The alliance between warmongers and the press

By A. Peter Bailey
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

Once again the American press, which loves to loudly and consistently boast of being the best and freest press in the whole wide world, is allowing warmongering politicians and pundits to do their thing without asking a most basic question: How many family members of the trash-talking chicken hawks will actually fight in the war they insist is absolutely necessary for U.S. national security? Please notice the words, “Fight in combat.” Just their being in the military is not sufficient. Much too often the relatives of the warmongers who go into the military are seldom assigned to actual combat zones.

Every day one sees or hears “chicken hawks” such as Senator Lindsay Graham, Senator Ted Cruz, columnist Charles Krauthammer, propagandists Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol and his neo-con desk warriors the Fox and Friends crew, the editorial page writers of the Weekly Standard, and their cohorts, rant and rave about some kind of military involvement in Syria.

This is especially true of Senator Graham. Yet the highly paid, supposedly independent and truth-seeking members of the national print and broadcast press never ask them how many of their children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews or first cousins will face the possibility of combat in Syria or anywhere else. They are high among the chief beneficiaries of the existing system and should be the first ones willing to fight for its continuance.

All one has to do is read Faces of the Fallen, published several times annually in The Washington Post. Its most recent listing was published May 3, 2013. The casualties included many military personnel from places such as Claremore, Okla., Cabot, Ark., Tolar, Tex. Liverpool, N.Y., Maysville, N.C., Houlton, Maine Sierra Vista, Ariz., Gillette, N.J., Gardiner, Ore., Greer, S.C., Jordan, Minn., Sidney, Mont. and New Carlisle, Ohio.

While these overwhelmingly small town soldiers are being killed and maimed in “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, family members of the warmongers continue attending birthday parties, celebrating holidays, vacationing in the Caribbean, graduating from colleges and universities, attending weddings and jamming at pool parties with their economically and socially elite peers.

Meanwhile, their warmongering grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers and cousins are insisting on U.S. military involvement in Syria and members of the press still don’t ask them the most basic question: How many of your immediate family will be in combat if you are successful in your quest for another war of choice? It’s for sure that my godson, who was sent to the Iraq combat zone 5 times wants an answer to that question.

This article originally published in the May 20, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.