Undisturbed Dreams of Freedom

I'm out here in Western Colorado, where all the vehicles I find myself in have radio buttons tuned to HannityLimbaughSavageIngrahamNorthFoxPatriot. The other night, returning from a niece's basketball game, I got to hear Right Radio obsess over John Kerry's description of home searches by U.S. troops in Iraq:

[T]here is no reason ... that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the — of — the historical customs, religious customs. ... Iraqis should be doing that."

Kerry admittedly made a poor choice of words. But he's not guilty of host Laura Ingraham's willful misinterpretation, equating "terrorizing kids" with calling U.S. soldiers terrorists. Hearing Ingraham carp about Kerry's clip made me wonder which is a worse way to spend your day — listening to smart people talk really stupid or listening to smart people talk as if everyone else is really stupid.

After belaboring her point for awhile, Ingraham brought in callers who affirmed that liberals hate our troops, who are just doing their job in the best way they can. How else, they asked, can you find weapons in houses unless you look in the houses? Right, and why would innocent people be afraid of foreign soldiers armed with assault rifles coming into their homes at night? (We will not go into those reasons right now, since no one on the show could think of any.)

Then came the most chilling call. Someone claiming to have a son in Iraq said her son told her their raids were so non-intrusive that they were able to sneak into peoples' homes when they were asleep, search for weapons, and leave without the residents even knowing they were there!

Since this was not "Talk of the Nation," no host happened to question whether terrorized women and children might lie quietly in bed rather than risk being manhandled or shot when they awakened to sounds of intrusion. No one raised the point that being able to conduct so many uneventful clandestine searches might indicate poor intelligence about the location of weapons. No one suggested that if they awoke to an uninvited visitor in their house — American or otherwise — they would feel mightily justified in offering them a Smith & Wesson sandwich.

No, instead we heard how great our troops were, and how considerate, to be providing such trouble-free service to those poor Iraqis, who were allowed to sleep undisturbed, dreaming about freedom.