2005's most underreported story?

2005's most underreported story?


Besides progress in Iraq, it may have been the Egyptian massacre of Sudanese that occurred on December 30, says National Review’s Jay Nordlinger:

Egyptian police assaulted a crowd of Sudanese refugees, people who had already fled mass murder in their home country. Estimates vary on how many were killed, but it was a lot. For more information, you may wish to see the website of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, in Washington, D.C. They do a world of good work.

Reading about these events, I couldn't help thinking of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, in which "Christian" militias butchered Palestinian refugees. Israel was duly blamed. (As Prime Minister Begin remarked, "Goyim kill goyim, and they come to hang the Jews.") That story dominated the front pages for — what? Two years? It seems to me the wallpaper of my youth.

Of course, many more Palestinians were killed by their Lebanese foes than Sudanese were killed by the Egyptians, apparently. But you better believe that if any Israelis had been anywhere near the Sudanese bloodbath, this would not be an underreported story. This would be an over reported — and almost certainly wrongly reported! — story.

The story certainly deserved more attention then it received. And I agree with Nordlinger as far as how the media would have treated the story if Israelis had been involved. But I don’t think the story is the most underreported by a long shot.

My candidate for “most underreported story?”

The extraordinary skill and bravery of the world’s largest and best human rights and relief organization: America’s military.

How much did you hear about its work shielding billions of people from attack and death or enslavement? What would happen to all those Europeans who bash America if Muslim fundementalists knew America's military wasn't around? And what would happen to us?

How many of the year-end news reviews even bothered to mention the American military’s Tsunami relief work? Yet of all the world’s major relief agencies, our military was there first, delivering the most aid and taking on the toughest work.

We can never say thanks enough to our military and their families.