On Sat, 24 Jun 2006 22:05:23 +0100, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

From a military point of view, that's like complaining about geography:
why do the enemy never let you assault them downhill, over dry ground
with good going yet plenty of nice concealing folds and tussocks, on a
day not so hot you sweat to death during the assault nor so cold that
certain important bits froze off waiting for H-Hour?

There is a larger issue about the extent to which the military
perspective is influenced by external social and cultural issues.
Geography is (largely) beyond human agency to inform or alter, at
least in the short term. The meejah issue is more malleable - my
parallel would be to ask why are the Blue forces required to attack
uphill, in poor weather, against prepared Red defences while their own
supporting arms are curtailed? Why is the behaviour of Red Forces to
kidnap, multilate and murder civilians and combatants alike not
subjected to the same level of "war crimes" scrutiny?

This is the problem for the military in places like Iraq - the
subjective application of double-standards and the perpetuation of
assumptive judgements formed and supported b the meejah. In many
cases they reflect the assumptions of the host culture, but while that
explains them, it does not legitimise them.

"The meeja" exist as they are, just as the weather and the ground and
the enemy do. Good commanders do what they can to gain benefit from them
(like, making sure 'Our Story' is better TV than 'Their Story') while
limiting the damage they can do. Not easy, but that's why good
commanders are to be cherished.

Indeed, but even without counter-propaganda, the doublethink,
groupthink and downright hypocrisy of normal meejah coverage should
not pass without question or challenge. This is a meejah problem in
the first instance, as the meejah have as much responsibility to
police each other as they do to bring politicians and generals down.
Their failure to do this makes the problem a larger cultural and
social one.

Gavin Bailey
--
I have enough of Windows error message which say "Intelligent life
not detected at keyboard." You hear me good Bill! Not mess Eastern
devil warrior. Yeah like Jackie Chan. Worse Bart Kwan-En.
- Bart Kwan En