Silly Little Country

Lost voices

In an earlier post I made passing mention of the tendency of much of our media to pay no attention to the voices of American soldiers in Iraq, at least when those do not fit the bill. Certainly Casey Sheehan gets less press than Cindy.

Michelle Malkin posts with a very specific and shocking instance of this behaviour. It is difficult not to regard this as extremely dishonest behavior, and at the very best it is showing a complete lack of respect for the voice of the soldier in question, who wrote in a letter he left for his girlfriend on his laptop in case he should be killed:

I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.

The NY Times chose to omit this from their story on him, their poster child as the 2000th American soldier victim in Iraq (to give them some credit, the article does mention that he was a supporter of the war he was engaged in). His words I find heartbreaking, as I would never have the courage to have been in his position with his views on it.

I wish there were a better way to get biweekly acrostic puzzles than paying for the Sunday NY Times.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 1:51 PM