This may sound strange, but the GOP last night and its aftermath made me think once again about the perverse lack of reason on the left in this country. As anyone who has read my posts about the debate realizes, I am horrified by the call by Donald Trump for the US military to attack the families of terrorists. The liberal mainstream media has been almost completely silent about this subject. I did real two items today from the mainstream media discussing Israeli policy with regards to dealing with the families of terrorists. The Israeli policy in question is the decision that Israel will not provide government benefits for the families who survive a terrorist. In other words, if a terrorist is killed during an attack, the Israeli government will not provide the Israeli version of food stamps and welfare to the family he leaves behind. According to both of the articles, the Israeli policy is "discriminatory" and harsh. Needless to say, that view is ridiculous, but that is not my point. I am just amazed that the liberals in the media condemn a cutoff of welfare benefits to the families of terrorists, but when Trump calls for the USA to kill families of terrorists, there's only silence.
Now I know that this is not the first time that such bizarre reasoning has shown up in the liberal media. Another good example came with the subject of waterboarding of terrorists captured by our forces. You can call that procedure "enhanced interrogation" or you can use the name that the media used: "torture". The point remains that the USA did use waterboarding on three captives at Gitmo, and the coverage of it was nearly endless. When president Obama took office, he changed American policy. American forces stopped taking terrorists prisoner; instead, we moved to drone strikes that killed the terrorists rather than capture them. For the media, the switch from capture to killing meant that the "torture" debate was over. Terrorists would no longer run the risk of being subjected to water boarding for ten or fifteen minutes of the rest of their lives. What a victory! Instead of fifteen minutes of what the left called torture, the terrorists would just be killed. Essentially no one in the media pointed out the perversity of killing people in order to prevent their being subjected to torture.
So how can we explain the different treatment by the media of these situations. For Trump, we need to assume that the media has decided that what he says no longer matters. For Israel, the same media has decided that whatever that country does is wrong and needs to be criticized. And for killing in lieu of a few minutes of waterboarding, the only explanation is that the decision was made by Obama. For the media, he still can do no wrong. Nevertheless, if one ever needed proof that the mainstream media is irrational, this is it.
Now I know that this is not the first time that such bizarre reasoning has shown up in the liberal media. Another good example came with the subject of waterboarding of terrorists captured by our forces. You can call that procedure "enhanced interrogation" or you can use the name that the media used: "torture". The point remains that the USA did use waterboarding on three captives at Gitmo, and the coverage of it was nearly endless. When president Obama took office, he changed American policy. American forces stopped taking terrorists prisoner; instead, we moved to drone strikes that killed the terrorists rather than capture them. For the media, the switch from capture to killing meant that the "torture" debate was over. Terrorists would no longer run the risk of being subjected to water boarding for ten or fifteen minutes of the rest of their lives. What a victory! Instead of fifteen minutes of what the left called torture, the terrorists would just be killed. Essentially no one in the media pointed out the perversity of killing people in order to prevent their being subjected to torture.
So how can we explain the different treatment by the media of these situations. For Trump, we need to assume that the media has decided that what he says no longer matters. For Israel, the same media has decided that whatever that country does is wrong and needs to be criticized. And for killing in lieu of a few minutes of waterboarding, the only explanation is that the decision was made by Obama. For the media, he still can do no wrong. Nevertheless, if one ever needed proof that the mainstream media is irrational, this is it.
No comments:
Post a Comment