Pam Nelson's Blog

This War, part 2

I had another thought about the war today. Newt Gingrich was on "Meet the Press" this morning, and said that the United States is in a global war, just as we were in World War II. He sees the Iraq war as part of the global war. I can see how that could be true, but the war in Iraq has been so horribly managed that it's a lost effort.

The president and others should explain that the war -- the global war that began with 9/11 -- is a war FOR democracy. When they say it's a war to defend our way of life, it sounds as if it's a war so we can continue to drive gas-guzzling vehicles and live on cul-de-sacs in the suburbs. Other times the war is posed as a clash of cultures, which sounds like a code word for religion -- Islam against Christianity.

What we should be defending is democracy first. That is the most important thing that the United States has to defend. I will sign on to defend democracy, free speech and free press, but I am not sure that I want to sign on to defend conspicuous consumption or Christianity.

This war

I was talking to a colleague one day this week about a Travel section story I had copy-edited. It was about visiting war memorials and other sites associated with U.S. wars for Memorial Day. As we talked about a headline (we went with "Remember"), I almost started to cry, not because I was thinking of long-ago wars, but because I was thinking of the current war, the war that is wasting young men and women in a futile cause. It has gone on for more than four years now, and things just seem to get worse -- for our fighting men and women and for the Iraqi people.

Today Dennis Rogers, columnist for The N&O who is writing about the war on the homefront, has a column about his new "beat." It will break your heart. It's headlined No good news in this war.

Oh, brother

So Mary Cheney is pregnant, and conservatives think they have the right to comment on one family's personal, private choice.

It's interesting that her father is the vice president and that he and his wife are known as social conservatives, but Mary Cheney is a grown woman who can make up her own mind about becoming a mother.

It's nobody else's business.

Hurricane Katrina aftermath

This CNN report by Tom Foreman shows how Homeland "Security" Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown backtracked and talked in circles about Hurricane Katrina. I found it on AOL. You'll need to use Internet Explorer to view it, and it would help if you have a Broadband connection. The president must fire those two as soon as possible.

Here is a story about  an editorial in the Times-Picayune, New Orleans' daily newspaper, calling for every official at FEMA to be fired. AMEN.

Angry at my government

I have never been so angry at my government, not even when I was a teenager and young men were dying needlessly in Vietnam. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been more horrible than even that pointless war. People who did nothing wrong, who went to the shelters where they were told they would be safe and would get help, have been abused as badly as any people in Saddam's Iraq.

Never, ever, ever have I seen such a sorry pair as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown. They have shamelessly lied to the American people. They even lied to the president. Their incompetence and lying actually led to people dying -- helpless babies and old people. The mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana are guilty, too -- guilty of incompetence and indifference. THEY should have sent buses into the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans to get people out BEFORE the storm. The federal government should have known that the mayor and the governor were too stupid to handle this crisis. Yet, Chertoff continues today (Sept. 4)to insist that the government didn't know how bad it could be.

The president is once again ill served by his insistence that loyalty is the most important trait in the people who work for him. In truth, the most important traits are COMPETENCE and HONESTY -- neither of which Chertoff and Brown have.

Chertoff and Brown should be so ashamed of themselves that they turn in their resignations -- RIGHT NOW, TODAY.

Today, I watched Allen Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish in Louisiana, a grown man, a public official, break down in racking sobs on "Meet the Press," as he described how an employee's elderly mother drowned because NO ONE could save her.

This doesn't end with Katrina. If the Department of Homeland Security cannot help after a hurricane, it won't be able to help after a terrorist attack or after an earthquake. It is worthless.

Swarming media

  Having been in the newspaper business for almost 30 years, I love news as much as anyone. When I worked on the news desk, I became excited whenever some big event broke. I was working as a news editor the night Diana, Princess of Wales, died and I can't even begin to describe how thrilling it was, even on the desk of a midsize, North Carolina daily, to put that story at the top of Page One. I knew it was going to have a huge impact on people. But even I, someone who has been fascinated with the British royal family since I was a girl, grew disheartened at the constant and, it seemed to me, exploitative coverage.

    Today, a day after the death of poor Terri Schiavo and as Pope John Paul II lies near death, I feel again as if we just have lost our collective media mind. The pope, a man who had a great impact on the world, is a worthy subject for the news cycle, but the endless speculation and thin reports delivered by phony TV news people are just making a spectacle of the man's last hours.
   
    And what of the Schiavo story? Has anyone as helpless as she ever been so exploited and ill-used by the media? It was horrible to watch the media storm, even as it was terrible to contemplate her family's pain. (I hope that if I am ever in such a state as Terri Schiavo that no one will put my shell of a body on display for the world to see and pity.)

    I don't have an answer about this media madness. I wouldn't want to give up our round-the-clock news channels, which keep us connected, if nothing else. And I still love a breaking story.

   I guess my answer is one everyone can make for himself: Turn it off when I can't stand it any more.