I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/122137/83512
This appeared on a thread at Pen-L. And the essay is a good rant. However, the story isn't whether journalists should or should give their subjects a pass, or whether McChrystal used bad judgement. I think the story is that McChrystal was expressing the truth as he saw it. The civilian leadership is uninformed, makes stupid judgements, and has no clue what to do. It seems clear to me, that is pretty much what McChrystal said, isn't it? I think McC is probably the worst enemy imaginable, but now it turns out, he has one virtue. He is honest.
McC's crime was to break propaganda protocols and give an honest appraisal of his civilian leadership. I have little doubt that Obama was nervous and informed around military brass. He is nervous because he his afraid he is going to `lose' no matter what. He is definitely uniformed since he carried on Bush's failed war and had no concrete reason to try to sustain it. It was a stupid decision. Obama obviously never followed the history of Vietnam, were counter-insurgency was developed. It doesn't work. Evidently, the military's version of history is still in denial. We lost.
CG