Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ricardo S. Sanchez delivered a public speech to the Military Reporters and Editors at a luncheon on 12 October. The speech was widely referenced in the media and considerable comment has been generated. Because of that comment I've provided the link above as a public service. It is to the transcript of the speech posted on the host's website.
Of interest are the opening paragraphs which have generated a lot of smoke in the blogosphere. For those interested, here is a set of blog references found in Technorati. Reading some of them makes me wonder if some even read the reports in the NYTimes and the rest of the mainstream media which have generated the controversy.
Addressing military editors and reporters, General Ricardo Sanchez referred to the handling of the Iraqi conflict asking point blank: “Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leaders involved in the management of this war?”
It is not surprising that it took a uniformed officer four years to speak up his mind in public (upon retirement). What is far more worrisome is that the US mainstream media has not risen up to secure straight, clear-cut answers.
Media outlets ought to answer why it hasn’t sufficiently probed the cakewalk crowd who promised a casual march to victory in Iraq. How many media activists pressed for accountability of the likes of Ken Adelmen who misled the American media by claiming “measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism.” Had American tax payers an easy access to alternate information sources it wouldn’t have taken them four years to question the wisdom of the “cakewalk” bunch. Thus encouraging and embracing alternate sources of media has become increasingly important at a time when many US media organs tiptoe around issues in fear of overstepping their boundaries.
An Italian scholar of the Arab media, Donatella della Ratta rightly suggests that the West should seriously consider before blaming or blocking channels like Aljazeera that are in fact educating tools to inform rather than a medium providing an embedded version from a warring side. If the likes of Aljazeera English had wider access in to American homes it would not have taken this long to see the contradictions between the lofty claims made at the Capitol and actual realities faced on ground.
At a conference, "Creating Connections: New Partnerships for Understanding in the Middle East," sponsored by the Vermont Peace Academy, Vermont Council on World Affairs and Norwich University. A participant said: "It's an intellectual tragedy that the United States has cut itself out of Al Jazeera English's contribution to [informative] conversation. Everything that's happened to us in Iraq shows that's very dangerous. The lesson of Iraq is: Ignorance kills."
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/NEWS03/710070376/1004/NEWS03
Instead of making wrong choices and pursuing wrong approaches that are just goose-chasing and witch-hunting exercises US needs to befriend with the ones that capture and portray the facts professionally and far effectively. Now more than ever the USA public and its opinions makers need tools that can help them separate the wheat from the chaff not occasionally but on an on-going, round the clock basis.
Posted by: Jim | Oct 18, 2007 at 02:05 PM