A little clarity

David Warren with an excellent piece in Saturday's Ottawa Citizen:

More than a name to the passersby

I am outraged by the numbers game that is played in our mainstream media, and by the political opponents of our Afghan mission.

I am outraged by the affectation of remorse from people who never wanted any soldier sent on any mission to any field.

I am appalled by those reporters who nosed through the crowds, fishing for antiwar soundbites. By the newspaper headlines that shriek grief when we never saw, so prominently displayed, a single article in which the achievements of our soldiers in Afghanistan were mentioned. Such reporting presents our soldiers' lives as wasted. The drumbeat of casualty numbers gnaws at our will to victory.

Far, far more people die annually in auto wrecks on our streets, and there is no media drumbeat about this. Yet that is pure waste. Each year about a hundred thousand unborn children die on the altar of "a woman's right to choose," yet there is no drumbeat. And the families of our fallen soldiers are afflicted with "how do you feel?" questions, and the gall of false sympathies, from reporters they know perfectly well are using the death of their beloved to pump out a message that desecrates his memory.

That fallen soldier did not break faith, but walked through Calvary. And we, the living, must not break faith, but assure the victory of the cause for which he died.

Amen