What is our media showing us about the war in Afghanistan?
It seems to me that they are trying to sell us something, probably something the party in power wants us to buy like "our soldiers are doing a great job", a basic sanitized version of reality. I do not believe that is good, it allows for too much wool to be pulled over our eyes on a war that is being fought with our blessing. We might not be so willing to approve of it if we were getting the full story.
Of course there is coverage of the commander's memories of our fallen soldiers, which is entirely appropriate, but that is not what I am referring to here.
I am referring to the activities of our soldiers, and I do not thing we are getting anything close to the whole story.
What we have been seeing on the news, over and over for a few years now, is "live feed" video of our soldier's boots on the ground, our tanks firing at some distant and unseen target. It is hot and dusty. Sometimes there are setups like our guys yelling "villagers and children here!!" as if that is their primary concern. We see villagers holding their children, but those are not the enemy we are fighting [but they would be the "collateral damage" if they got killed in the firefights, but we don't see that when it happens, and it does happen].
What we are NOT getting is any video of the ENEMY. Who are our guys shooting at? What happens when the targets are hit, or missed? Are the Taliban taken prisoner, or buried, or do they run away somewhere, and if so where? We NEVER see them!!!
WHAT DOES THE ENEMEY LOOK LIKE? I think we should know, it is costing Canadian lives, and a significant amount of money. We are told things are going well, but what is it that we are doing that is going well - killing the Taliban? Where are the dead Taliban then??
We have to be suspicious of such sanitized news from the front lines. There is more going on than we are being told, and if it was good then we would be told about it, so any thinking person might have to assume it is bad. No room for dead bodies on TV? Why not? - we see dead bodies on every other show on TV, just not the ones being killed with Canadian's supposed approval...
