Flipping the Hourglass
Of the more than 126 million, 144 thousand seconds of real time that mark the Iraq War, our impression of its nature and reality is formulated by exposure to media clips 5 to 60 seconds in duration. How much of those millions of real-time seconds that the average American citizen has digested is anybody's guess. Exposure depends on where one has turned to to view footage and how varied are its themes. For instance, how often in media are precious informative seconds devoted to 10 second flashes of fire or smoke? Of twisted metal? Of hooded Iraqis wired to electrodes? How often are those images looped? So that as the millions of real time seconds tick by, the average viewer is treated to reruns of prior years spectacular footage? How overweighted are those media 10 seconds - compared to the millions of seconds filled with trivialities and non-events; media unfriendly footage?

And how much of prescious informative real time seconds are not shown at all? Instead the American citizen gets treated to peripheral footage. 10 seconds here and 10 seconds there of Pelosi and Mutha? Of supplemental budget debates, non-binding resolutions, sense-of-the-senate stances, and other parliamentary kabuki - all while the real important stuff ticks by unnoticed in time's slipstream? How much of our impression is influenced by the 10 second media discussions of parliamentary kabuki when we could learn far more with 1000 or 10000 second revelations on Karbala?

Unless one is motivated enough to truly study War, one isn't going to understand in any meaningful sense what is meant by a tactic such as the Surge. No 10 second soundbite by Pelosi or Reid will educate. How meaningfully encompassing is our understanding of what is fully going on in Iraq? How much do we truly know what American soldiers do on a daily basis there? Indeed, the stories of history's warriors were written by such minds as Homer, Thucydides, Virgil, Shakespeare. Today's warriors will be mythologized by heavyweights Diane Sawyer, Michael Moore, and Jon Stewart. The Epic Poem or literary Tragedy as means will be sidestepped for the current en vogue methods of storytelling: the morning show, the "documentary", and the comedy sketch, or more devistatingly, the 10 second video clip.

We as a people are ready to lavish millions to watch 7200 seconds of a cinematic CGI abs-fest spectacular having to do with 300 Spartan warriors. Yet our own real life warriors get nary more than 10 seconds exposure here or 10 seconds exposure there on the airways of hostile networks more interested in treating them as children, or boys and girls, or victims - not as soldiers, not as warriors. Forget body armor or up-armored HUMVEES. The resource most important to give to our soliders in Iraq is ample media exposure for them to tell us back here in America what they are doing daily. Our soldiers deserve far more than brief 10 second narrative bursts.