I am one of those news junkies who routinely start their computer day by clicking on the Drudge Report … not because I give a tinker’s damn about what Matt Drudge says (in point of fact he hardly ever says anything himself, at least on his website), but rather because it’s a very complete collection of news and opinion links. I seldom bookmark anything because the Drudge list obviates any necessity for doing so. Likewise, his newsreaders diligently and reliably pick out the most controversial political headlines of the day. With most of the big stories directly linked, reading time for the real news junkie is greatly enhanced.One of the more useful links on Drudge leads to the “World Front Pages,” a snapshot of the front pages of newspapers throughout the world. Ten minutes or so spent scanning those pages gives the reader a pretty good perspective on what the newspapers are selling each day.

Yesterday, the 16th of December, what they were not talking about was the Iraq war. In fact, on most days, in most newspapers, precious little is being printed regarding the Iraq war. And when something is printed, more often than not it’s buried on the inside pages.

By circulation, the biggest newspaper in the United States is “USA Today.” The only mention of the war yesterday was a small head reading ”Bush to Congress: Troops need money, not just pledges.” Another small head concerned increased Iraqi oil output.

The Wall Street Journal, the nation’s second largest newspaper, is a subscription only website, and so I have no idea what was on their front page (but would place a blind bet of a dollar to a doughnut that they had nothing to say about the war either). It will be interesting, in future weeks, to see if Rupert Murdoch lives up to his pledge to open up the site to advertising based online free access.

The NY Times, widely known as the “Newspaper of record” of the U.S. (despite their claims to the contrary) is the nation’s third largest newspaper by circulation. Let the record show that yesterday they had nothing to say about Iraq worth putting on their front page.

The LA Times, fourth in size, the Chicago Tribune, fifth in size, the Washington Post, sixth in size, the NY Daily News, seventh, the NY Post, eighth, The Denver Post, ninth, and finally the Dallas Morning News, had nothing to say about our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, on 15 December, the Department of Defense confirmed the deaths of Private Daren A. Smith, 19, of Helena, Montana on 13 December in Baghdad, and Sergeant First Class Jonathan A. Lowery, of Houlton, Maine, who died on December 14th, of wounds suffered in Mosul.

Much has been made of the apparent fact that the anti-war movement in today’s America is largely impotent insofar as influencing the administration’s war policy is concerned. One of the reasons is that newspapers and television carry nowhere near the volumn of war news carried by newspapers and television during the period of the Vietnam war. We do not see the carnage on the evening news, or in our newspapers. And that’s a net loss for everyone. A nation at war needs to be reminded, daily, of the cost of war, especially the cost in blood.

It’s the same on the major opinion magazines on TV … Only two, Keith Olberman and George Stephanopoulis, regularly recognize the sacrifice of the soldiers who die each week. In a nation where the “support our troops” ribbons are ubiquitous on cars, trucks and bikes, most of the citizens aren’t really all that interested in what our guys are doing, and how they’re dying, in Iraq.

Nor have we heard much in the “debates” among the presidential contenders of both parties. That much at least is easy to understand. Most of them (the contenders at least) have dirty hands on the war.

And as far as The President is concerned, judging from his most recent remarks, there might as well be no war in Iraq (but may be a new one in Iran, despite the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

As the Vietnam war dragged on month after weary month, and more and more GIs died, news coverage in the US increased and the demands for peace became stronger. That in itself generated more and more news. By comparison, the Iraq experience has shown just the opposite. Since Saddam was done in by the Iraqis (with plentiful assistance from the administration), the war has receded week by week into the inner folds of the newspapers and seldom deserves a mention on TV.

It is as though there is some kind of tacit agreement amongst the news media that other things are more important (and insofar as their bottom line is concerned, other things may well be more important), like Britney Spears underwear (or lack thereof), or, God Forbid, Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends on “The Girls Next Door.”

And now, of course, we are entering “the holiday season,” when TV will be running all the traditional shows, from several versions of “A Christmas Carol” to “Miracle on 34th Street.” Strange that Scrooge and Santa Claus trump news of the deadly struggle in which so many of our young men and women are involved every day, on behalf, mostly, of the president and politicians who set this deadly target practice in motion by unnecessarily interfering in the affairs of a country posing no threat to America or to our interests in the area (those interests having been permanently secured by Gulf War I and the virtually complete destruction of Saddam’s army, as well as the partition of the country into three parts, two of which were effectively beyond his control).

