Whats Wrong Today:
Millions of words have been written. Hyperbole is piled upon hot steaming piles of exaggeration, but nothing touches the Sacramento Bee headline of 5/2/2011:
âBin Laden went out a coward, U.S. saysâ
When you read the story, he didnât have a gun in his hand when he was killed, which is the opposite of what was originally reported. Words matter. The press calling UBL a coward panders to the coarsest side of our spirit. Headline writers and editors of The BEE, why do you need to cheapen the story and paint the mission as if it was a video game? No gun does not equal coward except maybe in Hollywood. This headline is not who we are as a people. It tells us we can minimize UBL because he wasnât a warrior.
Iâm glad heâs gone and it doesnât matter to me how it went down. It does matter how we frame our thinking about our enemies. Calling our #1 enemy in the GWOT a coward may appeal to some of the Couch Patriots out there who have never worn the uniform and it may make some of us feel better about ourselves, but it reveals that the press (at least the Sacramento Bee) underestimates the enemy and reveals us as unsophisticated, arrogant and clueless about the mission undertaken by our SEAL team.
Imagine the impact if this headline was repeated broadly around the world: jihadists would be thinking, (âthat wonât be the way I go outâ).
Some read that UBL wasnât armed and questioned if the SEAL team did the right thing. They think we should have captured him alive and held a show trial. We all know that UBL admitted to planning and executing the 9/11 attacks. He was videoed saying he did it while sitting on a rug at his hideout without requiring any enhanced interrogation techniques. These people imply that the world would be better off had he been captured alive. I disagree. The SEAL team acted correctly. UBL is now out of the terror equation. Our satisfaction at his death is not enhanced by thinking he was or wasnât a coward in the eyes of the Sacramento Bee.
So Whatâs Wrong?
We should care that the media reported that UBL had a gun and then that he didnât have a gun. We should care that they reported that he hid behind his wife and then that he hadnât. There was precisely one source for the facts in this instance, our military, as told to us by our government. Was the difference Fog of War, or manipulation of the facts? We’ll probably never get the real scoop on everything that went down and everyone who was responsible.
We know only two facts: UBL is dead and was buried at sea. And that may be enough.
We also know that the Sacramento Bee did not add to the facts, just to the hyperbole. No one in the government called UBL a coward. Didnât see that reported anywhere else, either. So we can conclude that the Bee it is run by adolescent minds that need to grow up and get a world view. Pandering headlines like theirs coarsen our spirit and weaken our nation.
