Nobody Asked

Another contribution from Anotmo. An exclusive at Heavy-Handed Politics from a man who nefariously pens at night somewhere in Eastern USA, in the dark of night, by candlelight, so as not to draw attention, as he trys to exist in a sea of blue.

Nobody Asked

"Throughout the execution of the War in Iraq, President Bush has been questioned, criticized, second guessed and confronted by the MSM every step of the way on every conceivable aspect of what he has done, what he has not done, what has occurred and what has not occurred. His motives, integrity, intelligence, leadership, morality and ethics have all been challenged continuously with an amazing assortment of nefarious and even criminal scenarios postulated to explain his actions. He has been blamed for every negative out come and sorry turn of events in his efforts to conduct a totally new kind of warfare against a fanatically religious and determined enemy using previously unacceptable tactics that deliberately place civilians life’s in jeopardy.

Fair enough, perhaps. The professional MSM is just doing its job the responsibilities of which, they have told us, they hold higher than they do their responsibilities to their own citizenship in the country from which comes the very freedom their vaunted profession enjoys. (How else to interpret Mike Wallace’s response of ‘No, you are a reporter!’ when asked if he would warn U.S. forces of an impending enemy ambush?)

On the other hand, the Democrats position on the War in Iraq has evolved from initial support for its declaration and funding to now constant calls for our imminent withdrawal. This while, strangely, continuing to vote for its funding despite opportunities to do otherwise. Yet, not once has any proponent of withdrawal had to articulate what they believe would be the consequences of that action. We seem to accept by default the ridicules implied presumption that since everything bad in Iraq is George Bush’s fault then if we stop George Bush from continuing to do what it is he is doing in Iraq all the bad things will go away. Instead, we play obfuscating word games and question whether or not it is ‘fair’ for President Bush to characterize ’withdrawal’ as ‘cut and run’.

The irony is that this is not the Democrats fault. If confronted with it, their perfectly reasonable response could well be ‘nobody asked’. Therein lays the problem. Nobody in our highly professional objective MSM ever posed the question. And don’t give me some Lexus/Nexus nonsense about some reporters, somewhere sometimes having asked some Helen Thomas inspired softball version of that question with the above presumption inherent within it. If the MSM were doing its job professionally, then the question of what is likely to happen should the U.S. withdraw from Iraq would be as prominent in the public discourse as is the war itself.

That it is not is more than just a transparent and obvious example of political bias on the part of the MSM. It is also a transparent and obvious example of a lack of the very professionalism on which the MSM so prides itself. Take away all of the politics and emotion surrounding the issue and one is still left with one side of a political debate being excoriated to explain its actions and defend any and all untoward events presumed to be a consequence of those actions while the other side of that same political debate is never required to even speculate on the likely consequences of the course of action it proposes.

Every time I perceive something of this sort, I wonder why nobody has brought it up before and am amazed at the extent to which the MSM’s ‘template’, as Rush Limbaugh calls it, effects us all. To be sure, Republicans and the occasional far right bigoted commentator, by association, on Fox have voiced their views over the consequences of the various Democratic withdrawal plans but that is always allowed to fall dead on the studio set floor as though it is nothing more than the expected Republican talking point with no follow-up or response required

Just the other night I watched Bill O’Reilly do that very thing on his Factor show interviewing some Democrat operative. To her proposal that we withdraw from Iraq, Bill voiced his opinion that if we were we to do that now, Iran would quickly move in. But even he did not require the interviewee to then respond. He just threw the point out there in a sotto voiced aside as though knowing nobody was listening. I do not know why he did not require his guest to even express much less defend what she believed would happen as a result of our withdrawal except that we all seem confined by the MSM’s template. Democrat positions are presumed to be correct; they are the good guys, their hearts are pure and their intentions are above reproach. Their plans may be argued against by Republicans but they and even their results, when implemented, need never be defended by their proponents.

It is precisely to avoid this very sort of thing that we have a free press and why it is so important that it conduct itself professionally. The one thing a ‘professional’ journalist should never accept is the possibility that regarding a story that journalist has covered some participant in it could later truthfully respond ‘nobody asked’."