Media pacifists are jumping all over Mark Yost for complaining about the biased coverage of the war in Iraq, but the good people aren’t just rolling over and taking it. Here’s an excellent defense of Yost:
Anytime someone dares to call into question the motives of the media, we can count on Lovelady to come to the defense of the far-left extreme — anyone out there remember the Eason Jordan affair? Easongate was all the fault of the “wacko neo-fascist bloggers,” or so Lovelady would have had us believe in the dozens of posts he made in cyberspace.
I don’t doubt for one moment that President Bush and his advisers made mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq war. I do not, for one minute, believe that he purposefully lied to the American public about the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power or the importance of introducing democracy in the Middle East as a way to stem radical Islamist terrorism. I believe with all my heart that the Iraqi people are better off today and will be better off in the future because of the American intervention to remove Saddam. Just peer into the dozens of mass graves uncovered in the last couple of years and tell me you disagree with me, Steve.
What America is attempting to do in the Middle East is nothing short of revolutionary. After years of supporting regimes that were friendly to our interests but suppressed their own people, President Bush has decided that the only course of action is for America to do all it can to foster self-determination in a vital region of the world. Not American-style democracy, mind you, but true local self-determination. And each day, on the ground in Iraq, there are dozens of small steps taken toward that goal. Yes, there are missteps and miscalculations … yes, there are setbacks as today’s suicide bombing of U.S. soldiers giving candy to Iraqi CHILDREN, but the ultimate success of the mission is not in doubt in my mind because of the determination of this president.
The predictability of Steve Lovelady and the Columbia Journalism Review has become something of a joke over the course of the last few years. They’re preaching to the choir while lecturing a public that increasingly writes off both of them as useless relics.
The media can’t play the same game with Iraq they played with Vietnam because there are too many alternate routes for news to take these days, but they’re certainly trying, relics that they are.
Yost, like most neo-cons, is a [very bad man] writing from air conditioned comfort who wants us to take credit for what I call “sunrise” accomplishments (i.e., we made the sun rise this morning). Things like schools, electricty and water which existed in abundance BEFORE the invasion. Problem is, we’re not even doing THAT well. Electricty production is down. Clean water is scarce.
To quote his KR colleague Hannah Allam (who is acutally IN Iraq):
“I invite Mr. Yost to spend a week in our Baghdad bureau, where he can see our Iraqi staff members’ toothbrushes lined up in the bathroom because they have no running water at home. I frequently find them camping out in the office overnight because electricity is still only sporadic in their sweltering neighborhoods, despite what I’m sure are the best-intentioned efforts of people like his Marine buddy working on the electrical grid.
“Mr. Yost could have come with me today as I visited one of my own military buddies, who like most officers doesn’t leave the protected Green Zone compound except by helicopter or massive convoy. The Army official picked me up in his air-conditioned Explorer, took me to Burger King for lunch and showed me photos
of the family he misses so terribly. The official is a great guy, and like so many other soldiers, it’s not politics that blind him from seeing the real Iraq. The compound’s maze of tall blast wall and miles of concertina wire obscure the view, too.
“Mr. Yost can listen to our bureau’s morning planning meetings, where we orchestrate a trip to buy bottled water (the tap water is contaminated, when it works) as if we’re plotting a military operation. I wonder whether he prefers riding in the first car — the most exposed to shrapnel and bullets — or the
chase car, which is designed to act as a buffer between us and potential kidnappers.
“Perhaps Mr. Yost would be moved by our office’s tribute wall to Yasser Salihee, our brave and wonderful colleague, who at age 30 joined the ranks of Iraqi civilians shot to death by American soldiers. Mr. Yost would have appreciated one of Yasser’s last stories — a rare good-news piece about humanitarian aid
reaching the holy city of Najaf.
“Mr. Yost’s contention that 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces are stable is pure fantasy. On his visit to Baghdhad, he can check that by chatting with our resident British security consultant, who every day receives a province-by-province breakdown of the roadside bombs, ambushes, assassinations and other violence
throughout the country.
“If Baghdad is too far for Mr. Yost to travel (and I don’t blame him, given the treacherous airport road to reach our fortress-like hotel), why not just head to Oklahoma? There, he can meet my former Iraqi translator, Ban Adil, and her young son. They’re rebuilding their lives under political asylum after insurgents in Baghdad followed Ban’s family home one night and gunned down her 4-year-old daughter, her husband and her elderly mother in law.
“Freshly painted schools and a new desalination plant might add up to “mission accomplished” for some people. Too bad Ban’s daughter never got to enjoy those fruits of her liberation.”
Obviously, she’s a terrorist lover while Mr. Yost is a freedom lover — as his sips his lemonade made from tap water in his nice cool home and opines while mainlining the Faux News Channel and blogging at Free Republic, thanks the the limitless electricity available to him.
Nice comment moonbat. Yost is right and you just proved it…