Ryan ChartrandIt was May 1, 2003 when the United States led the invasion of Iraq. The disillusionment provided by the White House administration and the media alike have provided a base for the apathetic nature of our country.
I know this might sound harsh, but look at the facts. We did not see body bags or the flag-draped coffins of the fallen soldiers from 1991 until 2005 due to the Defense Department withholding the photos. The media isn’t showing us because our government bamboozles the truth. The Pentagon released the pictures in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by University of Delaware journalism professor Ralph Begleiter, who said the images were public record. He sought all military photographs of caskets carrying the remains of military personnel taken since the United States attacked Afghanistan in October 2001.
You should realize it was not the media vying for the pictures but a professor of journalism. My point is today’s media is nothing like the Helen Thomas era where journalists were the true watchdogs of democracy. Back then the media would have stood outside the media gates and demanded access to see the coffins.
We need to look at the era where people cared about our country going to war and stood up to the government to tell them what they wanted to see happen. The apathetic nature is apparent in America with most generations because our media and the American people will go along with what our government is telling them to do. When turning on the television, pundits are talking about Britney showing her “Britney” once again rather than hard news.
The New York Times Web site has a feature which allows you to look up fallen soldiers of Iraq. It is a heart-wrenching thing to see pictures of all who have died, but it really brings back the verisimilitude of today. It is quite sad looking up your hometown on the site. My hometown of Helena, Mont. gives four young men along with their pictures.
But the soldiers are not the only ones who are dying. According to Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since 2003 at a over 1.2 million while a study published by a joint U.S.-Iraqi team in the eminent medical journal The Lancet said the casualties were about half of the ORB report at 655,000.
What I would love to see happen is a student revolution like that of Vietnam. People should be alerted by the fact there is so much death and destruction from the actions our country has taken. A military draft would open the eyes of many, but it should not come to this.
Choose where your news sources come from and vote for candidates based on what you want to see happen. Take action and rise up if you feel something should not be happening. The leaders we choose will be the deciding factors to remove the occupancy of Iraq one day, but it is us who will be the ones to decide what democracy is and how we can once again show it to the rest of the world.