Think you have a good handle on world events? Got a good picture of what’s going on in Iraq or Afghanistan? If you said yes, guess again. The world, and the Middle East especially, is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. If you can see 5 or 10 pieces fitting together, you’re far ahead of most people. Yet you are still not seeing the whole picture.

I spent last weekend with my nephew, who returned from a tour in Iraq this past summer. He’s a higher ranking non-com who worked in a headquarters operations group. He’s a go-to guy who’s seen a lot. I’ve always felt we Americans have not been getting the whole story, either on the good side or the bad, but this past weekend’s discussions really drove home that point. The newsies filter everything to fit their needs. Doesn’t matter which side of the fence either. They all chop short sound bites out of long interviews with military leaders and paste them all together to shape the story to their liking. They find a talking head who will say what they want to hear and then present the head’s opinion as fact, even though most of the heads know diddly-squat. Everything that goes on in Iraq and Afghanistan is vetted before release to assess its political volitility. Much of it never gets released at all. There are so many variables to consider. How will this event affect the situation in Pakistan? If we release this news and it makes Russia look bad, will they tell the world about the dumb thing the US did? How will this event affect the upcoming elections?

Then there’s the fiasco surrounding military funding. Which branch gets the most? To what lengths will the other branches go in order to increase their piece of the pie? How many soldiers will die simply because their branch wanted more money? And most urgently, how long before we’ve exhausted the whole military? 

Maybe it’s good we don’t know everything. Maybe we really “can’t handle the truth,” as the saying goes. There’s a nagging fear in the back of my mind that things are not good and are going to get much worse. Maybe it’s time to make like an ostrich and just stick my head in the sand. Maybe I just don’t want to know.