So, the media is losing us the war in Iraq because they refuse to tell the good news? That boys and girls is known in polite company as merde of Moo Cow. This disgusting and disgraceful lie has been repeated ad nauseum by the Bush Administration and its Republican hacks–John McCain to name one. There are, unfortunately, some in the media as well who insist that the media is just not telling us the good news. A friend of mine, Joel Mowbray, takes a whack at this topic in today’s Washington Times (and please, no hateful comments for Joel, he is still willing to give the Bushies the benefit of the doubt and is not an evil soul) by arguing that Iraqis by and large say they are better off today than under Saddam Hussein.
I would argue that objective facts point to a society that is drastically and dramatically worse off:
- Iraqi doctors and dentists have fled the country in droves
- Iraqi society has become more segregated
- Electricity production lags far behind the norm achieved under Saddam
- Public safety is a joke
- Religious extremism is more widespread and women in several areas of the country are subjected to Sharia law in a way never experienced under Saddam
But, I am an American and to be perfectly selfish about it my first and foremost concern is the welfare of Americans. On this count the trend is going in the wrong direction. Consider, for example, the number of U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq. I pulled together the following graph using data provided by the website Iraq Coalition Casualties. I counted the number of U.S. soldier who died in the four month period–December thru March–for the years 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. The following is the four month average:
Larry, he may not be “an evil soul” but he has had six years to watch the Bush administration in office, and longer to watch the entire Republican machine at work.
If he still tries to give them “the benefit of the doubt” by now he is blind, deaf, extremely stupid and very possibly psychotic. Like a tobacco executive his paycheck depends on not admitting the truth of what he sees happening in front of him daily.
Hannah Erandt pointed out the “Banality of Evil.” It consists of focusing on the routine of a job and attempting to become much better at doing it, while completely ignoring the morality of the human outcomes of the work that those people are doing. Adolph Eichman was not especially evil. He was just trying to be as good a functionary as he could be, and ignored the resulting actions others performed because of the papers he shuffled and signed.
Stanley Milgram in his great book “Obedience to Authority” describing the well-known experiments in which a subject is directed by an authority figure to give regularly increasing electric shocks to another person regardless of the pain or danger the shocked person is undergoing makes a fascinating observation. Most people will keep right on doing what they are told to do, even if their own morality is offended. They will feel bad about it, but they do it. What they will NOT do is take an action to stop the experiment. It is that single step – taking an action – that makes the difference between someone who is not evil compared top someone who is.
The quote that I find most powerful is “Tyrannies are perpetuated by diffident men who do not have the courage to act out their beliefs.”
All it takes to be evil is to focus entirely on the narrow scope of functions you can personally deal with and ignore the results when others who depend on your work act on it. The first person ignores the end result of the orders he gives, and the person acting on the orders focuses on doing as he was told and leaves the responsibility for the results back on the first party. Both can then go home at night, play with their children, and sleep without moral qualms. That’s what evil is.
And I think that the U.S. right now is filled with banal, evil journalists and TV News personalities. That’s in addition to the Republican Party as a whole.
Among others.
I hate to say it Larry but much of the general public here isn’t going to care plain and simple cause these aren’t white bread American journalists getting killed-won’t even get reported here.