The vicious media circus began over a year ago, when George W. Bush announced that America had gone to war.
Within a week, the New York Times and other media outlets were blasting the President’s war-plan. As sandstorms kicked up across Iraq and the Middle East, media elites gleefully mocked Vice President Dick Cheney’s claim that American troops would be in Baghdad within a month.
Two weeks later, on April 9, 2003, statues of Saddam Hussein began tumbling to the ground just as Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin’s had 12 years earlier in the former Soviet Union.
But, like Ronald Reagan’s struggle with Communist Russia, the liberal media elite spent most of the energy attacking America’s president, often glossing over the evil nature of our enemies.
The mainstream media was shocked when Reagan called the Soviet Union, “evil,” even though that regime killed up to 30 million of their own citizens. George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein was a member of the axis of evil also drew similar cries of outrage.
Meanwhile, media outlets have practically ignored Saddam Hussein’s decade of butchery in Iraq because they are obsessing too much over the U.S. troops behavior at Abu Ghraib.
This weekend, Americans streamed into movie theatres to see Michael Moore’s dark vision of America, where U.S. troops gleefully listen to heavy metal while gunning down young Iraqi children. Those same children, a little more over a year ago, were living in peace and flying kites under Saddam’s rule.
Isn’t it ironic, that the day the Iraqis get their first taste of freedom ever, is the same day America’s top hit at the box office is a movie showing America’s "savage leaders" launching that very war? It's the same war which removed the most murderous tyrant in Middle East history and began to plant those seeds of freedom.
The elite media criticized our leaders in the actions leading up to war for the failure of diplomacy. In the early days of the war, our leaders were criticized for getting us into a quagmire after we entered Baghdad for a supposed theft of thousands of years of antiquities. They were criticized after Saddam’s statues fell for showing too much national pride, and after major operations ceased for terrorist attacks. The list goes on.
It seems the only time this elite media was on our side, or maybe even just neutral was when reporters were embedded with our troops and the images broadcasted back to America were irrefutable.
Today, the Iraqis know for themselves what it is like to taste freedom. Whether the elite media is willing to face the fact or not, the Iraqis are glad Saddam is gone and thankful to those who helped liberate their land.
When a democratic Iraq helps stabilize the region, maybe the media will rethink their stand, just as they almost did when Ronald Reagan’s death forced them to revisit his record. Perhaps, but I'm not holding my breath.
