According to Greyhawk, there are two Iraqs, one in which things are going well and one, a media creation, which is a distaster.

The Iraq we need to abandon is the Iraq that the media have created. It's a lengthy post, well worth the read. It ends like this:

So I'm walking to the gym. Under my feet: four inches of gravel pave the way. Concrete t-wall sections form unbroken fortress walls on either side of my path. It's early in the morning, so the shadow of the wall on my left is shading that half of the road. A breeze is blowing, and in the shade in the moments just after dawn that breeze hits me in my shorts and t-shirt and chills me just enough that I take a few steps sideways and into the sun. And then it hit me - I'd been walking in the shade because that's what I - and everyone else here - had done throughut the 120 degree summer and on into the merely 90 degree days of early fall. And while the change has been gradual, it was only today that I noticed it, as I broke a time-worn habit and passed from the too-cool shadows into the glowing warmth of the morning desert sun. And I'm whistling a tune...

The media have been rather interesting to watch with respect to the war issue. They do seem to be doing much of their reporting so selectively as to give the impression that they are committed to undermining the war effort.

By and large they certainly give that impression. But I wonder about something.

I have a friend who is a counselor, a Christian counselor. For some time he taught the adult Sunday School I attended a few years ago. In the course of one session he made the comment that after decades of counseling he's convinced that most people are doing the best they can -- even if their best, quite honestly -- stinks. Failure, he said, is not prima facie proof of not trying.

Maybe the real problem, as it concerns the media, is not that they are trying to undermine the war, though I recognize that possibility. Maybe the real problem is that many of them just don't like war, an obvious enough point, but bear with me.

When I was an early teenager I complained to my dad about someone who didn't like me, despite there being not the slightest possibility of my having done something to this person. "Son," my dad said, "learn to accept now the fact that no matter where you go in life, someone, somewhere is just not going to like you for no reason. And there won't be anything you can do, up to and including sexual favors, that will change their minds about you."

I have noted over several decades that my father was indeed correct.

I have also noted the way people treat those they dislike in comparison with those whom they like. Take this person I just mentioned. One day (it was winter, junior high) a friend of his slipped and fell on some ice and he helped his friend back to his feet. They both got a laugh out of it, but it was the laughing with, not laughing at. Just a few days later, I slipped on some ice and (wouldn't you know it!) this nemesis of mine was there and got a great laugh out of it (i.e., laughing at, not with). I also noticed that this guy's friends could say something, and I could say the same exact thing. There was a problem only with things I said. One day, one of this guy's friends told him I soiled his shirt with my nasal discharge -- which was certainly not true. But because it was me, he believed it.

It is easy to believe the worst, to see only the worst about someone or something we do not like. That guy didn't like me; and everything I said or did was wrong, even if it was the exact thing one of his friends said or did. That's life.

The media do not like war. There is, therefore, nothing about this war which can have any redeeming value. To suggest that a war is going well is to assert an oxymoron, like bad scotch or something. A good war is like a good disease. There's a greater likelihood of someone being "pretty ugly" than of having a "good war".

It only gets worse when you throw in the media's obvious dislike of the President and most of his cabinet.

H/T: Blackfive