Odd Angles from Sedona

By David Keeber | Sedona Verde Valley Times

Sedona, AZ - Bill Moyers, one of the last truly great-thinking reporters, has an online journal in which he recently outlined the media’s complicity in the lead up to the current war in Iraq.

He looked at how practically everyone, save for a few reporters at Knight-Ridder News, took what was handed to them by the administration and reported it as gospel.

That handful of reporters that did take issue with the claims of weapons of mass destruction, connections to al Qaida, the expected ease of the campaign and more, found all they needed to make the important counterclaims without much digging.

Mr. Moyers also looked at the tone of the times in the general population as a result of the attacks on September 11.

As a nation in shock, we acted emotionally and with outrage, as can be expected. But, the result of that outrage led us to a far too simplistic view of the claims leading up to the war. It was a time that required more of us as a nation than at any other time since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, which prompted out entry into World War II. In many ways, I believe that we failed the test of those days.

Obviously, this will not be a popular position to take. But, no country that has the freedoms and privileges that we enjoy can easily blame this entire mess on the President or his administration. The adage is that we get the government we deserve. If that is the case, we need to do some serious rethinking.

As a parent, I admonish my teenaged son to not let his emotions rule his life. Such behavior quite often leads to big problems. Yet, as a nation, with far more at stake than just the life on one child, we let our emotions cloud our ability to examine, to critically think and to reason. The result is the hellish quagmire in which we are embroiled.

Many protested, but the national dialogue was decidedly not anti-war. When the message changed as delivered by President Bush and his team, we took the news with almost no sense of outrage. And, as the outcomes promised have not been delivered, and have shown a phenomenal lack of planning, we have taken too long to develop the national level of anger with the president we currently see.

If we are to enjoy the freedoms our nation’s founders bequeathed us, we have a responsibility to be critical thinkers such a society allows.

There is nothing to suggest that by engaging in critical thinking we would not occasionally choose to go to war. But, to go to war, kill innocent people as well as the enemy, to say nothing of our own sons and daughters, requires a great deal of us. It requires the utmost clarity of purpose based on unimpeachable information. To do less is to have relinquished the duties and responsibilities that this hard-won freedom demands of us all.

It would be too easy to blame the president or the press. The data were available, but the exercise of our minds was not done. We missed a chance to pursue a real problem with intelligence and discernment.

Each of us must recognize it was far easier to descend into jingoistic bluster, tuck our heads into our shoulders and merrily believe we were on the right path.

They don’t hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we refuse to think for ourselves. They hate us for our gross oversimplification of the issues. They hate us for our hammer-handed techniques of dealing with the world. They hate us because we didn’t do our job.