Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

There are two possible reasons why this is a story. One is the the Globe may have a political agenda (is that possible?). The other is that it may be a sort of man bites dog story. If the majority of vets who are losing legs are supportive of the war than this would be an interesting counter example. Of course in the interests of fairness the Globe would make that clear right?

One thing that I think *is* a big story in this war is this: the increase in sophistication and speed of battlefield medicine means that more soldiers survive combat injuries that in any previous war would have killed them. That's great. But that means that we now have 6,000+ vets who are either blind, have had a serious head injury, or lost one or more limbs. I think few Americans realize just how many Brian MacQuarries there are.

This is the story: the extreme combat injuries and our country's complete inability to handle these vets. The government announced that it's closing Walter Reed, for godsakes! Just at the time we're producing an unprecedented number of amputees they shut their premier center for rehabilitation. Reed won't close right away, but these guys will need a lifetime of help, skills, and refitting of prostheses as their bodies change over time.

That's a story regardless of whether the vet in question is pro or antiwar.

We're going to see vets from this war on the streets begging, because we're not providing the assistance we should be to keep them healthy and make it possible for them to live independently and hold jobs.

I half agree.

The story is more likely to be about the shift in American attitudes to the war.

The human damage to US Troops has not been acknowledged to any great degree, and the whole subject of dead troops is taboo. By running this story the Globe is acknowledging the shift in the zeitgeist. It is now acceptable to count the human cost as the US psyche gets ready to accept defeat and withdrawal.

In Vietnam it was the photos of the cost that drove the change, in this war it is the realisation that the sunny predictions are never going to come true, but the change has to be associated in the public mind with something concrete.

The majority now believe that "the war wasn't worth it", rather than the war was wrong. These stories give that perspective something concrete to attach to.

It also allows the assessment that Iraq is a quagmire to be held up in a way that makes it harder for the happy talkers to deny. People like Kos and Gilliard have been saying for almost exactly 3 years that it is a quagmire. They have been roundly condemned by the war party for that.

But if a disabled vet says it on the front page of the Globe, how can they respond? "He doesn't have a leg to stand on?" The public is not yet ready for editors to analyse the war honestly, and editors are certainly not interested in taking the lead, so they sneak in on the coattails of the particular.

The fact that it has been upgraded from page B9 to A1 is a measure of the shift.

As for whether it is acceptable; if it is acceptable to show US troops in the streets of Fallujah, killing Iraqis, or film of bombs detonating in the suburbs of Baghdad, or bombsite cameras showing the destruction of a building and the people in it, or the nightscope view of men being cut in half by machine gun fire, then a disabled vet is nothing more than the other end of the continuum.

It is common journalistic practice to try and connect the individual picture. I don't understand what you are complaining about.

What crack was I smoking when I posted that? I'd like some more!

Anyway, what I was trying to say: It is common journalistic practice to try and connect the individual story with the bigger picture.

They just had Sgt.Fountaine on O'Reilly and he denounced The Boston Globe for misrepresenting him in the article.

Yeah, I just saw that too. That's why I looked up the Sgt's name, and found the story used as a propaganda piece on some foreign sites. Sad really, but that's what you get from a polorized, partisan press, though I'm glad somebody held the paper and reporter accountable. As a journalism student, I'm deeply offended by it. I don't even read the newspapers anymore. They're just as bad as, or worse than Al Jazeera and the Huffington Post. Waste of good paper and/or webspace, if you ask me--though you didn't--but that's what I'd say if you did.

Anyway, The Boston Globe's circulation is down 7% this year, and it was already in financial trouble. The path it's currently on predictably leads to scaling back in coverage and running more syndicated articles. If the current decline continues it's hard to see how the Globe can survive. And that would be a disaster. A newspaper is greater than the sum of the knowledge, talent and experience it aggregates.
Narconon