Here's a question without an answer for the Sun Times. Actually for all the news media. You regularly feature pictures and stories of the tragic civilian deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but you rarely did in Italy and France when the toll was far greater during World War II. Why the difference....?
The irony grows when you realize the WWII GIs who caused these deaths are still honored in military cemeteries over there, whereas today we sneak them out of countries who have no wish to honor a single one of them. And all this despite the fact that in both these wars we saw ourselves as fighting and dying for these very civilians.
Some thoughts come to mind, but none exactly an answer. Maybe our mission is less morally clear now...or our media is more willing to feature ugly stories...or our allies are not really willing allies...or our soldiers are less tolerant. More likely it's a mix of all the above, leaving us with a recipe of American exceptionalism that's no longer as easy to swallow as when we were saving the world from Hitler back in the 1940s.
May is the month we honor our military dead -- buried here or over there. The honor is desperately well deserved. But as we remember them and their sacrifice, this disturbing question should be rattling around at your news rooms. At the networks. At the Pentagon. Everyone can agree with Sherman that "war is hell," but the question remains: Why is the hell so different and so less fulfilling than it was 70 years ago..
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