uggabugga

HOME RSS | .

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Ignoring the troops helps home-front morale:

Or so says the New York Post. From their editorial about the 31 Marines that died in a helicopter crash, THEY DIED FOR FREEDOM: (excerpts, emp add)

No doubt there will be many who will attempt to make political hay of the helicopter crash — 35 Marine Corps boot-camp photos squeezed onto the cover of Time or Newsweek magazines, or crowded somewhere into The New York Times, all in an effort to undercut home-front morale wouldn't surprise.

The Bush administration doesn't like the press to publish photos of caskets. The New York Post doesn't like people to see photos of soldiers that have died in the war.

If the war in Iraq met with substantial public approval (e.g. WW2), then these images would not affect morale. This war - like so many things the administration does - is a policy that has to be lied about, or hidden, in order to carry it out.

ALSO: Can be banish the notion that opposition to policies is "political" and therefore illegitimate?

posted by Quiddity at 1/27/2005 03:49:00 AM

2 comments

Well, hiding "true costs" is Bush standard procedure. Also appalling to me was the cable news channels' first take on the helicopter crash: it's okay folks -- they think it was weather-related, not caused by enemy fire. Oh, well, fine. Then those lost lives somehow count less. Bizarre.

Grace Nearing
Scriptoids

By Grace Nearing, at 1/27/2005 8:59 PM

The helicopter was flying at night because of the hostile environment. Night flying (and using night-goggles) meant a much diminished ability to navigate in rough weather. So the crash was due, in part, to the fact that the country was not tranquil. It is in accurate to characterize the deaths as being purely weather-related.

By Quiddity, at 1/28/2005 3:26 AM