Two-Front War
Diana West has a terrific column in the Washington Times about the two-front war our soldiers are fighting in Iraq--one front against the terrorists, a second front against the media:
In what became a six-hour firefight, Americans battled militiamen of Muqtada al-Sadr to secure the hulk of a burning Humvee. It's not that our soldiers foughtbecausethe flaming wreck amounted to a tin can's worth of military value.They fought, as Capt. Ty Wilson of Fairfax, Va., explained to The Washington Post, because "we weren't going to let them dance on it for the news. Even [with] all the guys they lost that day, that still would have given them victory."Chalk one up for our side, a small win on the way to an underreported triumph over Muqtada al-Sadr's spring uprising. Iraq is sovereign, life goes on ... but I can't get over the chilling description of American soldiers risking their necks to keep the media from awarding a phony victory to the enemy. This puts the media — in this case, anyone with a video camera and a satellite hook-up — not in No Man's Land, but on the Other Side.
[Coverage in the American media] isn't a steady flow of facts; it's an antiwar drumbeat. Which means this isn't a war for soldiers alone. To win abroad, we must battle the burning Humvees at home.
