Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JustTradeEm who wrote (80641)	3/9/2003 4:21:52 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

MOYERS: You say also in the book that the first Gulf War made war more fashionable again. HEDGES: Right. MOYERS: What do you mean by that? HEDGES: Well, it was you know so much of commercial news has not become an extension of the entertainment industry. And the war became entertainment. The Army had no more candor than they did in Vietnam. But what they perfected was the appearance of candor. Live press conferences. And well-packaged video clips of Sidewinder missiles hitting planes or going down chimneys. You know this kind of stuff. It's— and the fact that they covered up death. Not only the death of our own. But the death of tens of thousands of Iraqis who were killed. They were nameless, faceless phantoms. When we the victims, if you watch the news reports carefully, were our young men who were out in the desert having to sort of bathe out of a bucket and eat MRE's. So it was completely mythic, or mendacious narrative that was presented to us. And I was a little delayed getting back to New York because I was a prisoner with the Iraqi Republican Guard. But I remember landing into New York and even then the mood was that we'd just won the Super Bowl. And it frightened me and it disgusted me. And it wasn't because I didn't believe that we shouldn't have gone into Kuwait. I believe we had no choice. But I certainly understood that we, as a nation, had completely lost touch with what war is. And when we lose touch with what war is, when we believe that our technology makes us invulnerable. That we can wage war and others can die and we won't — then eventually, if history is any guide, we are going to stumble into a horrific swamp. pbs.org