Read Jules Crittenden on the deaths of the nine members of the 82nd Airborne. (Hat tip to Ace) He has the rest of the story the mainstream media ignored. I seriously wonder how the battles of past wars, battles that we count as major victories, would be reported today. Hundreds, and even thousands, were killed in battles that we count major successes.
The television reports of today consist almost completely of casualty figures, and often soundbites of politicians, with no context of the battle whatsoever. The written press reports are usually somewhat better — they are longer with more space to fill so they generally provide more context and some information about our military successes, but still are lacking. There is an entire generation of reporters that evidently believe that if anyone is killed in battle, then it by definition cannot be counted a success. I think that some of the problem is that these are not conventional battles with two sides shooting at each other and one side advancing to take territory. Instead, the battles being fought in Iraq are often back and forth action/reaction situations. We round up or kill the enemy, or otherwise disrupt their activities, then some of them come back and attack with a car bomb or other method. Unfortunately one of the ways the enemy fights is by using the media and they know that it doesn’t really matter how many of them are caught or killed or how seriously their operations are disrupted, as long as they can shoot or bomb a half dozen or more Americans they know what news the people in the U.S.will hear that evening.
I am not advocating minimizing the significance of our casualties — quite the opposite. What is a better way to honor the fallen? To recite a casualty number and express pity, or to tell the story of some of the successes those brave men and women achieved at the cost of their very lives? I realize that news is not about honoring the fallen, but it should at least be about telling the story — the whole story.
