Bombarded by brutal rhetoric

[Jasper Fidget]

http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/columnists/story.html?f=/stories/
20020107/1053525.html
 
January 7, 2002
 
Bombarded by brutal rhetoric
 
Mark Steyn National Post
 
Whatever happened to the "brutal Afghan winter"? It was "fast
approaching" back in late September, and apparently it's still "fast
approaching" today. "Winter is fast, fast approaching," reported ABC's
Nightline on September 26th.
 
Two weeks on, New York's Daily News announced that, "realistically, U.S.
forces have a window of two or three weeks before the brutal Afghan
winter begins to foreclose options."
 
Two or three weeks passed and the brutal Afghan winter's relentless
approach showed no sign of letting up. "A clock is ticking," declared
The Oregonian on October 24th. "The harsh Afghan winter is approaching."
 
The clock ticked on, and on, and on. On November 8th NBC's Tom Brokaw
alerted viewers to the perils posed by "a rapidly approaching winter."
"They expect the conditions to deteriorate rapidly as the brutal winter
soon sets in," wrote Newsday's Deborah Barfield on November 11th
updating her earlier sighting of "the typically brutal winter
approaching" a month earlier on October 9th.
 
[...]
 
So where did this "brutal Afghan winter" business come from? It came,
pre-eminently, from spokespersons from the relief agencies. There are
some special-interest groups -- the National Rifle Association, Right To
Life -- whose press releases get dismissed by the media as propaganda,
and others -- environmental groups, for example -- whose every claim is
taken at face value. Into this last happy category fall the
"humanitarian lobby." Throughout the rhetorically brutal autumn, they
bombarded us: "Predicting even more desperate times for millions of
Afghans, international relief groups and federal humanitarian aid
officials are scrambling to get food and medical supplies into a country
they say is on the verge of famine ... They expect the conditions to
deteriorate rapidly as the brutal winter sets in."
 
[...]
 
Instead, they seem a little touchy about the fact that among the first
food supplies to get through was a fresh supply of egg on their faces.
When Axworthy and other self-proclaimed "humanitarians" start droning on
next month about starving children in Iraq, always remember the lesson
of Afghanistan: A bombing pause is not as "humanitarian" as a bomb. The
quickest way to end a "humanitarian" crisis is to remove the idiot
government responsible for it. Conversely, the best way to keep people
starving is to cook up new wheezes to maintain the thugs in power, as
Christian Aid, Oxfam, Conscience International and all the rest did in
their petitions through the gullible Western media. I would urge readers
to be highly selective about supporting aid agencies who operate under
tyrannies. Better yet, go see for yourself: After all, for Canadians,
there's no better time than now to spend a sultry two weeks in Kabul
enjoying the charms of the brutal Afghan winter.

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