I was scanning the News-Leader’s web page today and found a few interesting issues on Brian Lewis’ blog regarding two videos about the war in Iraq and contacting our representatives on the issue.
The first video featured a veteran of the war who lost limbs in service to our country. As I saw the video, I had two impressions. First, if you have this guy who gave more than most of us ever will for our freedom wants to ask people to support the war then good for him. He certainly has a stronger perspective on what’s going on there than most people. Secondly, there was no reason for them to include 9/11 footage because it wasn’t Al-Queda in Iraq that we’ve been fighting. Clearly that was misleading although if you want to say that the video represents “terrorists” in general then I would say it’s at least a tenuous connection. (Of course, most of us know that wasn’t the intent of the video.)
In the second video, they had an anti-Iraq group talking about another group that ran a commercial asking people to call their representatives. When this anti-Iraq group called the number from the first video, they recorded themselves saying they didn’t agree with the first group’s position. The woman on the phone then said they only transferred calls from the people who supported the war. The graphics on the screen said “They call that freedom?” I had a laugh because yes, it is! This group has the right to pay for the phone line, pay for the staff to man it (or organize the volunteers) and therefore they have the freedom to decide who gets forwarded from their phone line and who doesn’t get forwarded! It’s pretty arrogant for this second group to say that freedom should be defined by the first group paying to let them use their phone line to deliver a message counter to their message.
Brian Lewis made the comment this was another example of sliding into partisanship and deception. I don’t disagree.
