RC3 on Al Jazeera:
My problem with the common dismissal of Al Jazeera as a propaganda network is that it betrays a lack of perspective that offends me utterly. I can deal with conservatives and liberals equally well, what I can’t deal with is people who can’t get beyond their own biases. For example, I’m amazed by people who think it’s perfectly fine for us to detain people captured in Afghanistan as “unlawful combatants” rather than as prisoners of war, but who howl with outrage when Iraqis don’t treat our captured soldiers properly under the Geneva Convention. Our soldiers should be accorded the rights of prisoners of war but so too should we honor the convention even when it doesn’t suit us.
The inability to step outside one’s own political outlook, or nationality, or race, or gender and look at the big picture from other perspectives is an intellectual flaw that I find to be fatal. Everyone comes at every issue with biases, I’m a liberal white male who grew up in a small town in Texas, and that background certainly colors my thoughts on pretty much everything. However, I pride myself on my ability to compensate for those factors and look at a situation from the perspective of other people, although I’m obviously far from perfect.