historiblogography

cri de fucking coeur

Professor Hanson,

I just read the transcript of your attack, during Hugh Hewitt's radio show, on Michael Ware [who is the Baghdad bureau chief for Time magazine]. To recap: Ware said that al-Qaeda and Iran have benefitted from the American war in Iraq; you responded by asking, "Is that man a journalist?" And then you said that Ware's statement was
"just a mockery of what we would call sober and judicious reporting. And everything he said was factually incorrect." You managed to avoid speaking to Ware's (entirely correct) claim that he was merely repeating what leaders in the American military and intelligence communities in Iraq were telling him, and you instead described him as a product of "this affluent, elite culture, to be frank, that comes out of the universities on the left and right coasts, that's divorced from the tragic view, because these people are not...they don't open hardware stores. They don't service cars. They've never worked physically with their hands. They have an idea in this international culture of the West that somehow, all of their affluence, all of their travel, all of their freedom came out of a head of Zeus, and it's not dependent on the U.S. military, the United States role in the world. They have no appreciation for the very system that birthed and maintained them. And they've had this sort of sick cynicism, nihilism, skepticism, and the height of their affluence and leisure, that they don't have any gratitude at all, which is really one of the most important human attributes."

All agreed, so far? Reporters who repeat what military leaders tell them are proving that they are sick nihilists who hate the West. (Because they've never opened any hardware stores, apparently.) Good one.

What I love is that, as Gen. Anthony Zinni, Lt. Gen. William Odom, Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, Col. Pat Lang, Col. John Murtha -- 37 years in the Marine Corps, he must really hate America -- and others who have spent decades in the uniform of their country all criticize the conduct of the war, and in some cases criticize the decision to go to war with Iraq in the first place, you nevertheless manage, over and over again, to publicly paint those views as anti-military and elitist, while declining to acknowledge that those views are shared by military professionals. A significant number of military professionals disagree with your view of the war in Iraq, but you persistently misrepresent the nature of that disagreement and continue to sell it in public as being radical, unbalanced, and wholly invented by people who despise the American military. Are a conscious liar, or are you merely ignorant? When will you closely and honestly engage, say, William Lind's exceptionally sharp criticisms of the conduct of the war, and acknowledge that he is a respected conservative and a highly regarded military analyst?

I'm not holding my breath.

Sgt. Chris Bray
HHC, 2-128 Infantry
Camp Buehring, Kuwait

posted by Chris Bray @ 8:37 AM