with me, anyway.
I hope that the "liberal media" is a myth. I hope they are just trying to do their job, and not color their stories. But I know they do. Even just a little, sometimes, but it's hard to keep your editorializing out of your reporting (two great tastes that taste great together... not).
I hope that the media coverage of the recent hostage situation(s) in Iraq has simply had the intent to inform. I hope that it was not aimed at making the war more real for the American public so as to foster a sentiment against the war, against the President, against our own troops and against our very own country.
Because it's not our fault that those two Americans and that Brit were kidnapped. It's not our fault that criminals kidnapped those two nice Italian ladies and those two Iraqi gents. It's not our fault that a suicide bomber drives up to a police station and kills dozens of prospective recruits, not actual cops, who were trying to make a better living not just for their families, but to protect their neighbors and help create a safer place for every Iraqi citizen to live.
I see these images, I hear these things, and it disgusts me. And, yes, I sometimes question why we're there. I question if we've always done the right thing, first by invading, then by eliminating their security forces, deposing their government, destabilizing their lives. I know we've done good there: creating jobs, the influx of money into the economy, elimination of forced conscription, ending the threat that was the old regime...
But these images don't break my spirit, or my will to try and do what is right. I refuse to stop my attempts to make this mission work. I will continue to strive to improve the situation in Iraq, and elsewhere, not in spite of, but BECAUSE of these atrocities that are taking place. I will derive strength in knowing that anyone who stoops to this inhuman level must be stopped.
I will do my part.
[/soapbox]