Andrew Foster Altschul
04.16.2007
Each day it becomes clearer what a great national shame is the presidency of George W. Bush. Whether it's the illegal, incompetent, dishonest prosecution of the war in Iraq - where a member of the "freely elected government" we're so durned proud of just led a protest of thousands against U.S. presence and regularly incites, if not commits, violence against troops; where the most visible result of the "Surge" has been a suicide bombing inside parliament - or the silly defense of an Attorney General who promotes torture and lies (yes, it's documented: lies) to Congress, it is now undeniable that our country is being led by a soulless, self-adoring crook who cares nothing about average citizens, American history, or the rule of law.
But just when you think he can't go any lower, President Bush always finds a way to outdo himself. Today, in the wake of the incomprehensible slaughter of thirty-three students at Virginia Tech, the president sent out his spokeswoman to - first and foremost - defend the killer.
"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms," said Perino, in the first White House response, adding the utterly meaningless "but that all laws must be followed," thus nipping in the bud any crazy attempt to use this incident to have a discussion about gun rights in the United States.
Well, thank Heavens someone's looking out for the Second Amendment while everyone else is losing their heads.
I teach at a West Coast university which, like many, is somewhat self-contained, its physical loveliness giving a sense - perhaps a false sense - of security, of being separate from the dangers of everyday life. I'm certain that if even one of our students were shot on campus, the school would be gripped in anguish for weeks. If thirty-three students were killed, if our dorms and classrooms were suddenly rendered unsafe, the very fabric of this place would be ripped to shreds, the students and faculty thrown into a deep pit full of questions about our country, our laws, our culture, our way of life - all on top of an unbearable grief for friends, students, and colleagues.
And you, Mr. President, you want to come lecture us about gun rights?
moreToday's Commons debate should focus on the hideous civil war that is destroying Iraq, not this trvial spat with the mediaJackie Ashley
Monday April 16, 2007
The Guardian
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What matters is the disaster. What matters is the blood dripping into the sand, day after day, week after week. What matters is the obvious thing, the hideous civil war destroying Iraq, and the murders and the bombings, and our complicity in that. What can have happened to us that we are so interested, instead, in the chain of command that led to two junior service people being paid to publish rather uninteresting accounts of their bloodless abduction and return? The looming crisis with Iran is certainly important. Our attitude to their nuclear programme is, too. The politics of the seizure of the British personnel matters. But a tiny spat among self-obsessed media and political players in Westminster does not.
<...>
Broadcasters are well aware of the problem. Here is something so big and so relentless, it drives their viewers away. They want to be responsible. The BBC and ITV will do special Iraq weeks, to highlight the continuing carnage, before turning with relief to easier-on-the-eye subjects that will keep their numbers up. But even when we do see something of the reality, the pictures seem always the same. There are the weeping women running towards the camera, the oily black smoke curling up in the middle distance, the chaos of ambulances and the angrily gesturing people.
They don't show the cuts of human meat littering the streets, or the hands, feet or heads lying by themselves at the side of the road. They don't show children with holes in their bellies, screaming with pain. As a former TV journalist myself, I used to strongly defend this kind of censorship. It was unnecessary to show everything, I thought, a kind of pornography of violence that damaged the viewer for no obvious purpose. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe we should be shown these things, just to shock us into taking another look at Iraq and thinking again about what can be done.
As a notorious sceptic about aspects of the blogosphere, I have to say that, in the case of Iraq, the web has provided a heroic and essential counterweight to traditional media. There are websites devoted to painstaking and unflinching counting of what happens there.
Take the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (icasualties.org), which confines itself to collating news reports and is therefore, it says itself, undercounting. Look just at reports from yesterday morning. There was the British helicopter crash. And 37 people were reported dead after a car-bomb attack on a bus station; a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb; a suicide bomber blew himself up in a minibus in Baghdad, killing at least nine; five "suspected insurgents" were killed in Basra, then another four, by the Iraqi army; four people were killed by suicide bombers in Mosul; gunmen killed a police colonel and another policeman in Baiji; a group linked to al-Qaida abducted 20 Iraqi troops and policemen; Baghdad police said they had found 19 bodies around the capital; another two policemen were killed in Baghdad; four bodies were found in Mosul, two of them decapitated. I haven't listed the wounded because it would take the rest of this page.
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