Haditha
Christopher Hitchens has a good piece in Slate about the recent media frothing comparing Haditha to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Base10 thinks that the liberal media is just waiting to show their natural state: that of extreme distaste for the military. Deep down, in spite of the fact that they have to kowtow to the public by declaring their support for the troops but not for the war, the extreme left really thinks military people are just a bunch of homicidal maniacs. This accounts for the present fixation on My Lai. Check out this article by left-leaning Paul Campos:

This column was originally going to be about a couple of law professor-pundits, Hugh Hewitt and Glenn Reynolds, who specialize in defending the Bush administration. My learned colleagues are now busy claiming that the supposed "media frenzy" regarding the apparent massacre of civilians in Haditha, Iraq, is a product of liberal bias, rather than of a sense of professional obligation to report a major news story.

But in the end it's not very interesting to point out that Bush administration dead-enders are willing to defend anything it does. (Hewitt in particular seems past praying for: If President Bush came out in favor of compulsory late-term abortions for the wives of NASCAR drivers, I wouldn't be surprised if Hewitt found something to praise in the proposal).

What's more interesting are the following comments from Peter Beinart, editor in chief of The New Republic. After noting that Americans can be as barbaric as anyone, Beinart argues that "what makes us an exceptional nation with the capacity to lead and inspire the world is our very recognition of that fact." While it's true "we are capable of Hadithas and My Lais," America is nevertheless almost unique among nations because, when we confront such atrocities, we are "capable of acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again."

What's disturbing about this claim is that illustrates how a person in a position of considerable public influence can simply concoct an imaginary past to suit the propaganda needs of the present war.

Consider three of the best-known atrocities committed by American troops during the Vietnam War. (I say best-known rather than well-known, since the vast majority of Americans have only heard of one of them at most. So much for our supposed national willingness to "acknowledge what happened.")

Read the article, Campos proceeds to describe My Lai and some other incidents (and even manages to smear Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld). The anti-war anti-military left is starting to show its true colors.
- posted by Base10 @ 3:57 PM