Wonder If Brian Will Embed Anytime Soon?
Brian Williams in his own words:
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: But, here we have maybe 24 people who have lived in London and England and the free world for all these years that become citizens, subjects of the Crown, and yet, after having gotten to know us, they want to kill themselves to hurt us. Isn’t that an even deeper conundrum here than the chemicals being used in these attacks.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: And that, Chris, that last aspect, the willingness to take one’s own life. I always tell people there are guys on our team like that, too. They’re called Army Rangers and Navy Seals and the Special Forces folks and the first responders on 9/11 who went into those buildings knowing, by the way, they weren’t going to come out. So we have players like that on our team.
I wonder if at any point while uttering that, Williams had a little voice in his head suggesting he just stop right there. My money is on the prospect that he still doesn’t think it was a poorly worded comparison.
Because such even-handed comparisons are the hallmark of good journalism on the coasts.
Filed under: The Failing MSM
Was the even-handed comparison in this quote so badly off the mark?
A friend of mine has always said to me, since way back when, that suicide bombers are far more courageous going to their certain deaths than any military man period. We argue this one over and over, and I’ll concede that modern warfare with its tendency for killing from a distance rather than up close and bloody, perhaps detaches the killer from the killed and requires less guts due to this detachment from the consequences. But, I argue, there are plenty of guys who fight and take risks with their person directly, etc etc. My friend maintains that most military personnel might have a death wish or not expect to live, but each of their encounters is usually non-fatal, whereas the suicide bomber usually does not return to fight another day. He then points out that it is traditional for the oppressed and occupied to fight back with asymmetrical and often suicidal methods, especially when faced with a higher tech invading and occupying army. I counter that these people are brainwashed into needlessly sacrificing their lives by puppet masters. He then raises his eyebrows and asks me how my description does not fit the military forces they oppose. We get nowhere, and so it goes on.
Now, presumably Williams is saying that these guys on both sides have in common the fact that they are willing to lay down their lives for what they believe in. That would not seem to be poorly worded. So presumably the poorly-worded part is the apparent foreknowledge of the 9/11 first responders that they were not going to come out? Or that comparing people dying to save others with suicide bombers dying to kill others was the bit he might rephrase had he listened to himself? I wasn’t clear.