Double-edged olive branch
Violent threats don’t become peace activists
10/04/2007
Last week, I received a phone call from a reader upset that we have discontinued our feature called “The Count,” in which we tallied statistics from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Using online databases at Web sites such as www.iraqbodycount.org, icausalties.org and www.nationalprior ities.org, we regularly updated the number of military and civilian casualties in the military inventions the United States has become entrenched in since Sept. 11, 2001. We also listed details such as the amount spent to date on the military operations and what share of that spending has been shouldered by taxpayers in Ventura County. The feature was developed by our sister paper, the Pasadena Weekly and adapted for our use.
After I came aboard as the editor at the Reporter, I began to realize we were receiving numerous letters to the editor that we were unable to publish because of the amount of editorial space we had devoted to The Count. Many of these letters expressed passionate opinions about timely subjects affecting the lives of our readers. Indeed, many of the letters we receive on a regular basis discuss the wars, often insightfully pointing out the misguided decisions the Bush Administration and its supporters have taken to the detriment of both national and international security.
Not long after I made the decision to stop running the Count, I was questioned by both members of the public and even some of my own editorial staffers about why I made that decision. Most of the critiques they offered were based on thoughtful arguments that the public must not be lulled into complacency and that The Count offered a constant reminder of the growing toll the war was taking on both our own society and, more drastically, on the people of Iraq.
But the call I received last Friday was beyond troubling. It exhibited an intolerance of diverse mindsets prevalent among some opponents of the war. Indeed, the caller’s attitude mirrored the blind rhetoric and narrow-mindedness of those portions of society that first allowed George W. Bush to steal the 2000 election, emboldened him to pervert the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy for his own political goals, and scared Congress into the toothless body that it remains even after the Democratic Party’s victories in 2006.
The caller opened his call by asking me, “What Republican bought you out to get rid of The Count?” When I explained that no one influenced my decision, he flew off the handle in disbelief, railing accusations against me and insinuations about my motives. Employing circular logic and vitriol that would make Bill O’Reilly proud, he refused to listen to my explanations, let alone address them.
With the phone call dragging on and a doctor’s appointment looming for me, I explained that I had to end the call. Hearing my explanation, he told me how he hoped I was seeing a doctor to “get my head checked out,” because, as he put it, if I wasn’t already having problems, he would “personally see to it that [I] have to get more than [my] head checked out at the doctor.” He then hung up.
I don’t believe we need a psychologist to explain that threats of physical violence (my first as a journalist, by the way) followed by cutting off communication is an immature response to a dispute. What is most troubling to me is that a caller upset about the war in Iraq — for the record, a war that I have opposed since well before the 2003 invasion — would threaten (however hollowly) to physically hurt those who disagree with his position.
The ever-growing tally of casualties is troubling, certainly. The realization that social programs are starving to pay for the war is of great concern, so visualizing the cost of the war helps bring its impact home. But that information is and has been available in many forms in many places.
What is not as readily available are the countless perspectives readers have to share about how the war, and countless other issues, affect the people of Ventura County (the amount of letters to the editor I have had to hold until next week for space considerations should be a testament to this fact). I will never regret my decision to help offer a chance — albeit a limited one — for those voices to be heard, whether I agree with them or not, and whether or not they are critical of my perspective.
— Bill Lascher
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