Having never pulled any punches

when it comes to criticizing the mostly liberal national press and the

bias in much of its reporting, I now find myself feeling the need to defend

many of those in the hydra known as "the media."

I know it makes us uncomfortable

when a newspaper or a TV station shows us pictures of dead children in

Afghanistan, but making us comfortable is not the job of the news media.

Telling us the facts is the

job of the media, and I think they've been doing it fairly well since

9/11.

Not perfectly, to be sure.

That really would be a shocker.

But by and large the reporters

trying so hard to make names for themselves are bringing us a huge amount

of information without regard to whether we will like it or not. Some

stories are encouraging and upbeat, and others are discouraging and downbeat.

We shouldn't be afraid of the

truth.

Knowing that our bombs and

bullets are killing hundreds or thousands of innocent Afghan men, women

and children is not something we like, is it?

What do you do with that sort

of information?

It's not as easy as it was

when we rained death and destruction on the likes of Nazi Germany and

used our new-found nuclear power on Japan. Then, it was all-out war in

which failure meant enslavement or worse. Then, the Nazi regime was killing

millions of innocents, and stubborn Japan probably would have held out

for years, bringing about many more deaths than those two bombs caused.

Thousands versus millions.

The equation adds up.

In Afghanistan, some reports

suggest, we've killed far more innocents than died here, in addition to

the not-so-innocents.

We've attacked and destroyed

a government that has not attacked us. Looks like Afghanistan will be

better off without it, true enough, but we don't go around attacking nations

and replacing their governments just because those governments are sorry,

worthless sacks of fertilizer. That would be a pretty messy can of worms

to open up, wouldn't it?

For instance, China would have

to be high on the list. Are you ready for that?

I didn't think so.

If the thought process I'm

going through in this column makes you squeamish, it should. Me too.

But this is, after all, the

United States of America, a place where we claim to be well-educated and

sophisticated enough to govern ourselves by electing our leaders and then

keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't go off and do things in

our name that we don't want done.

So we have to look squarely

at the consequences of our government's actions and decide whether we

support or oppose them, decide whether we, the people, believe we are

justified in going across an ocean and killing other people's children.

If we prevent future terrorist

attacks in the U.S., will it have been worth it?

Are our lives worth more than

theirs?

If not, why didn't we declare

war on terrorism when it was people in Israel, the Phillipines or Sudan

who were being targeted?

I'm raising questions here

without giving answers. I'd be interested in yours.

And while you're thinking about

those answers, think a little further into the future.

We've started something with

this war that won't stop anytime soon not if we want to be successful.

All we've done so far is kill a few terrorists and stir up a hornet's

nest of hatred and resolve among thousands more.

Will we be able to stay the

course to the end? Will we be willing the pay the costs? Can we do it

without becoming basically an imperial power, forcing the world into a

mold of our creation?

What, in the final analysis,

will victory look like?