Someone sent me this article from the Atlantic Free Press in which a stupid hippie tells us about how he became anti-war in the 60s because the media published pictures of the horrors of war. He laments the fact that media doesn’t continue to feed his perverse need for gory photos.
A key reason my—and millions of other Americans’ — eyes were opened to what the US was up to in Indochina was that the media at that time, at least by 1967, had begun to show Americans the reality of that war. I didn’t have to look to hard to find the photos of napalm victims, or to read about the true nature of the weapons that our forces were using.
Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.
Oh, goodness, he has to make a “concerted effort” – poor child. How can the media do this to a poor hippie – making him actually do something besides smoke pot and scratch his ample ass. But, see, it’s the media’s fault this war has continued – it couldn’t be because we learned our lesson in the 60s that we have to fight our wars to a successful conclusion, could it? Naw. Couldn’t be.
We may read about wedding parties that are bombed by American forces—something that has happened with some frequency in both Iraq and Afghanistan — where the death toll is tallied in dozens, but we are, as a rule, not provided with photos that would likely show bodies torn apart by anti-personnel bombs—a favored weapon for such attacks on groups of supposed enemy “fighters.” (A giveaway that such weapons are being used is a typically high death count with only a few wounded.)
Now, the poor thing is a bomb damage assessment expert – even though he successfully avoided the draft when it was his turn to serve. But, he tells us that we’re all a bunch of morons because we need graphic depictions of deaths before we understand that war kills people.
We ain’t not smart enough to cipher that from them scribble thingies on that there paper stuff – we needs pitchers. Maybe them hippie fellers could buy us some crayons and them books that we kin color in, too.
Of course, he’s one of those goofy elitists who claims the scales fell from his pro-war eyes the minute he went to college. Well, anyway, this goofball thinks we send soldiers into the fight instead of using drone aircraft;
Meanwhile, the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan is only likely to increase with the expanding use of Predator drone aircraft which kill from the sky, piloted by pilots based in control trailers in remote places like Nevada.
To bolster his point he quotes John Grant, the stupid hippie Hun that butts heads with our buddy Skye and her Sheepdog friends in West Chseter, PA. Grant is the president of the local Geezers for Peace chapter;
Is this who we want to be as citizens of the world, essentially hiding away in our comfy homes afraid of engaging with the world except through remotely piloted drones or controlled visits to Disney World? Considering the long history of warfare, why is this kind of warfare not cowardly? Are drones the answer to not wanting our young men and women brought home in aluminum boxes?
So who do you want to be, John? The guy who is calling for more of our troops to come home in aluminum boxes so you can feel better about yourself?
ADDED: Some guy named Thus Spake Ortner at some other blog I’ve heard of from time-to-time wrote about Dave Lindorff, the author of this nimroddery, here and here.
