Must get out more

I just remembered a piece on the Channel 4 news yesterday notable even by that channels standards as dumb and reality-free. They had obtained a video, of which they seemed inordinately pleased, of US and Iraqi soldiers on patrol in Baghdad. Channel 4 news had done a voice over, full of stage whispered horror and melodrama.

To save time, I'll summarize what the actual contents of the video were: a bog-standard US/Iraqi joint patrol stops a car with three blokes in it, and find mortar shells in the boot. On the way back to base, the Iraqi soldiers whack the blokes around a bit, and stuff them unceremoniously into the boot of a Humvee. The end. Nobody died, three more insurgents were cleaned from the streets, no civilians became collateral damage, in other words- total success.

But from the voice-over, you'd have thought that a Szrebrenica-scale breach of human rights had taken place, and that at the very least the UN should pass a stiff resolution of censure against the US. In a city where dozens of people are tortured in ways that you and I really don't want to dwell on and then are murdered every day, by people of the same religion, and where every trip to the market could end up with you being embedded into a nearby building, where the smell of death can be detected in most neighborhoods on most days, three guilty blokes getting some bruises is... a poor joke.

But if you sit in beautiful, modern offices in Grays Inn road, and the closest you have ever come to violence is the local rugby derby, and the most dreadful thing that ever happened to you was not getting a seat on the Northern line, its easy to get carried away. Next thing you know, your script about the Baghdad security situation has become an anguished wail against the futility of war, the hideous brutality of the Americans, the so-last-yearness of America's hubris etc.

I read the blogs of three American embeds (http://www.indcjournal.com/, http://www.michaelyon-online.com/, http://fumento.com/), guys who go out with the US and Iraqi military and police every day. They are usually ex-military, and know the tasks of soldiering very well. They are never over-the-top, never stupid, never hysterical and they are good company to their readers. The difference between the real journalism they produce, and the candy-floss squealing of the Channel 4 prissies is exactly parallel to the difference between a veteran and a pontificating 15-year old braggart. The former commands respect by his simple presence- the latter invites pity and scorn in equal measure.