(no subject)
What Ted Koppel did tonight was absolutely incredible.
If you weren't aware, tonight on Nightline, Koppel did nothing but read off the list of the 750+ that have been killed in Iraq since the war was declared in March of 2003. Tonight is the eve of the 1 year anniversary of the "end of hostilities" as our ever tactful president so ironically put it.
Regardless of how controversial Koppel's decision to do this is/was, one thing is for sure. Something like this needed to be done. With the advent of the technology like laser guided bombs and bradley fighting vehicles and stealth jets, the harsh humanity of war has been eroded. It is bad enough that the person sending our young men and women to war skipped out on his national guard duty, but nowadays, we don't even see the faces of those who are lost in such a mess.
General Robert E. Lee once said 'It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise it would occur far too often." It is amazing to look back at those words and see the type of significance they hold today. Nowadays, we can sit patiently on warships while missles we launch destroy villages that are thousands of miles away. Nowadays the world can be blown to bits with one call on a red telephone and the press of one red button.
Until tonight, unless you knew one someone fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, ANYWHERE, those that had died were nothing more than a number. They were a representation of something we would never be able to comprehend unless we or someone we knew was put into that situation. 750. Thats a lot of people to be killed over lies. and thats just the americans. Ted Koppel lent faces to those 750. Ted Koppel made us realize why it is important that we show pictures of caskets covered by American flags coming back from Iraq. Ted Koppel made us realize why it is important that the president of the united states attend the funerals of those that have given their lives. Ted Koppel did something that everyone else in the media was afraid to do.
750 is a large number, and it can only get larger.
If you weren't aware, tonight on Nightline, Koppel did nothing but read off the list of the 750+ that have been killed in Iraq since the war was declared in March of 2003. Tonight is the eve of the 1 year anniversary of the "end of hostilities" as our ever tactful president so ironically put it.
Regardless of how controversial Koppel's decision to do this is/was, one thing is for sure. Something like this needed to be done. With the advent of the technology like laser guided bombs and bradley fighting vehicles and stealth jets, the harsh humanity of war has been eroded. It is bad enough that the person sending our young men and women to war skipped out on his national guard duty, but nowadays, we don't even see the faces of those who are lost in such a mess.
General Robert E. Lee once said 'It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise it would occur far too often." It is amazing to look back at those words and see the type of significance they hold today. Nowadays, we can sit patiently on warships while missles we launch destroy villages that are thousands of miles away. Nowadays the world can be blown to bits with one call on a red telephone and the press of one red button.
Until tonight, unless you knew one someone fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, ANYWHERE, those that had died were nothing more than a number. They were a representation of something we would never be able to comprehend unless we or someone we knew was put into that situation. 750. Thats a lot of people to be killed over lies. and thats just the americans. Ted Koppel lent faces to those 750. Ted Koppel made us realize why it is important that we show pictures of caskets covered by American flags coming back from Iraq. Ted Koppel made us realize why it is important that the president of the united states attend the funerals of those that have given their lives. Ted Koppel did something that everyone else in the media was afraid to do.
750 is a large number, and it can only get larger.