Orright, try this on your friends, Americans.
Who are the U. S. A. 's most famous soldiers? I don't mean Generals, and not your great uncle Jim, but famous working soldiers? And why?
War by war, you'll get-
First world war? Sergeant York, maybe Rickenbacker. Killed lots of enemy.
World war II? Audie Murphy. Killed lots of enemy.
Korea? Nobody.
Vietnam? John Kerry. Killed one enemy, threw away medals.
John McCain. Captured, imprisoned a long time.
Iraq?
(No, "that football guy" Tillman was Afghanistan. ) IRAQ.
That's right-
Lynndie England. Naked prisoner on leash.
Jessica Lynch. Captured, tortured after being knocked out in a truck wreck.
And now "that protestor woman's son", Casey Sheehan. His mother is angry.
Should we see a pattern here?
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2 comments:
hmm...you forgot 'Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf (did I spell that right?).
Interesting comment above. I think it all comes down to the question that hasn't been answered yet: Why is the US in Iraq? When you can answer that question, then people will probably be astounded and amazed.
Seriously though, doesn't the military have a role in educating the public in the good work that the forces are doing?
Here in the UK, although the coverage of the war is not as focused on the British troops as before there are still stories that come out. For example Private Beharry see here for details.
However, it appears that it is as though some news organisations are not interested in the good things that happen, only the bad. I find the best overall news tv coverage in the UK at least is Sky News. I don't know about US channels.
I have seen some Fox News when I was in the US, and the political bias shown was incredible. News apparently can't be impartial (as it should be). It seems that biased politics is the norm over there...for example the belief that if you don't support the war, you don't support the troops. That I don't understand.
Oh well....it will be interesting to see how long we are talking about Iraq. I suspect a few more years.
We have always been a mythological-hero driven country. It's just that we used to celibrate heros, now we create heros to tear them apart. Doesn't matter if its sports, war, church, law enforcement, hollywood. Tillman was a true American hero, to me it didn't matter whether he died from enemy or friendly fire. He was a hero because he had a paid ticket to the American dream and passed it by for his country. Why the pentagon had to cook up a story about him was beyond me. The story has be unassailable to be myth making material. The pentagon blew it with Jessica Lynch. They created a story which was a bacon wrapped lie that was easily uncovered. The real Lynch never fired a shot at her attackers (gun jammed) and was helped by Iraqi doctors even while her captors wanted to kill her. She was a pretty face for the press. Miss England became the poster child for everything wrong with army command structure. Pentagon tried to keep prison torture out of public view, in the end we all got to see our values torn apart by our very own. Why? They were trying to put all the blame for abuse on one soldier who decided he wasn't going to be fall guy for a widespread tolerated problem. Lt Paul Reikoff, head of Op-Truth, appears to be a good soldier who saw combat, but he has the wrong message (pro-Afganistan, anti- Iraq war). The country has been divided over Vietnam and latest Iraq war because we the people were lied to by our leaders in both cases. (Sure there are a few radical lefties who were against Afganistan, but they are very few in number.) It's harder to rally around a hero soldier story in these cases. We all know there are good men and women who distinguished themselves everyday by risking life over and over to save their fellow soldiers or to help some civilians. Bad leadership and celebrity news culture prevents us from honoring them properly.
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