Saturday, August 27, 2005

Why do facts keep contradicting analysis?

The Times (UK, not NY) reports that Islamic Fundamentalist candidates took a huge electoral beating in the border provinces of Pakistan.

This give a huge boost to President Musharraf, a key American ally who has stuck his neck out repeatedly to support the War on Terror.

It also is factually problematic for the antiwar left's drumbeat that the Iraq War is creating more terrorists.

But this time SWNID doesn't blame the MSM for ignoring the good news about Iraq. Blame the American MSM for ignoring the fact that there is such a place as Pakistan.

Or India, or Sri Lanka, or Malaysia, or Fiji, or Botswana, or Paraguay. Or Bulgaria or Armenia or Estonia. Or Canada!

The British press remembers that "the pink bits [used to be] ours," and reports on them regularly. The American press knows that there are the European Union, Israel, places where illegal immigrants come from, and, occasionally, places where bad people harvest narcotics. They've known about Iraq since 1989 and Iran off and on since the 70s. They don't even know that there used to be an American Empire of sorts. When was the last time you heard anything about the Philippines?

And when American reporters get outside their comfortable surroundings, they all check into one hotel with herds of other reporters. And they do their reporting from there. I wish I'd saved a link to a story to this very effect that was posted recently by a MSM outlet. A reporter in Baghdad actually said something like, We don't need to leave the hotel; we can see the explosions from here. Remember Hotel Rwanda?

But back to the big point. Who would have expected that pro-Musharraf candidates would have reversed a 50-point deficit in the very provinces where the Qaida guys are cave-dwelling? Is it possible that there is a fairly universal human longing for freedom and dignity?

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