Sunday, April 23, 2006

Retired General Balks At Afghanistan Coverage

I don't understand the logic here:
Lewis MacKenzie, the retired major general, a former member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and one-time federal Conservative candidate, said he was taken aback by full-page newspaper accounts Sunday screaming Death in the Desert and Day of Death in Afghanistan.

"As a Patricia, you say to yourself, 'This is really going over the top,"' MacKenzie said from his central Ontario home.

"Those people who are sitting on the fence in their support for the mission - which they don't really understand - could well have their opinion affected by what's going on the last couple of days."

Canada's intermittent military casualties have generated wall-to-wall coverage on all-news TV networks and days of front-page newspaper treatment ever since the first four soldiers died in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan four years ago.

I'm not sure what news headlines MacKenzie would deem acceptable. Is there a way to sugarcoat the death of four soldiers? MacKenzie's claim of "over the top" coverage is strange, given the fact that yesterday's casualties represent the single biggest military loss of life since Korea. Should the headlines read "Nothing to See Here" or "Minor Development in A Land Far Away".

MacKenzie's other quote is even more perplexing. Why wouldn't anxious supporters reconsider their opinion when faced with the reality of lost lives? Hawks like MacKenzie get all bent out of shape when the reality of war trumps the relatively sterile rhetoric. MacKenzie acknowledges that people "don't really understand" the mission, so events like yesterday should serve as education. If the mission is noble, as is often claimed and I believe there is some rationale, then that fact should counter events like yesterday. What MacKenzie proposes is a muzzled press that lacks the ability to influence the mission. MacKenzie had best realize that Canadians take every single death to heart, so support for this mission is not absolute or open-ended. The only thing that is "over the top" is people like MacKenzie berating reporters, when the script doesn't go according to plan. We are all in trouble the day when dead soldiers are so commonplace that it doesn't cause waves.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

MacKenzie's claim of "over the top" coverage is strange,

oh yeah what about our troops being involved in a war, not peacekeeping, a fucking war

Anonymous said...

what else would he expect "flowers and candy"?

good for the media, i had just about enough with all this canadian idol crap that has hijacked our t.v's, a little reality minus the prozak is just what our nation needs to wake up

Steve V said...

jacobin

You could just as easily argue that the media initially dropped the ball, in failing to report extensively on the nature of this mission when it was first debated.

Simon Pole said...

This is how MacKenzie usually responds to any criticism or any coverage that could be remotely construed as negative for the military.

When a few voices were criticizing Hillier for calling the enemy in Afghanistan "scumbags and murderers" MacKenzie's reaction the next day in the Globe was: "back off."

I knew the son of a Forces officer, and he was exactly like that. You couldn't say anything critical or remotely questioning of the military around him. He just always showed automatic support.

I can understand this from a military family, but it is odd behaviour from someone who is now supposed to be a national pundit (and not just a rep for a special interest).