Thanks to Truthout.org for pointing me to a Jeremy Scahill article in antiwar.com I missed. Col. Ralph Peters, a military analyst who has whored for virtually every cable network in existence, has written a puff piece for the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (an organization that makes AIPAC look respectable), in which he says that military attacks on partisan media may be necessary when conducting an unpopular war. To be precise, the U.S. military did conduct a few deliberate attacks on media representatives in Iraq in the first year of the war, but Peters is calling for pre-emptive physical military strikes on the media, in the home nation. He accuses journalists of considering themselves "superior beings."
Excuse me? The few journalists I know are scared kittens, assaulted on every side because their very form of employment is going away. First we have to put up with corporate machinations, an indifferent public, a disappearing media format in which to decribe the world that exists, and now some military-consultant-loon wants to take potshots with live grape and gravity bombs. Who will rid me of this meddlesome Peters?
4 comments:
I'm not sure many remaining media organizations can afford Kevlar these days...
And if the military came after the media, there's so few media left that probably no one would know. It's sad...
The sad thing is that Peters really is right. The U.S. does not have the will to do what must be done. What we need to do is to identify people like Peters whose worldview is based entirely on fear and is manifested as bullying, arrogance, an abandonment of morals and, when given the choice between judicious use of force and self-defeating violence, will choose the latter every time -- we need to identify those people and drum them out of the military, prevent them from getting any job that might have any influence on policy, and deny them access to the media.
But we won't because sticking corks in the mouths of morons isn't what Americans do.
Paula, Hey hello! Wretch, speak for yourself, here in Colorado we have the Make My Day law, which means that a favorite hobby of most Colorado residents is stuffing corks in the mouths of morons. And finishing it off with a .38 and a sorbet to cleanse the palate.
"Go ahead, Peters, make my day."
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