If you haven’t read Frank Rich’s column for 10/11, get yourself over to the Times website and please do so. Rich asks the simple question, why are we seeking advice from people who were so wrong about the Iraq war? His example is McCain, but there are many, many others who get endless media exposure-these days on Afghanistan.
Planting stories in the media is one of the time-tested ways that policy elites try to get their views across-and yes, this is common on both the left and the right. Presumably, it is the job of responsible journalists to help is sort this out, and not to act as passive stenographers. Enter Globe Washington bureau writer Bryan Bender. In a piece in Sunday’s Globe Bender extols (no other word for it) the husband/wife team of Frederick and Kimberly Kagan who are pushing hard for 40-45,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Kimberly is at Harvard, Fred at the American Enterprise Institute. We learn that Fred “helped develop the strategy credited with stabilizing Iraq” Iraq has been “stabilized?” Who knew? Iraq is mentioned four times in the piece. What is never said is that Fred Kagan pumped for war with Iraq even before 9/11. After that he was a signatory to a September 20, 2001, “open letter” which urged President Bush “that the war on terrorism include the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ‘even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the (9/11) attack.'” His profile at History Commons amply confirms his unbending hawkishness. As Matthew Yglesias once wrote, Fred Kagan’s policy recommendations on Iraq amount to “We’ve screwed up so much, so badly in Iraq that we can ill-afford to stop screwing up.”
Now how does such a story come to be written? Perhaps Bryan Bender was lolling at the water cooler one afternoon and thought, “Wouldn’t it be spiffy to do a piece on that cool husband-and-wife foreign policy team Fred and Kim Kagan?” Highly unlikely. Much more likely is that Bender gets a call from one of the communications folks at the American Enterprise Institute. Hey, Brian, I’ve got a nice angle on Fred and Kim Kagan for you. And, of course, General Petraeus will be available for a brief interview, and Fred’s dad, Donald. Dad Kagan goes for the love angle. While at Yale, he tells us, Fred and Kim “fell for each other very early.” So important to know.
Bender concludes “Many scholars and military officers interviewed by the Globe-including liberal experts such as Lawrence Korb … describe the Kagans as “intellecutally honest.”…. No specific person—much less Korb or another “liberal”— is credited with using the term “intellectually honest,” which is interesting. But more interesting is the question that, if the Kagans are such “clear-eyed analysts” (Bender’s words) why do they invariably come up with the same policy prescription: more troops, more bombs, more war?
An answer is provided by Andrew Bacevich on the Globe’s op-ed page the same day, who writes:
If the president assents to McChrystal’s request [for 45,000 more troops], he will void his promise of change at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths – costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.
And that is really the agenda of Frederick and Kimberly Kagan.
But Bacevich is writing on the Globe’s opinion page. Bender is writing a news piece. And that’s why Bryan Bender’s piece on the Kagans is a travesty of journalism. It’s a propaganda piece masquerading as news. But the Globies are too worried that anonymous bloggers might say nasty things about them. So they can’t be concerned about being enablers to warmongers.
I’m sitting here looking at my son’s draft card and thinking about how best to torch it!
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p>Also the name Kagan for some reason presses all my paranormal buttons, directing my thinking towards generationally evil entities.
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p>Regular lamestream TV was trying to sell Afghanistan last night, “winning hearts and minds” or some other such drivel. The Marines were there retaking an area called Little America. Why little America? Well it is an area in which the US through “charitable organizations” built a series of irrigation canals that now feed the poppy and pot fields. Just the think for black ops money.
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p>So, like 911 Peace was an inside job.
Two chickenhawks that were wrong time and time again over Iraq and are historians with little experience dealing with international relations, military strategy, or the consequences of war. On the other side is decorated war hero Andrew Bacevich who sacrified a son in Iraq. You tell me whose right?
The same article you lambast calls them “warmongers” in the opening paragraph – well before it calls the “intellectually honest”. And about that line, here’s some context.
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p>You put the ‘clear-eyed’ as being Bender’s word, but its clear that someone he interviewed described them as that, if you’re saying Bender lied about interviewing many scholars and military officers – which you’d have to for your statement to be accurate – then come out and say that.
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p>It’s possible to be intellectually honest and clear eyed and still be a fascist. Nothing in the article indicates that more troops won’t die because of their recommendations, nothing indicates that the short term consequences aren’t going to be bombs and more bombs – they’re the architects of the surge! You ask the question:
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p>Well, from the article itself, it’s clear that it wasn’t some conspiracy to raise their profile or some “spiffy” idea of the reporter, it’s because they’re officially part of the debate around Afghanistan:
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p>This is an important subject, this article was fine and did not carry the bias you’re asserting. Thankfully, you’ve made the story about the Globe and the evils of the “MSM” and not the war in Afghanistan. You’re clearly on the right side of this issue and well informed. A diary with additional background would have been informative and far more constructive. Personally, I think this kind of analysis, along with the obsession with Glen Beck just distracts us from our real enemies, who are on advisory panels that talk to the President.
Criticism from Boston Globe readers is crucial to understanding our community and their concerns. Sounds like a platitude, I know, but it is the truth. This screed, however, is not simply misinformed, but utterly uninformed. I feel the need to set the record straight.
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p>”Smalltownguy”‘s unsubstantiated attack on my recent profile of Fred and Kim Kagan and their influential role in American war planning is baseless — and, I might add, unnecessarily personal. Moreover, it clearly sought to malign the paper’s entire editorial process as an end it itself.
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p>The conspiracy theories he weaves on why I wrote the piece and who put me up to it are laughable. The simple facts are that the Kagans play a considerable role in crafting Iraq and Afghanistan strategy, largely behind the scenes and out of the public view. I thought it was newsworthy to tell readers who they are, where they are coming from, and how they are perceived by a variety of other players. That was the genesis of the article. And everyone cited in it –as well as others I spoke to about them in the course of my reporting — were contacted by me. They were suggested by no one.
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p>Moreover, to say the article extols the Kagans and their views makes me wonder whether Smalltownguy (as far as I can tell a totally anonymous blogger) ever actually read the piece in its entirety. The clear concerns some have with their role and their analysis, I think, was clearly laid out.
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p>In the end, Smalltownguy is entitled to his opinion. But I would expect that before making such unsubstantiated — and highly personal — charges in a public forum, he would have the basic itegrity to contact me and ask me about the article. My email address appears at the bottom of every one of my articles for that very purpose. High school students who use my articles in their coursework do it all the time. And I am happy to aswer their questions if at all feasible.
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p>This is a serious forum on issues that matter to people in Massachusetts and beyond. This post does it a disservice.
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p>Bryan Bender
Boston Globe Washington Bureau
bender@globe.com