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Of course you are right that the only news we have been hearing was about Foley, while people are dying in the Congo and in Darfur, while the Talibans are on the verge of taking back Afghanistan with a serious thread to nuclear owning Pakistan. Of course you are right that the military leaders in Afghanistan are begging for more troops.
But don't blame the media. The media reports what it thinks is of interest to its audience and in the past 20 years or so, ever since Reagan took office, the audience wants to watch "reality shows" that titillate and this include the Foley tapes. Poor Anderson Cooper has been in Africa for the past week to report on these places and his stories have been lost in the Foley tapes.
No, direct your admonishment to the "leaders" in Washington.
If we had real leaders who can think beyond their immediate surroundings and sound bites, heck, if we had leaders that can actually think - they would take the initiative to lead UN nations to the Congo and the Sudan to try to keep people from dying, at the rate of a thousand per day. They would send food supply and shelters. They would, yes, help a coup to kick the leaders. After all, we did this to Saddam Hussein, right?
They would institute a "peace draft" for these missions if we are completely out of troops now. They would, gasp, levy a special tax on those making more than, say, @200K to help these efforts. And if anyone would try to call these missions "wag the dog" they would just shrug and continue in these efforts.
I cannot find online your op-ed that you delivered earlier on CBS Sunday Morning. If someone will, perhaps later today, please post a link.
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