A Historical Day

Yup … it was a historical day in Iraq today with millions turning out to vote in the elections today. The voting was peaceful with even the Sunnis turning out in large numbers. True, this is not the first vote that the Iraqi people have turned out for … but today was the day they voted to elect a new parliament of 275 representatives which will begin the process to select the President, Prime Minister, the Cabinet and so on.

Today the Iraqi people elected their new representatives in their new governmental structure. History is being made today and, history that will likely affect the politics in a major area of the world that we now live in. While it may not affect some people directly … it marks a major change in the world that may well mark the beginning of something larger.

This isn’t a small story … it is a story with wide reaching ramifications … and yet, going to most of the network news sites tonight and what is their lead story? For most it’s the ice storm in the south eastern United States. OMG an ICE STORM …. 450,000 people in Georgia and the Carolinas are without power!

Yes, I was one of those 450,000 that lost power today … lost it for … oh … about 8 hours maybe? Give it a rest folks … okay, that story may be news, but … even for those affected by the storm (which was hardly that bad) it isn’t the biggest news story of the day … not even close. Heck, there are other national stories that are more important than the ice storm (like the things going on in DC … immigration bills, and such) and I don’t believe that most of them are of more importance than what’s happening (well, happened at this point) in Iraq today.

This is what we’ve been fighting for … a free Iraq … and we’re winning (despite what Howard Dean and the many of the Democrats would like you to believe), we’re succeeding in the mission, and we’re having a positive impact in the lives of MILLIONS of people. And yet most of the news media is treating it as a ‘page 2 or 3’ story.

Why is this? Is the media afraid to show our success in Iraq? Are they afraid that it would cause the current President (and thus his political party) to look better in the eyes of the American people?

Bias is showed both in what you chose to say, and in what you choose not to say, by what you choose to give importance to, as well as what you choose to downplay. Even as our goals in Iraq are being accomplished the media chooses to focus on other stories.

But what would you like to bet that if there had been wide spread violence during the elections that the news would be the top story of the day … edging the ice storm to a (likely) distant second or, perhaps, even farther down the list. I would almost quarantine that 25 people being killed in a car bomb at a poling place would have made headlines and front pages across the country.

Now I could be wrong … tomorrow’s news papers could have large banner headlines about the success of the elections in Iraq … but I’m not holding my breath. Particularly in the case of the Atlanta paper which I’ll be amazed if the front page even mentions that there WAS an election in Iraq ….

You will hear about every gun fight, every car bomb, every US soldier killed (rarely will you hear about the Iraqi soldiers dying, unless it’s in a car bomb, or other mass attack) you won’t generally hear about the schools being built, the bolstered economic growth and increased standard of living. You will rarely hear how the life of the average Iraqi is already better than it was before the invasion and overthrow of Saddam. You see a lot of reports of certain politicians saying ‘we can’t win in Iraq’ and that we should ‘withdraw our troops now’ … but rarely do you hear the reports of the soldiers IN Iraq saying that we are winning the war … the stories of the troops volunteering to go back for second tours in Iraq because of the positive effects that they are seeing in that country.

Now our troops aren’t going to be shipping out of Iraq tomorrow, but we’re closer to a point now where we can start cutting back our presence. Every day more Iraqi soldiers are trained, and with the government in place the Iraqi people will be in a much better position to begin managing their own security. I expect that next Christmas we will still have a military presence in Iraq, and it will still be a significant number of troops. But it will likely be less than what we currently have deployed and that number will be dwindling further as more and more Iraqi troops are able to replace them in their duties.

As for the ‘War on Terror’ itself I believe that we are at a point best described by Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The ‘War on Terror’ is a far reaching goal … it may be that human nature itself dictates that it can never truly be won because there is no decisive enemy to face, no capital that you can topple to end the power of the enemy. Even should we find Osama Bin Laden and destroy Al Qaeda there will be others to take their place.

That does not, however, mean that we should pack it up and call it quits … that would only encourage the terrorists further because they work on the mindset that if we back down in any way, they’ve won.

Again a quote of Churchill comes to mind “Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

So long as terrorists confront us with force we must never back down … never give in … because to do so is to hand them victory on a silver platter, and in so doing we may as well cuff ourselves in chains and toss them the keys. We can not seek to appease them for each victory they accumulate through appeasement will only encourage them to try for more. We can not negotiate with terrorists, for such action will be seen as weakness and exploited further in their next action. We must forever be ready to defend ourselves and our freedoms from those that would take them from us … be it through force, terror, or guile.