Vodkapundit today takes a look at the "Long War" and wonders if we can Stay Focused. He does not believe our society is doing what is required in order to in the war, and I see little to disagree with in his formulation:
If we’re going to win a long, ideological war, we need our primary schools to [teach] our children what patriotism is - and for the most part, they don’t. We need our college professors to give our best and brightest the intellectual ammunition to confront our destroyers – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our public thinkers to defend our laws and our way of life against foreign aggression – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our entertainers to choose the home team – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our politicians to show the backbone of Churchill, but for the most part, they don’t. And we need our military to understand, embrace, and put everything on the line for their country.
One out of six? That’s pretty bad. Is it enough? Probably not.
Our schools, our public thinkers, our entertainers, and our politicians either do not realize we are at war (which is hard to believe, but possible) or understand we are at war yet are unable to break out of their sclerotic paradigms. Our media continues to view the world through the dialectical lens of Political Correctness. In the PC world, there are only victims and oppressors and once a group or an individual has been determined to be a victim, they are held to minimal standards of accountability and seen as innocents whose atrocities are explained as the result of their desperate circumstances (especially their oppression by the West.) Among other things, this allows the media to simplify the news in the service of "Stories" or "Narratives." Although the media often has pretensions of sophistication and nuance, in reality, they have very little time or ability to explain complex stories in any depth and falling back on the ready made "victim" template is the easiest way to get stories into print.
John Walker Lindh is now being actively rehabilitated in the media.
The New York Daily News had an article about Lindh in the Sunday paper. We are offered An exclusive look at Lindh's life behind bars by reporter Adam Lisberg:
Lindh is serving a 20-year prison sentence, and is under a court-imposed silence.
But Lindh's family and supporters say he deserves a break, and America needs to take another look at what he really did.
"His story is indeed a story that needs to come out, and needs to be shared with the world," said Shakeel Syed, who served as a religious adviser to Lindh in prison.
In his first-ever account of Lindh's life in a medium-security federal prison in Victorville, Calif., Syed said Lindh is a model inmate who lives as normal a life as possible behind bars - but also is a spiritual beacon to other Muslims there.
"Prison has helped him become a better Muslim," Syed said. "He is a Malcolm X with a softer tone."
Lindh's father lays out the basic strategy of the quest to rehabilitate the image of his son:
Lindh's father, Frank Lindh, said his son was well-meaning but misguided, never taking up arms against America or joining Al Qaeda in its destructive quest.
"In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man who became involved in a spiritual quest and became the focus of the grief and anger of an entire nation over an event in which he had no part," Frank Lindh told a San Francisco audience earlier this year.
Alas, poor John was merely a misguided young man who turned to Islam and swore Jihad as a purely spiritual journey of self discovery. The business with para-military training, the meetings with Osama bin Laden, and his involvement in the prison uprising in which an American intelligence agent was killed were all simply cases of an idealistic young man finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lindh is thus presented as the victim of circumstances; he is not the agent of his own destiny but an unfortunate caught up in events over which he had no control. I do not begrudge Lindh's father making such arguments; I do find much to condemn in the media's uncritical conveyance of the assertions. Plan on seeing this motif played out in all the usual venues over the next months to years until, at some point, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, he will have made the transformation from a murderer into the victim of American oppression.
For contrast, note the Newsweek description of the distress caused by the showing of the trailer for "United 93":
When the trailer played before "Inside Man" last week at the famed Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, audience members began calling out, "Too soon!" In New York City, where 9/11 remains an open wound, the response was even more dramatic. The AMC Loews theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints. "One lady was crying," says one of the theater's managers, Kevin Adjodha. "She was saying we shouldn't have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong ... I don't think people are ready for this."
I saw the Trailer for United 93 in the theaters last weekend and it looks like the movie will be riveting, horrific, and excruciatingly painful, yet I plan on seeing it. Newsweek ends their article with a revealing contrast [Emphasis mine-SW]:
It's unclear whether Americans will pay $9.50 to hear it. The A&E cable movie "Flight 93" drew 5.9 million viewers in January, the highest-rated show in the channel's history. But movies are different. "I don't want anyone to go who doesn't want to have this experience," says Adam Fogelson, Universal's president of marketing. "But when I see what's on screen, I feel comfortable that a lot of people will." Audiences seem to be split on the issue. "I don't think that's a movie I really want to see," says Jackie Alvarez, 73, of San Ramon, Calif., after seeing the trailer. "It gave me the creeps. It's way too soon." But 17-year-old Antoine Richardson of Memphis, Tenn., is looking forward to it. "I don't think it's exploitative or too soon," he says. "It helps us remember." As if any of us could forget.
We have not suffered a major attack in almost 5 years now, we are engaged in a very difficult and painful task in Iraq, and too many would like nothing better than to forget. The longer we go without an attack, and the further in time 9/11 recedes, the more necessary it becomes to remind ourselves that we are still facing an implacable enemy.
One reason that I do not think we will ever completely forget is that if we slip and allow ourselves to lose our focus, our enemy will surely remind us.
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