Sanitized Iraq War Coverage=America Gives * TANG A Pass?

[stopbush]

So I'm watching Band of Brothers (again!) tonight on the History Channel, and it hit me: Americans are in a cognitive disconnect on what war is all about. And is it any wonder?

The Iraq War was all over the place when it played into our national myth of the liberating, ass-kicking troops. But since the war became a quagmire, it's gone from the airwaves. We see very little about it, and I'm not just talking about the thousand funerals and caskets Americans haven't seen. But the truth is that thousands of people are dying *in our name,* and about a thousand of them were our fellow Americans.

But out of sight means out of mind. It never occurs to most Americans that John Kerry faced the same hell that our guys faced in WWII or Iraq, because those horrors don't exist in our national psyche. In such a nation, a coward like * is excused for his cowardice because, "so what if Kerry went to war, no one gets hurt in those things anyway, do they?"

The sad truth is that the RW nuts and the fundies will watch a work of fiction like Mel Gibson's Passion S&M fest and feel good about * because, "he's a Xtian who understands Jesus' suffering," while at the same time making fun of Purple Heart recipients because, "no one suffers from a little scratch that was probably self-inflicted."

It sucks, doesn't it?