WaPo - The Right Conversation for America

We, as a nation, can blame the media for losing perspective in the GWOT, and Fred Hiatt of WaPo unwittingly points that out in the last sentence of his editorial bashing America for failing to live up to its standards. He says that "it's fair to write more editorials about exceedingly mild Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay than about the unspeakable mass graves of Hilla."

That, folks, is patently absurd. It's not fair. It's not fair to write about how we got someone's Koran wet as some sort of outrage, while downplaying the accounts of the detainees destroying their own Korans or when Pakistani terrorists blow up a mosque. He claims that we don't need to know how evil al Zarqawi is, as if it's a given.

I'm sorry, Fred, but we do need to know it. We need to know why we're fighting this war. When all we hear from the media is what we've been doing wrong and never what we've been doing right, normal people begin to wonder if we've ever done any good at all. We don't need the media to be slavish in its praise of America, but we do need it to be fair. We shouldn't have to go to Arthur Chrenkoff's wonderful blog to help us realize just how much progress we're making in Iraq. You should be reporting it...but instead, the MSM buries good news on page 12, while reporting the U.S. body count on the front page.

However, America is not without fault. Let's be clear about that. Unlike our French and German friends, we are generally a people of action, not talk, and those who act, being human, are inevitably bound to commit mistakes and bad acts. We've made many mistakes during our young life as a country, some horrible, and we should be held to account. But, it's important to know that what it all boils down to is that we're all human. Yet, in the balance of things, America is still the greatest force for good in the world, and we, and the world, should never forget that.