Dissent during war
I'm sure Dick Durbin will receive the usual mountain of insults and virulent attacks from the conservative hate-radio crowd for delivering the Democratic response to Bush's proposal to escalate the war in Iraq. Once again, I'm proud to have Dick Durbin representing me in the US Senate.
I'm proud that Durbin was one of only two US Senators up for re-election that year who voted against the Iraq war resolution. The other was Paul Wellstone. I'm proud that he called Bush to task for manipulating national feelings about the 911 tragedy to advance an unrelated agenda. I'm proud to have a Senator who thinks acts of torture are beneath our national standards as the world's leading democracy.
I'm proud that he had the sense to point out that the people spoke clearly in the last election and they did not ask for Bush's new plan. Springfield wasn't the only city that voted overwhelmingly for a resolution to bring the troops home. It happened all over the nation. I'm glad I'll get to vote for him again this year.
I watched coverage of the speech on WCFN TV News. I noticed something dramatically different from the Iraq war coverage I've seen from the media in the past. Not only did they cover Durbin's response, but they also had a quote from a local opponent of the Iraq War, Bob Wesley.
During the lead up to and early days of the Iraq war, dissenting voices where absent from corporate-owned media outlets. Bush's claims were repeated without challenge or contradiction.
Imagine if the initial coverage before the war in Iraq had included the kind of balanced coverage I saw today. What would have happened if Bush's statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been immediately followed by statements from an expert like Scott Ritter, who was very effective at pointing out how some of Bush's claims about specific biological and chemical weapons agents were false and misleading?
How would national attitudes have been different had dissenting voices like Howard Zinn or Dennis Kucinich not been censored from most new outlets? Would the war have happened at all?
The media shares part of the blame for allowing the nation to be mislead into Iraq because it did not play its traditional role as watch-dog. It only took a few reporters getting fired after 911 for being "unpatriotic" for everyone else in the industry to get the message. It was a case of self-censorship. But, at least they're starting to do their job again. Better late than never I guess.