Roger Cohen falls in love or at least gets morbidly impressed with Al Jazeera

and the DW pals are gonna be cross with me for once again getting grumpy with an NYT columnist, but what can I say, it just calls out to be spanked a lot of the time, and ya only remember the ones ya need to spank


Dear Roger,

Your article makes a few good points, viz. Rumsfeld's dismissal of an important, even if likely to be, an enemy viewpoint and the lack of habeas corpus at Guantanamo, which was never intended to lock up cameramen but bonafide battlefield detainees, and even in that, within circumscribed parameters of war.

However, you offer no proof for your assertions and gloomy predictions.

The entire article is a series of assertions and gloomy predictions of which the one about American power is the most egregious.

While American power may have attenuated due to poor policies, you discount the importance that American power plays in stability on at least 2 continental areas and in addition to keeping Europe safe and now most lately keeping safe the high seas from notorious pirates off of the coast of Somalia.

If you had needed to make a case for Al Jazeera as one of the channels one should watch, particularly if one is a soldier, that is a circumscribed parameter.

I have watched it in foreign countries and found it tedious, wishfully opposed to the US and morbidly morose.

To me, they do not reflect the reality that the guarantor of physical safety is still the United States and that Arab states are still in turmoil from the threats within their own borders or that Iran is wilful in continuing to bash Israel and to suppress the legitimate aspirations of its own young people and of women.

I am thrilled the troops get to watch the channel of their choice, since we had heard dire rumors of military censorship, but I suspect it is for the same reason I watch certain Democrat bashing shows and read right leaning news, is to know what the enemy is banking on and what they are thinking.