Fraters Libertas

The Inferno

Front page, above the fold Pioneer Press headline today:

Hopes Dim For Iraqi Election

This syndicated article, from the Knight Ridder Foreign Service, leads off as such:

Prospects for a successful Iraqi parliamentary election Jan. 30 appeared all but hopeless Tuesday as insurgents gunned down the governor of Baghdad province, Ali Al-Haidari, in a brazen daylight attack and a fuel truck rigged with explosives killed at least eight members of an elite Iraqi commando force.

Later the writers (Tom Lasseter and Yasser Salihee) let us know that even if, against all hope, the election proceeds, it will all be a facade:

Even if the elections proceed, they now hold little prospect of producing a government that would be broadly acceptable to Iraq's diverse ethnic groups.

(If broadly acceptable results for the losers were a requirement, I guess there was no hope for the US Presidential election either.)

Finally, they let us know that despite this impending disaster, the US has painted itself in a corner and must keep slogging onward, for changing course now would be even worse (worse than hopeless - what is that?):

Even so, President Bush and his top advisers see no choice but to hold the election on schedule. The senior official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because his remarks weren't authorized, said any delay now would mean even greater trouble for the United States because Iraq's Shiite majority and its spiritual leaders insist that the balloting proceed.

Mind you, this erotic dream scenario of every Anybody But Bush zealot isn't a Michael Moore screed, or even an editorial or bastardized hybrid "analysis" piece - it is the front page news! You know, just the facts ma'am, all the news fit to print, and all that jazz.

I suppose the occasional presentation of facts in this article, such as they are, could be argued as accurate. But what purpose does the overt defeatist attitude serve in a news report? The vividly crushing characterizations - over highly contestable conditions (citing anonymous sources, no less). Where's even the attempt at objectivity in that?

Dependent on mainstream media as we still are, it's hard to tell if the situation is hopeless in Iraq or not. But I wonder who's supposed to be hopeless here? This article presents a litany of the gruesome violence perpetrated by terrorists in the last week and the significant challenges inherent to bringing democracy into an area formerly ruled by the law of the jungle (many of whose animals are still, shall we say, adverse to change). But where is the hopelessness? Who is hopeless? This article doesn't provide a single shred of evidence to substantiate that characterization, yet it appears in both the headline and the lead.

Hopeless. Have the people of Iraq already surrendered the prospect of political freedom to the murderers and reactionaries attempting to steal their chance away? Doubtful, particularly among those poised to win the election (Shiites) or those poised to institutionalize their quasi-independence (Kurds).

Of course, the indiscriminant violence has all parties concerned, many terrified. As the terrorists surely know, random bombings and beheadings tend to have that effect on rational human beings. But that doesn't have to lead to hopelessness. In the heart of a free man, or someone fighting to secure their liberty, terrorism leads to defiance. And the articles about Iraq could just as easily be written in that spirit, instead of fearful defeatism.

Perspective, in this case (and probably every case), is a choice. Hopelessness of the weak in the face of overwhelming oppression or defiance of a people fighting for their freedom against a great evil. We now know where the Knight Ridder reporters come down. Which makes me think they might be the most hopeless people in Iraq.

Borrowing from Dante (not Culpepper), I recommend this as their future corporate tagline - and for the MSM epitaph:

Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.

Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.

Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.

(That ending was kind of a Belmont Club moment, wasn't it.)