None of this is an accident on the part of the media, or the politicians. My right wing friends will not like this, and will disavow it, but the plain simple fact regarding newspapers is that they are supported mostly by advertising rather than circulation. They therefore have a very tenuous relationship with their advertisers, peace with whom is a higher priority than just the news. In a world where push polls by the media themselves ask the reader to rate the “entertainment” value of various news programs and commentators, it seems clear to me that at least some of those advertisers are making their weight felt in the newsroom.

In the old days, television, at least, was different. The news budgets for the traditional networks were considerably less than now, and news shows were not expected to be big money earners. The competition between the networks was on the basis of quality and credibility. Now, of course, those same networks’ news shows are expected to produce revenue toward the bottom line. A lot of that has to do with the shelving of the Fairness Doctrine, which I think has worked to the net loss of the American people at large.

Now, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with ignorance on the part of newspaper editors, television news producers or The President and other politicians as to what most Americans want. They know that, down to the minutest detail. This is the most polled country in the world and Americans’ opinions on virtually every question are well known, and, well, … ignored.

A CBS News/New York Times Poll of Dec. 5-9, 2007, shows that those polled considered Iraq the most important question facing the country. (See polling point.com for all the polls). A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll of November 30 to December 3rd, 2007, did the same. The difference in percentages among the different polls is negligible. Health care and the economy are next in most polls. Not a single poll mentioned morals or family values as a top consideration.

Yet, on the republican side, especially, and increasingly among democrats, those are the issues most often mentioned by the presidential aspirants of both parties. I guess it’s safer, politically, to be against gay marriage or stem cell research than to  be against putting our troops in harm’s way for no good reason.

Most Americans understand the word “democracy” to mean that the majority rules, though that’s not really what the dictionary says. The dictionary defines democracy as a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and implemented by their elected representatives in fair and open elections. Nevertheless, most politicians feel no obligation to vote as the majority of their constituents would have them do. On those occasions (many) when their personal ambition or opinion is at odds with their constituents, they fall back upon their honorable obligation to “do what’s best for the people,” who are always, on those occasions, “not sufficiently informed as to make the proper decision” (Read, “The President or politician”) has access to information not known to the public). In fact, most politicians, of both parties, act as though doing the public’s will is somehow offensive to the republic. The logic of that proposition is hard to discern.

Robert E. Lee, surveying the carnage against the Federal Forces wrought by his artillery and intrenched infantry on Marye’s Heights above Fredericksburg, said, “It is well that war is so terrible, else we would grow too fond of it.” I fear that America’s leaders, especially in the administration, have come to love war too well by far and wonder how this came to pass. I suspect that it is because too few Americans have any direct involvement with the war, too few have sons or daughters in harm’s way, and too few politicians, by far, have sufficient conscience to reverse, for moral reasons, a decision that was, on both the right and left sides of Congress, purely a political equation and one brought to fruition by outright fraud and deception by The President and his administration with the complicity of congressmen and senators on both sides of the aisle.

We no longer have a democracy in America. For those who quibble, we don’t really even have a republic. We have a country in which the will of the people has been measured, published and is well known to pretty much everyone, including politicians and presidential candidates. The talk in the barbershop and around the water cooler is not about gay marriage, it is not about abortion and it is not about religion. In real life people don’t try to impose their personal religion or morality upon their peers, and they certainly don’t expose those beliefs to a test of popularity in the workplace. Face to face, conversation with strangers and workmates seldom touches on anything beyond the inoffensive mundane. That’s how polite society gets on with life (and it’s how I always thought America worked).

The polls, like them or hate them, are in remarkable agreement regarding the political priorities of the majority of Americans. Everyone knows what it is that Americans want. And yet none of those who could actually give Americans and the world the gift of peace in Iraq and the world are willing to even talk about it, let along bring it to pass. The very folks who have it within their grasp to solve the health care crisis, to address the dearth of good jobs in this country, to find a humane answer to the immigration question, all top priorities with most Americans, simply will not listen to the voice of America in her majority and are uniformly unwilling to discuss anything beyond the most divisive of issues, which are in most cases of little interest to the majority of voters.

Those conditions don’t describe a democracy, or a republic. They are more common to banana republic dictators and their rubber stamp legislatures. In politics, at least, we are increasingly a third world country.

America is desperately in need of competent and able leadership, a president whose sentiments are with the middle of America, a president who will implement the priorities of the majority, while protecting the prerogatives of the minority. Above all we need a president who recognizes that his first priority as president should be protecting the freedoms and democracy of his own people, rather than trying to force those values upon an increasingly unwilling world.

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