Glenn Reynolds just mentioned this post of mine on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Roger Simon (the journalist, not the smart blogger), whined in response (and completely missed the point) that WW II was nothing like Iraq.
[Update in the afternoon]
Here’s the rush transcript (in which they manage to misspell my name in a new and unusual way):
KURTZ: Glenn Reynolds, is this 2,000 deaths just a bloody milestone that naturally was going to get some media attention, or is there an anti-war tinge to the sudden focus on 2,000 deaths, the press’s way of saying, see, this just isn’t working out?
GLENN REYNOLDS, INSTAPUNDIT.COM: Well, it’s more than that. It’s a manufactured event by a press that has largely been anti-war from the beginning, and I think is dogpiling on the Bush administration for as many opportunities as it can find.
Ran Siemberg (ph), who is a blogger, had an amusing parody from World War II of the media making a big deal out of another milestone, the 250,000th death. And I think that provides all kind of perspective, on the difference between the two wars, and the difference between the press’ treatment of the two wars.
Too often, war coverage now is just another opportunity to try to go after Bush, who the press has disliked from day one. And I think that’s very, very unfortunate.
KURTZ: Roger Simon, you are shaking your head.
SIMON: I just don’t find much comparison between World War II, in which we were fighting predatory fascism that was trying to take over the globe, and invading Iraq for reasons that the administration now admits were false.
“…predatory fascism that was trying to take over the globe…”
I guess he’s never bothered to read any statements of intent from Al Qaeda.
Which part does he think is untrue of the enemy? That they aren’t fascists? Well, admittedly, the term has lost much of its currency from overuse by much of the left to be applied to everyone who disagrees with them on almost any conceivable subject, so let’s call it totalitarianism instead (a term that I would hope that Mr. Simon would agree also applies to our enemies in the second world war). If that word can’t be applied to people who want to run every aspect of everyone’s daily existence, will brook no dissent, and have no apparent value for human life, as the Jihadis objectively do, then to whom does it apply? And even if you want to imagine that the “secular” Saddam didn’t support the “terrorists” (one would have to disregard the Salman Pak training camp and the bounties offered for attacks on the Israelis to buy that one), he was as totalitarian (and fascist) as they come.
And part of the totalitarian ideology of Al Qaeda is that there shall be no ideology before theirs–ultimately, all the infidels must convert or die. That we aren’t first on the list is a matter of political and military necessity, not an indication of any solicitude toward our ultimate fate. Does he really believe that it isn’t their goal to “take over the globe”? From the standpoint of the threat, if they (and Saddam) are not the Hitler of the MSM mind, it’s because they’re Hitler in 1935, instead of Hitler in 1941. But while he made many strategic mistakes (which were his ultimate undoing, as hopefully will be the case for our new totalitarian adversaries), he didn’t make the strategic mistake of attacking New York in 1935, as Osama did in 2001.
It would have been a lot easier to deal with Hitler in 1935, which is one reason why our casualties are counted only in the low thousands after over four years of war, instead of the large fractions of a million that it took to defeat our totalitarian enemies six decades ago, for all that the media would make of them.