A few thoughts after the video.

What strikes me most about this speech: the Taliban recruits see horrific displays of civilian casualties from US-led wars, and we—the beneficiaries of a free press—do not. The deaths of Neda Agha-Soltan and Saddam Hussein were probably viewed over a billion times by Americans and our allies, but no such viral network exists for video of Afghani wedding parties mistaken for insurgent convoys. Or, for that matter, the victims of the suicide bombings mentioned here.

Two reasons are generally given for this: 1) Western media has standards of good taste which prevents the broadcast of horrific violence. I’ve always thought this was a pretty weak argument, especially in the United States, where we consider grotesque violence to be excellent fodder for escapist movies. In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time before some network becomes the next phenomenon on the scale of Fox News by broadcasting such videos and garnering an audience—and not necessarily an anti-war audience, depending upon how they frame it.

2) Americans are more interested in the fate of a puppy in a well, or of a white girl stranded in the Indian Ocean, than they are about the fate of millions of people of different cultures and colors. I think this is true, but also circular: Americans aren’t interested in the world at large, or the atrocities in it, so their media don’t treat such events as newsworthy—despite having access to video which is profoundly sensationalistic—which then perpetuates the culture that Americans are more newsworthy than other people.

(Note: not an American phenomenon. This is arguably true of all cultures. But what makes America exceptional is the vast influence our government, media, and businesses have on the rest of the world.)

Which leads to the next thought: it’s only a matter of time before one of these videos goes viral. Picture the recent flap over the Apache helicopter killing of a dozen probably civilians in Iraq, including the wounding of two children, combined with video in color and high-def. What happens to the American taste for war when that becomes as widely viewed as a cute kitten YouTube video? What happens when this becomes a regular thing on the Internet and in our mass media?