Terror war all but forgotten on home front
September 11, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

It wasn’t a “tragic event” or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an “attack,” an “act of war.” I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who’d tuned out the same station on the grounds that “I never heard my grampa talk about ‘the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.’ ” But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effort was under way to transform the nature of the event, to soften it into a touchy-feely, huggy-weepy one-off. As I wrote last year: “The president believes there’s a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane — just one of those things.”

. . .

Only a tiny minority of Muslims want to be suicide bombers, and only a slightly larger minority want actively to provide support networks for suicide bombers, but big majorities of Muslims support almost all the terrorists’ strategic goals: For example, according to a recent poll, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia in the United Kingdom. That’s a “moderate” Westernized Muslim: He wants stoning for adultery to be introduced in Liverpool, but he’s a “moderate” because it’s not such a priority that he’s prepared to fly a plane into a skyscraper.

. . .

So four years on we’re winning in the Middle East and Central Asia, floundering in Europe and North America. War is hell, but a war that half the country refuses to recognize as such staggers on as a very contemporary kind of purgatory.

Great article, but I have to disagree with that final point. The problem is not that half the country refuses to recognize we’re at war. The problem is they support the other side.

Black lawmakers angry about federal response to Katrina

WASHINGTON (AP) — Black members of Congress expressed anger Friday at what they said was a slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina.”It looks dysfunctional to me right now,” said Rep. Diane Watson, D-California.

She and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with members of the Black Leadership Forum, National Conference of State Legislators, National Urban League and the NAACP, held a news conference and charged that the response was slow because those most affected are poor.

Pay no attention to the race-related labels. It’s all about…the poor.

Many also are black, but the lawmakers held off on charging racism.

“The issue is not about race right now,” said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio. “There will be another time to have issues about color.”

Yes, still plenty of time to play the race card.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Illinois, said too much focus has been placed on the looting, taking away from what should be the priority: getting food, water and stability to the tens of thousands of displaced victims.

It’s OK to focus on bad news when it comes from Iraq. But newspeople have a responsibility to edit out anything that might make black- I mean poor people look bad.

Watson and others also took issue with the word “refugee” being used to describe hurricane victims.

“‘Refugee’ calls up to mind people that come from different lands and have to be taken care of. These are American citizens,” Watson said.

Added Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland: “They are not refugees. I hate that word.”

Yes, let’s frame this properly. How about “victim”? Fits perfectly with the epidemic of victimology sweeping the US today.

Countries Pledge Hurricane Aid to U.S.
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

The United States historically has aided victims of disasters, but it is not universally recognized as providing the level of aid expected of a rich nation.

The United States, which has the world’s largest economy, lags behind other rich nations in the percentage of its giving to nations in Africa, the world’s poorest continent.

The Associated Press historically has reported on disasters, but it is not universally recognized as providing the level of unbiased information expected of a news organization.

Compare and contrast. Would you rather have raw information or sneaky editorializing?

George Clooney thinks we were better off with a common truth dictated by “three networks and basically the same information“. I have to say I prefer it “fractioned into little pieces”.