The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue unabated - as also in Pakistan and probably Yemen now too - yet the American public seems indifferent to them.
It's a subject taken up by Glenn Greenwald in his latest Salon blog entry:
"The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt ponders how little attention our various wars received during the primary campaigns that were just conducted: "You would hardly know, from following this year's election campaign or the extensive coverage of last week's primaries, that America is at war. . . . those wars, and the wisdom of committing to or withdrawing from them, have hardly been mentioned in the hard-fought campaigns of the spring." Hiatt is right in that observation, and it's worth examining the reasons for this.
One significant cause of America's indifference to the wars we are waging is that those wars have virtually no effect on the overwhelming majority of Americans (at least no recognized effect), while they impose a huge cost on a tiny sliver of the population: those who fight the wars and their families. Hiatt acknowledges that fact: "it's yet another reminder of American society's separation from its professional military." If anyone would know about that, it's the endless-war-loving, nowhere-near-a-battlefield Fred Hiatt."
Continue reading here.
It's a subject taken up by Glenn Greenwald in his latest Salon blog entry:
"The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt ponders how little attention our various wars received during the primary campaigns that were just conducted: "You would hardly know, from following this year's election campaign or the extensive coverage of last week's primaries, that America is at war. . . . those wars, and the wisdom of committing to or withdrawing from them, have hardly been mentioned in the hard-fought campaigns of the spring." Hiatt is right in that observation, and it's worth examining the reasons for this.
One significant cause of America's indifference to the wars we are waging is that those wars have virtually no effect on the overwhelming majority of Americans (at least no recognized effect), while they impose a huge cost on a tiny sliver of the population: those who fight the wars and their families. Hiatt acknowledges that fact: "it's yet another reminder of American society's separation from its professional military." If anyone would know about that, it's the endless-war-loving, nowhere-near-a-battlefield Fred Hiatt."
Continue reading here.
Comments