Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

The military the media does not tell you about

Frank Schaeffer:

I never served in the military, and before my son unexpectedly volunteered, I was too busy writing novels to give much thought to the men and women who guard us. To me the military was the "other." After my son joined the Marines, however, casualty reports from Afghanistan and Iraq were no longer mere news items but gut-churning family bulletins. And reports about prisoner abuse cut me to the quick. They also made me angry at the media. Sure, this was an emotional, don't-impugn-my-son's-honor reaction, but I wonder if there is also something fundamentally amiss with the way the media report on our military.

If most reporters, editors and publishers are like this writer before his son volunteered, they don't identify with members of our armed forces personally. Most members of our media are drawn from my privileged class. And we, the most privileged Americans, seem to believe that everyone but our children should serve. When members of the elite do volunteer -- as did the Harvard-graduate son of Richard and Doris Kearns Goodwin -- it's a news story in itself.

...

As a military parent, why do I read the most positive stories about our troops in a sort of military-family samizdat e-mail underground network and not on Page One? And how many times does the same type of editorial about the same handful of abused prisoners have to be repeated before an inaccurate impression of our military is given?

Maybe reporters and editorial writers think that reporting too often on the many selfless acts our troops undertake will reflect well on an undeserving president who likes to grandstand with our troops in photo ops. But is the truth about the character of our military being accurately, or should I say proportionately, reported? Does the public, which has woefully little personal contact with our military, know that most men and women in our services are not torturers but people like them trying to do the best they can with compassion and honor? Does the public know that acts of kindness are routine and acts of abuse are rare?

I treasure a photograph of my son cradling an Afghan child in his arms while standing outside a school he was protecting from fanatics who wanted to kill the teacher for the "crime" of teaching girls. That picture is far more typical of what my son and his fellow Marines did every day than are the pictures of mistreated prisoners.

Many in the media put their antipathy toward President Bush ahead of reporting the good that is being done by our troops. To them stories that hurt the President politically are truly patriotic. Read the whole thing.