This Weekend’s Unanswered Question 1 (021806): On Freedom of Speech for Soldiers and Their Families
So Why Can’t Former Soldiers and the Families of Fallen Soldiers Speak Out?
Powerline has been on the revealing story during the past few days (here, here, here, here, here, and here; HT Hugh Hewitt).
The essence? Soldiers’ families and former soldiers, with the help of an organization, Progress for America and its Voter Fund, a (gasp!) conservative 527 organization analogous to but nowhere near the size of moveon.org, whose mission is to (oh no!) “level the playing field for issue advertisements,” have put a together two videos (”Midwest Heroes” — downloads in various formats available at link) that have been playing on Minnesota TV.
One of the videos (”Heroes”) has testimonials from soldiers who have returned, and hammers hard on the linkage between Al Qaeda’s responsibility for the September 11 attacks, the USS Cole bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and (heaven forbid) our efforts to put down Al Qaeda in Iraq. The other (”Remember”) includes expressions of support for the war effort from family members of, by my count, six soldiers killed in Iraq.
Nick Coleman, a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, objects, as do others in the local press and at supposedly (but not actually) non-partisan organizations, to the content and (naturally) the funding source. So does the local Democratic Farm Labor party (DFL - Minnesota’s name for Democrats), which also wants them taken off the air. KTSP in Minneapolis caved, using as a fig leaf the videos’ criticisms of media coverage which, it harrumphed, isn’t valid about them. That linked article also say that “DFL Party Chairman Brian Melendez called a news conference to call the ad ‘un-American, untruthful and a lie.’”
Those who object are basically telling us that we must rely exclusivly on the WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as the Mainstream Media) not only to tell us what is happening in Iraq, but also to be the sole arbiters of the truth. No attempt to offset free WORM wall-to-wall coverage of one dead soldier’s mother’s every move should be allowed — even if someone is willing to pay for it.
Rightwing Nuthouse’s reaction is that Minnesota liberal legend Hubert Humphrey, who narrowly lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard Nixon, must be weeping in his grave. Indeed. But why should we be surprised that a party whose leaders will eliminate a party insurgent by conducting a whisper campaign accusing him of war crimes wants to prevent us from hearing the testimonials of former soldiers and fallen soldiers’ families who disagree with them?
