Now They Tell Us Nothing

Michael Massing speaks about the war in Iraq and how Americans were pretty much excluded from all information on why or who we were fighting. Journalists were black-mailed out of asking the questions that would put our government at stake with the public opinion. Before reading this book, I had absolutely zero knowledge on the war and why we were/are there. Something about WMDs and oil...? I don't know. I hate to admit that. However, I think that the same goes for most Americans and it's not really our fault. We aren't told anything. Even now, after Bush has left office, Americans don't seem to want to hear about the gory details, so reporters don't report it. In my opinion, I could read up on the news and pay attention to every bit of over-seas information that is given to me, but I still would be out of the loop. For those years after 9/11, Americans were kept in the dark about everything. I feel like I will never really know the truth or be able to follow or understand what happened. This book enlightened me, though. Everything in the book was new information to me. I asked my "hard-core" republican friend to read the book and he scoffed. He said that he didn't want to read a liberal, biased opinion on the war. When I described the book, he said it sounded like another hippie that wanted to rant about something they knew nothing about. Based on that experience, I started to realize that that mentality is true for most Americans which makes us seem ignorant and ill informed. Americans are so loyal to our government that they can't see wrong. They can't see that they have been deceived and that our soldiers have died for no reason or that our soldiers have killed for no reason. We (Americans) don't want to see the images of the bodies, therefor we don't think that anyone is dying. At major universities, professors are discouraged from speaking about their opinion of the war. Going against the government is like admitting our defeat, admitting that we were wrong, and admitting that we killed for no reason. I think that we had reason to protect our country after 9/11, but I don't think that that is what Bush set out to do. It's even hard for me to admit that. I look forward to being in my 80's and reading what the high school history text books will say about the war in Iraq.