Watching US news would ‘drive me nuts’

CBS foreign correspondent: Watching US news would ‘drive me nuts’
By David Edwards and Muriel Kane Uncategorized Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Chief CBS News foreign correspondent Lara Logan, who recently returned from Iraq, appeared on Tuesday’s Daily Show.

“Are we just numb?” Stewart asked. “Have we lost our humanity with this entire situation?”

“Yeah, we have,” agreed Logan. “Nobody really understands. And the soldiers do feel forgotten. … We may be tired of hearing about this five years later. They still have to go out and do the same job. … More soldiers died in Afghanistan last month than Iraq. Who’s paying attention to that?”

This is the part that made me the most upset because it was true. No one really cares unless they have skin in the game, in other words, someone over there or has been there themselves. It's very sad. Even on this blog there is a clear example of the apathy considering the posts on the Marine Puppy Toss video gathered more hits than any other post I have done. What does that say about Americans? What does that say about this country when we have thousands of dead soldiers in two occupations, thousands more wounded, thousands of families hurting and more and more problems these men and women are coming back to yet people seem to care more about a puppy being video taped as a Marine idiot tosses it into the air?

Even veterans families don't pay enough attention to all of this and that is distressing. Ok, fine, it's not a pleasant thing to read about but think about how unpleasant it is to live with any of this? The loss of true care these men and women need is staggering. Is it because of the lack of photos of coffins covered being loaded onto planes to return bodies to the states? I doubt it. One flag draped coffin looks like all of them. Taking a picture of one of them looks like what is already available online. Is it because their pictures are not published? No because sites like CNN have most of their pictures up with the death notice from the DOD they keep track of. So what is wrong with us?

Why is it the media has been able to get away with it? It's because we have not demanded they cover the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan. We simply don't care enough to do it. I know how much time I invest in all of this but even though I don't have anyone in my family over in Iraq or Afghanistan, I have several people over there that I've been in contact with and praying for. I pay attention because I know what too many of them are going through and their families with PTSD and the problems with the VA and the DOD. I don't even know what percentage of the American public are paying attention to any of this but I guess it's reflective of the percentage of the men and women serving in both occupations which is less than 2 million involved. Think of that. Almost 7 years into Afghanistan and over 5 in Iraq and only that many families have been touched by it all. Very, very sad.