Okay, here's my rant.

Last night, while doing my regular scanning of the news networks for info on the latest in Iraq, I tuned in to Fox News for awhile, and then found myself getting steadily more and more angry at their flippant attitude.

They were bouncing in and out of different stories, one of which was from one of their embedded reporters, a guy named Kelly, who was reporting from one of Saddam's Palaces in Baghdad. They were laughing and calling it "Kelly's Palace," making fun of the tennis courts, and one of the anchors even said something to the effect of, "I bet Saddam is watching this right now. Hey Saddam, we've got a tank on your front lawn!"

They were treating their news coverage like some kind of "morning drive-time" chatter, and it was *so* belittling of other nationalities' viewpoints, I was appalled.

I've been steaming ever since last night, trying to figure out how to communicate to those nitwits just how damaging their attitudes and comments could be, and this is what I came up with.

Try, just for the mental exercise of it, to turn things around and look at it from a different perspective. A lot of people, I think, are bewildered at the anger that the Arab people have for the American invasion of Iraq, so here's a different way of looking at it:

Imagine, in some sort of alternate twist of fate, that Al Qaeda or the Taliban had managed to take over some territory on our own shores. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that they had infiltrated and taken over Texas (yeah yeah I know, some people wouldn't mind losing Texas). But, let’s say that for some reason our own military had not been effective in removing them, and that we in the rest of the country had watched with rage as all kinds of atrocities were committed in territory that we regarded as our own. Atrocities that were being committed against Americans -- people that we might not necessarily agree with all the time, but who we strongly identified with.

Further, imagine that other countries (say, France and Mexico), who for some reason had a better military might and the willpower to deal with the problem, decided that they were going to come in and fix things for us. To "liberate Texas" for us. So they massed French and Mexican troops around Texas, and moved in. The fighting was intense, many Taliban died, and many Americans died in the crossfire. Some Americans who liked it better under the Taliban fought bitterly against the French & Mexican "invaders," and those were the ones that really tore our hearts up -- on the one hand, we wanted to see the land liberated. On the other, we hated the thought of fellow Americans being killed by foreigners. Plus there was also a sense of, "As Americans, we're good fighters. Surely we can fight off somebody like the French!" Many of the Americans in Texas though chose not to fight, and would hide in their homes, hoping that the fighting would pass through their neighborhoods quickly.

Bit by bit, the French and Mexican forces made their way through, capturing city after city. Amarillo, Houston, Austin, bit by bit "liberated," though many parts of each city were laid waste by gunfire and street after street was nothing but a smoking ruin, reminiscent of September 11th.

In some cities, the French and Mexican soldiers would "liberate" the areas as though they had conquered them. French flags were raised in downtown Austin. A Mexican flag went up in San Antonio. And international press coverage would show the invading soldiers, lounging around after a battle. We'd probably find it particularly galling to see Mexican soldiers sitting around in the Alamo, smoking cigarettes beneath a fluttering Mexican flag. Though we might be grateful for their assistance in getting Texas back for us, I think our overwhelming sense would be, "Thanks very much, now get the hell out again." The last thing we'd want would be to watch the news and see foreign soldiers on our soil, laughing and joking about how they "0wned" the place, calling our buildings "Chirac's Palace" or being irreverent in other ways. I can imagine the indigant rage that I'd feel to see or hear something like that, plus all kinds of fears would come up about just who's in control of historically contested areas (such as the Alamo). Worries would be there that old wounds were going to be reopened. We wouldn't need some French reporter smirking and saying, "Hey Bush, we have a tank on your front lawn!"

So please, I ask the news media, show some more sensitivity, will you? The Iraqi people, and the Arab people, are still human beings. They have a lot of pride, and they've got enormously mixed feelings on accepting any kind of U.S. help, not to mention a *lot* of mistrust from the past. If this is done correctly, we can start mending some fences to bring about a more peaceful world. But we also have the potential here to cause even more injuries to Arab pride. So, show some class and professionalism in the reporting, please. There are a lot more people watching than you might think.