Saturday, November 22, 2003
Freakout
Some stories break into the national consciousness and some do not, and it's damned hard to say why. Sometimes people blame conspiracies. For example, at least one Internet site has floated the idea that this week's arrest of Michael Jackson on suspicion of child abuse was timed by California officials under the direction of Republican Governor Schwarzenegger to take the spotlight off President Bush's visit to London and the likelihood of a media examination of the Bush/Blair Iraq policy. (William Rivers Pitt contemplates the Jackson spectacle here.)
And sometimes, maybe it's the source that keeps a story from going bigtime. NewsMax.Com is a noted screeching wingnut news site. And Cigar Aficionado is not a magazine noted for its public affairs coverage. But the two converged this week, when NewsMax reported on an interview that Iraq commanding General Tommy Franks gave to Cigar Aficionado, in which Franks speculated that a successful attack on the United States with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons might prompt Americans to discard the Constitution in favor of a military government. This has already begun to happen to a certain extent, as Kevin Baker masterfully noted in "We're in the Army Now," an essay in the October Harper's. But for Franks to say it makes it far more newsworthy. One hopes that the story will get more play outside the blogosphere over the weekend.
With the news that American soldiers killed a Hungarian civilian driving toward a military checkpoint yesterday, a story from the Los Angeles Times earlier this week becomes even more worthwhile. "We are one stressed-out reservist away from a massacre," reports a senior official. Millions of miles from home, never knowing from which direction death will come, not getting paid on time--it's no wonder these people are on a hair trigger. And with the news this morning that we will keep 100,000 troops in Iraq at least until 2006, the danger to the soldiers and of a massacre is only going to grow. Nobody who joined the reserves ever imagined that they'd be put in this position. Small wonder some of them are freaking out--and many of them are saying there's no way in hell they'll reenlist.
Some stories break into the national consciousness and some do not, and it's damned hard to say why. Sometimes people blame conspiracies. For example, at least one Internet site has floated the idea that this week's arrest of Michael Jackson on suspicion of child abuse was timed by California officials under the direction of Republican Governor Schwarzenegger to take the spotlight off President Bush's visit to London and the likelihood of a media examination of the Bush/Blair Iraq policy. (William Rivers Pitt contemplates the Jackson spectacle here.)
And sometimes, maybe it's the source that keeps a story from going bigtime. NewsMax.Com is a noted screeching wingnut news site. And Cigar Aficionado is not a magazine noted for its public affairs coverage. But the two converged this week, when NewsMax reported on an interview that Iraq commanding General Tommy Franks gave to Cigar Aficionado, in which Franks speculated that a successful attack on the United States with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons might prompt Americans to discard the Constitution in favor of a military government. This has already begun to happen to a certain extent, as Kevin Baker masterfully noted in "We're in the Army Now," an essay in the October Harper's. But for Franks to say it makes it far more newsworthy. One hopes that the story will get more play outside the blogosphere over the weekend.
With the news that American soldiers killed a Hungarian civilian driving toward a military checkpoint yesterday, a story from the Los Angeles Times earlier this week becomes even more worthwhile. "We are one stressed-out reservist away from a massacre," reports a senior official. Millions of miles from home, never knowing from which direction death will come, not getting paid on time--it's no wonder these people are on a hair trigger. And with the news this morning that we will keep 100,000 troops in Iraq at least until 2006, the danger to the soldiers and of a massacre is only going to grow. Nobody who joined the reserves ever imagined that they'd be put in this position. Small wonder some of them are freaking out--and many of them are saying there's no way in hell they'll reenlist.
