On an different issue, could you answer a question? I'd have emailed it but no address. My blog is very new. I came to yours through Blackfive. Can you help me understand trackbacks? (The Help page on Blogspot isn't.) How does B5 know you linked to him? Does just posting a URL in comments do it, or do you let him know? I don't mean to impose, but thanks. I have linked to your site and look forward to reading your posts.
Thanks for the link. Welcome to blogging.
As for your question on trackback, since you are posting your site on blogspot, you need to visit www.haloscan.com to set up a way to do trackbacks. Regrettably, Blogspot does not allow for automatic trackbacks, so you'll have to enter the information manually. If you work the magic properly, your trackback will appear in B5's "trackback" total. Trust me, if I can figure it out, it's not all that hard. Come back here if you have more questions.
The news cycle vs. the end state view of the military may explain some of the focus on explosions, but most of it has to be due to bias. Consider the amazing story related by Blackfive about the little girl who saved a convoy by sitting on an IED and refusing to move. That is a human interest story par excellence (pardon my French), but no one from the print or television media picked it up, despite Blackfive's offer to put anyone needing verification in touch with the parties involved.
Blackfive says he has offered numerous moving/important positive stories to the press and never had a taker (see comment section of the little-girl story). Teasers for this story would keep watchers from changing the channel for an hour. The only explanation for eschewing it is a profound ideological bias in favor of negative news.
I don't disagree Alec. The continued repitition of the words "quagmire," "Vietnam" and the failure to put the size of the so-called "insurgent" forces into perspective in Iraq reflects that bias.
Since LBJ refused to run on his Vietnam war record the press has decided that it can and will use its power to remove presidents that it doesn't like. The successes (LBJ, Nixon and Bush the elder) have institutionalized the approach. No good deed goes reported (where did the stories about Afghanistan go?) and no "bad news" doesn't get hyped to death (fill in the blank: "Abu ____").
Foreign leaders and their press with their own anti-American agendas feed right into this (Chirac and the French concern over American cultural imperialism for example). But it's a short term viewpoint - one president at a time. Does the press really want chaos in Iraq? No, they just want to be able to say that they made the U.S. leave. The chaos that would follow if we left now - well, like th
(cont.) the disaster that followed in Vietnam and Cambodia after we left SE Asia, that's someone else's problem. No sense of end state at all, just a raw lust for power.
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