I've become more and more grateful for my involvement in and my regular reading of the blogosphere.
Take, as an example, Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online and his cogent and fact-filled defense of Donald Rumsfeld:
The idea that anyone would suggest that Donald Rumsfeld — and now Richard Meyers! — should step down, in the midst of a global war, for the excesses and criminality of a handful of miscreant guards and their lax immediate superiors in the cauldron of Iraq is absurd and depressing all at once.
What would we think now if George Marshall had been forced out on news that 3,000 miles away George S. Patton's men had shot some Italian prisoners, or Gen. Hodges's soldiers summarily executed German commandoes out of uniform, or drivers of the Red Ball express had raped French women? Should Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell have been relieved from his command for the February 12-13, 1991, nocturnal bombing of the Al Firdos compound in Baghdad, in which hundreds of women and children of Baathist loyalists were tragically incinerated and pictures of their corpses broadcast around the world, prompting the United States to cease all further pre-planned and approved attacks on the elite in Saddam's bunkers throughout Baghdad? Of course not.
Do read the whole thing.
I am more and more convinced, as I read and hear the shrill and unceasing calls for Rumsfeld's head, that there are those who are unquestionably putting the quest for political power ahead of the national interests of their country. And I am more and more convinced that questioning their patriotism is not anywhere near as above and beyond the pale that so many of them are quick to claim and charge.
The blogosphere is replete with the good news that is coming from Iraq. It is filled with stories of heroism and bravery that trump the Abu Ghraib references that so dominate the major media outlets. And it is teeming with that which agrees with Hanson on Rumsfeld's leadership.
I cannot help but wonder, and I admit it to be based more on anecdotal evidence and hope-filled longing than scientific proof, where this country might be had it not been for the less than silent majority that I think is represented by the blogosphere.
I can't also help but think of how the Vietnam war might've been affected had the internet been available for bloggers to peddle influence during the haze of that bygone era.
Think for a moment with me what your overall perspective of Bush and the Iraq war would be if all you had to read about what is going on were to come solely from today's major newspapers or the major broadcast media.
I shudder to even ponder it...
Props to Breaker at Right on the Left Beach, Reynolds at Instapundit.Com, Gene over at the Sideline Squawkbox, The Paratrooper of Love and, to be honest with you, for all who I read regularly on my blogroll. I hope some of you will make them regular reads as well.
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