If you think CNN is biased, you should try listening to the BBC. The BBC's partianship is so extreme at times that it just comes across as sloppy journalism. A mere symptom of a disease known as "lack of competition operating on a level playing field." The BBC lacks significant domestic competition and has slowly drifted into being completely out of touch with reality.
For example, this morning the news report (i.e. allegedly hard news) talked
about the "draconian" changes to American laws "severely curtailing" American
"civil rights" and "civil liberties". What draconian laws would those be? Maybe
it's my weaker grasp on the English language but "draconian", to me means...well
draconian. Of course, they are vaguely alluding to the "Patriot Act" that
many on the left rail against as being a "wholesale surrender of our
constitutional rights". Of course, when pressed, most on the left are not
able to actually articulate what in the Patriot Act is so vile and horrible.
The rest who have actually bothered to read the Patriot Act talk about how it
could potentially be abused by the government. When Michael Moore is
marched away to Guantanamo Bay to be held then we can worry. In the meantime,
the left should stick with the facts and not paranoid fantasies.
The BBC went
on to interview "average Americans". Based on the BBCs reports, there are
no Americans except maybe a hick or two in Iowa who a) feel safe (despite the
"Draconian" laws) and 
Are against the US's actions in the war on terror.
"We should be trying to find out why people hate us and solve that!" said one
interviewee in Chicago. "I don't know why we're in Iraq but it's not for the
reasons they told us." said another in Portland a state described by the BBC as
"split" between Democrats in Republicans (in the same way, I suppose,
Massachusetts is split between Democrats and Republicans no doubt).
This kind
of dribble from the BBC wouldn't be so obnoxious if it weren't taking place on
9/11. The problem with the intelligentsia on the left (And I use that phrase
kindly) is that they fall into moral equivalence arguments easily when
confronted with undeniably heinous acts by mideast terrorists and yet amazingly
at the same time have no problem turning it all around and arguing that there is
no deed we don't deserve.
Here are, in my mind, my opinions that I believe no
reasonable human being could possibly object to:
- There has been no US foreign policy action towards the Middle East
that makes the United States deserving of having 4 civilian jet liners
hijacked and 2 of them flown into the largest civilian building in the world,
a third flown into the Pentagon and a last one targeting either the White
House or Congress.
- Anyone who has bothered to listen or read the arguments by the Islamo
Fascists should by now realize that these guys are little more than really
well armed Klu Klux Klan types. You cannot excuse the vile actions of people
simply because they don't happen to be white Anglo-Saxon males. These guys are
as bad as the Nazis were. But don't take my word for it, read up on their own
views. If they had their way they'd have extermination camps that would make
Auschwitz look like a park.
- The United States has a fundamental sovereign right, having been attacked,
to defend itself. Its interests have been attacked by these forces for
over a decade and using international institutions and treating these actions
as law enforcement issues helped lead to 9/11. The United States does
not need the permission or blessing of any international body or group to
carry out what it believes is self defense. The right of national self defense
pre-exists international bodies (which some forget ones created by the United
States in the first place).
I believe that the United States has behaved extraordinarily well given the
circumstances. In the two years since 9/11 there have been no further
attacks in the United States. There have been no significant terrorist attacks
against the United States overseas (no USS Cole, no Embassy bombings, etc.).
The Taliban in Afghanistan is gone. Saddam Hussein is gone.
And while the BBC would describe US forces in Iraq as "bogged down", most
objective people would consider the removal of Saddam Hussein with only a few
hundred casualties to be an incredible achievement. Regardless if there's still
snipers and uber-snipers (snipers with RPGs), Saddam is gone and the US is in
control of Iraq. That several dozen troops have died is a tragedy but one must
ask, what is the mortality rate per thousand per month of males aged 18-25 here
in the US? I suspect in 9 months a random selection of 200,000 Americans of that
demographic would show similar "casualties" from various sources. Iraq's not
secure by any means but describing US troops in a "Quagmire" or being "bogged
down" is a disservice to them and to those counting on those news organizations
for factual reports.
And so here we are, 2 years from 9/11 and generally speaking, the War on
Terror has been a great success. Compare the progress made in the past 2
years to the first two years of World War II. In 1943 US forces had just
gotten into Italy. D-day was still in the future. And the war on Japan was still
nearly 2 years from completion. American casualties in World War II were
in the hundreds of thousands. Two years into this new campaign, troop
losses still have not exceeded civilian losses from the first 9/11 attack. I
would say that things are going pretty well.