Soldiers vs Winehouse

Soldiers v Winehouse (8/3/2011)

This past week I was riding with my daughter Haley talking about events of the week when I asked her if she knew who Amy Winehouse was. About two weeks ago Amy Winehouse died of an overdose and I had never heard of her, you probably haven’t either. What intrigued me more was the amount of media coverage her death received. I watch the NBC Nightly News and they gave at least three minutes to this celebrity, focusing on a lifestyle of degradation wrought with drugs and alcohol. My daughter impressed me with her next question, “did you see the Facebook post about this?”

I asked her to explain as I had no idea what she was talking about. Haley went on to share a girl had posted about Amy Winehouse versus the soldiers who died in the same week. Essentially, this is the same issue bothering me. Receiving no media coverage were the U.S. soldiers who gave their lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.

Since 2002 thousands of soldiers have died fighting in our Presidents’ war on terror. These are funded by, but not declared wars by Congress and in my opinion Bush and Obama along with the entire Senate and House can be blamed for these deaths. Prior to Obama’s Presidency the major networks would publish the names of the soldiers who died each day and give coverage to the IEDs and bombings taking the lives of our sons and daughters. Part of Obama’s election platform was the withdrawal of troops and shutting down the wars, but the opposite has happened with as many lives lost on his watch as Bush’s.

I puzzle why we have U.S. soldiers dying on foreign soil and speculate the following: Iraq – to install democracy, Afghanistan – to stop Al Queda, Libya – to remove Qhadaffi, and Yemen – to protect human rights. All of these theaters are U.N. sanctioned and fought without a declaration of War by the Congress. Therefore, our soldiers are policeman, not upholding the Constitutional premise of protection against enemies foreign and domestic, especially since Osama Bin Laden was killed and the mission accomplished.

The Gulf of Tonkin taught us politicians will lie to create wars. I must now questions the policies of our government, and more personally I wonder if I would allow the government to send my sons to a questionable war. Of most concern is the media stopped questioning the reason for these wars and it now appears a meaningless, drugged up 27-year old British citizen deserves more coverage than our youth fighting a politicians’ war.