Transcript from Nightly Business Report
Dan Henninger:
I wrote a column recently for the Wall Street Journal about the war in Iraq. This is the war we see on television every night. The war that people on television argue about every night. By now everyone is either for this war or hate and oppose it.
But maybe a middle ground IS possible.
My column wasn't about the right or wrong. It was about a remarkable group called Spirit of America started by a businessman in California named Jim Hake. Jim found out the American GIs in Iraq had rebuilding projects for which the U.S. bureaucracy is ill-equipped to help them. Small stuff. Like supplies for schools and medical clinics.
The Spirit of America project I wrote about was an effort to raise money here to equip 7 small TV stations over there. Marines would rebuild the stations and turn them over to Iraqi cooperatives.
Now, I'm not here to ask for money but to try to make sense of what happened after the column. The response was huge. Given a chance to help the Marines in a nonmilitary way, thousands gave money. Why?
Partly I think its the weird media age we live in. The closer events like this war are brought to us every night, the more disconnected they seem from our daily lives. In World War Two we had a homefront. People helped in small ways. Today, we just sit home, staring helplessly at the soldiers on TV.
This little project to build Iraqi TV stations didn't just open American wallets. It opened American hearts. It gave folks a chance to get off their hands and touch those American GIs.
Support the war or oppose it. We'd be a better people if we had more chances like this to extend a helping hand to our men and women in Iraq.
I'm Dan Henninger.
