5 comments, that's a lot of comments--for this blog

Thanks for sending along the Olberman transcript, I read it just now. I should not have used the word "journalism" as that is sort of all encompassing and stuck to the word "reporting." Traditionally, a reporter is supposed to be egoless and emotionless and interested only the facts of the case--all this in the exhaustive effort for objectivity. That's not a part of television reporting anymore as the reporters are presented as if they are, and should be, celebrated personalities. CNN advertises their reporters, I'm sure this happens elsewhere. That is one reason why I stated that no one "of substance" (I should have said no one who takes reporting and the ethics of news journalism seriously) would really want to work in television. I was not talking about commentary programs like Olberman's or the many others that exist. Secondly, a news reporter on television has but a slim chance of covering any story with depth. Network news broadcasts are about 19 minutes in length (after commercials) and only a small fraction of that time is dedicated to a single story. Studies have shown that networks focus less on "hard news" now than they did twenty years ago, and have less overall time in their broadcast. This is all corelative to the purchase of news outlets and networks by a few huge corporations and has had an impact of journalism in every medium-not only television.

Anyone who saw the Erroll Morris documentary "The Fog of War" heard a recording of then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara telling the President that there was no military solution to the Vietnam problem, and the President responding that he did not want to go down in history as "the first president to lose a war." That was in 1965, before troop levels in Vietnam escalated to over 100,000 and then eventually to 500,000. At the same time these two men were telling Americans of the progress being made in that conflict.

The real question in both cases is, what was success supposed to look like? There was an excellent editorial in the Jakarta Post which I will try to find and scan and post (though that sounds like a lot of work and I already doubt my ability to deliver) about energy strategies and energy security. The US has a strategy of energy security which means that need to maintain "stability" in regions vital to US energy interests. If you were to look at a map of where the US has positioned its armed forces around the world, where its permanent bases are, and where it would like more permanent bases, you would see that they are where they are in order to be able to use force should US energy security become threatened.

What the US wanted in Iraq was a pro-US government that would ensure oil security. There may well have been some, there were obviously some (neo-cons), who really believed that the US could transform the region into a model democracy but even they had to envision a pro-US quasi democracy, and not a pro Iran quasi democracy. The situation we are in now is such that even a pro Iran democracy would be preferable to the current chaos. In fact, the war has been destablizing to the region and has actually done damage to US energy security, and that is why the I think we will see, if we are not already seeing it, the American media retreat from the drumbeating and "boots on the ground" talk of three years ago. I am a bit all over the place, but what I mean to say is this: When the government wants us to go to war we need to recognize that it is always about issues of economy and energy. If we think that it is right to force our will upon other nations so that we can continue our standard of living at a level far superior to 90 percent of the world, then we should support the war. If we think that it is wrong, then we need to push for a new direction in our foreign policy and more sustainability in our energy policy. It is well know that the US consumes more oil than any other nation in the world, but India and China are on the rise, and the US Secretary of State recently criticized China's increased military expenditure as "outsized for the nation's role in the region." Of course, we feel no qualms about telling others they have an "outsized" military budget.