, al Qaeda! Weâll take it from here. But itâs not us. Itâs some, but they donât set the national temperament. They can set the mood, but not the character. Yet. This war is ours to lose if we want to. You want to lose it? Me neither. Posted by: Mike 2004-05-18 |
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