Another Book I Won’t Read
Hollywood seems to lack for new ideas; how many movies are re-makes, sequels, or prequels? Our news media (as Jonn notes) certainly lacks perspective and originality as well.
Us geezer types are often accused of lusting after “The Good Old Days” while the REAL hypocrites like the antiwar crowd, and OWS, are trying to recapture their own imagined “Good Old Days”.
Rarely is this hypocrisy quite so blatant as in this book (no direct link from me!)
During the Vietnam War, the generation of David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan transformed America’s mainstream media into a hotbed of antiwar and antimilitary muckraking. By the time a major war effort returned, in 2003, that generation had grown too old to visit the trenches, allowing the emergence of Generation X reporters like Dexter Filkins and George Packer, who did not share their predecessors’ contempt for the military. Most Americans welcomed the change.
Not so Michael Hastings, as we learn in “The Operators,” his account of events in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2011. Mr. Hastings asserts that this generational change drove him to write “The Runaway General,” the Rolling Stone article of June 2010 that doomed the career of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. With characteristic acerbity, Mr. Hastings laments that his press colleagues have abandoned the spirit of Vietnam, when “war had been exposed as the Giant Lying Machine, in Halberstam’s words.” Instead, he says, they write glowing profiles of generals and other officials in the hope of gaining greater access to sources.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Dumbass Bullshit, Geezer Alert!
You know you haven’t succeed as a journalist unless you’ve destroyed at least one high profile career. And you wonder why we don’t trust them anymore.
Hastings is no Evan Wright, that’s for sure.
“Mr. Hastings laments that his press colleagues have abandoned the spirit of Vietnam, when “war had been exposed as the Giant Lying Machine, in Halberstam’s words.” Instead, he says, they write glowing profiles of generals and other officials in the hope of gaining greater access to sources.” There’s the money shot. Flag officers and the military are not beyond reproach and individuals on occasion do deserve to be exposed and taken down. The problem here is McCrystal resigned over something he didn’t say. Hastings pushs an agenda by using a few pillars of facts(I think he did the same with the Stryker death squad incident later as well) to cast whatever aspersions he wishes, since can’t run down evidence for what he usually accuses.
Hastings is a direct descendant of Seymoure Hersh in that sense.
Here Zero this says it all “According to members of Gen. McChrystal’s team, Mr. Hastings represented himself as a supporter of the Afghan war and the U.S. military upon meeting the team in Paris. When “The Runaway General” was published, he dismissed accusations that he was antiwar, explaining that his views of the war “are critical but that shouldn’t be mistaken for hostile.” In “The Operators,” he states unabashedly: “I hated the war.”” he couldn’t even be truthful about his agenda. Then again what can you expect from a Rolling Stone writer.
Or this-“Although the events leading to Gen. McChrystal’s removal are the book’s main feature, many chapters analyze the war itself. They are noteworthy less for their content than for their snide tone. Mr. Hastings asserts, for instance, that “the simple and terrifying reality” for U.S. military officers in Afghanistan was that “they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.”
In contrast to many of the other correspondents covering Afghanistan, Mr. Hastings has not invested the effort required to comprehend the war’s complexities. He echoes superficial criticisms of the U.S. military, such as the one claiming that counterinsurgency invariably fails. Success in counterinsurgency depends heavily on local indigenous leaders, a group almost entirely absent from “The Operators.”.
-“Hastings is a direct descendant of Seymoure Hersh in that sense.”
An astute comparison. Both are political activists using journalistic mediums and media tactics to advance a personal and political agenda. They both rely on anonymous sources deliberately contextualized in a way so as to create the impression on the reader of something the author doesn’t have any actual solid evidence of. Hersh is a flat out liar though, inventing things on the speaking circuit he knows he can’t actually back up to create buzz and encourage more paid speaking gigs. We’ll see where the rest of Hastings career takes him.
I guess getting a book deal is more important to him than journalistic integrity…
The saddest part of this whole abortion is the lemmings that will accept any and everything Hastings and Hersh write as gospel. It reminds of the book “1984” where one yesterday ‘X’ was the truth and today ‘Y’ is the truth and the lemmings accept it, no question asked.