First, there's the reality:
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann continued to stand by President Bush's military surge in Iraq, two days after returning from a congressional trip that put her in the line of fire while visiting Baghdad...
The delegation's visit was harrowing at times. While visiting with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker at the U.S. Embassy inside Baghdad's walled, high-security Green Zone on Friday, mortar blasts landed inside the American-controlled territory...
Security conditions in Iraq prevented Bachmann from meeting any Iraqis, leaving the Green Zone or staying in Iraq overnight. She and other congressional members were required to wear full body armor, including Kevlar helmets, during the entire trip, she said.
And when it comes to right-wing spin, well, it doesn't get any funnier than Kate McMillan linking to Hugh Hewitt interviewing Michael Yon:
HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?
MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well. Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong.
They just need another Friedman or two, right, Mike? 'Cuz, gosh darn it, they're so close.
I'd use the phrase "in their last throes" but that would be just cruel.
FREE AT NO EXTRA CHARGE: Great moments in neo-con optimism:
It's been over two years, but that joke never gets old, does it?
14 comments:
The amusing thing is that if you actually read Yon's work, instead of trying to impose the views of some of his readers on him for your own partisan reasons, you would find that he is probably the best person out there at describing the harrowing reality you quote and reference in the first part of this post.
One thing I think everyone can agree on: the more we all know about what is actually going on in Iraq, on the ground, the better we are at making informed decisions.
anonymous,
The amusing thing is that you're too dense to discern Yon's "worldview" from any of his reports.
The irritating thing is that you keep coming here and lecturing people when you can't tell your nostril from your asshole.
Yon is a pro-war blogger who mysteriously got himself embedded with a US military unit, and he puts out optimistic drivel that turns on the 101st keyboarders and nobody else.
Yon has to account for the fact that the representatives of the people of Iraq want the US out.
[You're quite free to say that they don't truly represent the people of Iraq, so long as you're then prepared to say that Iraqi democracy is a sham, as opposed to being yet another stellar triumph for bush II.]
You have yet to account for the 4 million refugees created by bush II's monstrous stupidity.
You have yet to account for the bloody sectarian and ethnic violence unleashed by bush II's destruction of Iraq's existing social fabric.
You have yet to account for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.
Look, I'm sure it's great for you to have found some boob willing to provide this deluded crap to gratify your prejudices, but the people of Iraq, and the reality-based community in general, simply don't have time for your nonsense and stupidity anymore.
Show me some support that Yon is "pro-war" in his writings, please. Please also show me examples of his "optimistic" reporting. You just made factual claims that it would be nice to see supported.
I am not claiming you are wrong, I just expect you to support your statements, Thwap.
okay slow-poke.
Go here: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/desires-of-the-human-heart-part-ii.htm
and tell me what you get from it.
Also, perhaps you could tell us what you take away from the burly US soldier with his arm around the Iraqi boy in the banner at the top of the page.
anonymous's wife: "Would you be a dear and run to the store and pick up some milk?"
anonymous: "You are saying I am some type of antelope and must gallop to the store and..."
a's w: "No, I said d-e-a-r, not d-e-e-r, silly!"
a: "Why would I run to the store, it is too far, don't you understand what cars are four?"
a's w: "Sigh, I was just using a figure of speech, hon"
a: "You meant something by using 'deer' and 'run' in the same sentence, and saying 'pick up milk' instead of 'buy some milk' is the same as ordering me to steal milk. I suppose in your simplistic world people are just supposed to know what you mean without evidence blah blah... "
a's w: "Fuck off! It was just a simple request. You stop taking your meds again? Yeesh"
Thwap, thank you for being serious. I mean it and I will try to answer you.
I read that when it came out and just re-read it. It still reads like a direct but subtle indictment of US strategy in Iraq to date. It is also a moving story of soldiers attempting traditional counterinsurgency tactics by engaging in the community. It also not so subtly says that if we are not there to do it right--proven successful counterinsurgency combined with diplomacy, infrastructure rebuilding and relationship building--we should just leave.
It also shows the real faces of the people most impacted by this war--Iraqis, including children. And that is what that photo you reference shows me. It shows me a dying girl in the arms of a US soldier who had been blown up by a suicide car bomber who attacked the children surrounding the US troops and not the troops themselves.
One thing I like about Yon is that he humanizes the Iraqi people themselves and shows that they are like humans everywhere, just in a horrible situation. It is too easy for politicians on both sides to grandstand and make bad decisions if they dehumanize the Iraqis or treat them as an afterthought.
One real problem with the Iraq War is that we cannot leave in less than a couple years no matter what politicians say or do in the US. It is a practical impossibility, which many people argue the neocons knew and planned on along.
But none of that piece is "right wing" or "pro-war". It is an attempt to accurately portray what is happening on the ground and give some insight into the efforts being made there. I dont see why that cannot be appreciated regardless of personal politics.
Mikmik, shoo.
Thwap, I may have gotten the photo you were referring to confused. I thought you meant the one he took of the injured little girl in the arms of the soldier.
No, anonymous,
It's quite clear what's being said there. There is no "subtle indictment" of US policy there, unless you count his telling comment that the Americans used to fix things up and then leave the people to their own devices. The implication being that they should stay. The surge must go on. The US should stay and finish the job.
All the US military personnel are described in glowing terms. They all love their families stateside, they all want what's best for the people of Iraq, they're all committed professionals.
This isn't that hard to figure out.
It's also quite ridiculous.
Yon's unit might doing good, just as individual Canadians are doing good. I've picked up a "Maclean's" in a doctor's office and read their war reporting.
But these feel-good stories are DISHONEST if they're not situated in the context of the dismal failure and the growing anger against the Canadians in Afghanistan and the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yon's work is pro-war, it is absent of context, all it really serves to do is to foster sentiment to prolong something that has become a hideous nightmare for millions of people.
Which makes his original reportage on the "baked boys" exactly the sort of "dumb-assitude" CC described it as.
There. Are we up to speed now???
That is silly. Unless someone tells you exactly what you think their accounting is dishonest?
You are as rigid and sadly pathetic as the "wingnuts" you rail against.
By the way, Yon went to Afghanistan in early 2006 and said the West had pretty much failed there. So he actually says things that feed your need for reassurance of your own beliefs, you just wouldnt know it because you prefer arguing from a vacuum.
You should be proud, you are one side of a coin you claim to hate.
anonymous,
I'm going to assume that you're being honest and that you're as stupid and clueless as your words make you appear to be.
I fail to see how you could construe from my words that I want Yon, or any other reporter to tell me what to think.
Quit pulling shitty arguments out of your ass and work for a change.
Yon's reportage very much supports the US mission in Iraq. From the heroic images of US soldiers helping Iraqi children [I suppose some of them aren't raping them and then setting them on fire], to the boosterist story-telling, it is all about how these soldiers are doing good work and we need to support them and allow them to finish the job.
As I have said, Yon might very well be reporting honestly (except when he lets enemy atrocity claims stand without need of further verification), but without context, his work is less than useless.
I could type a mighty screed now about how Iraq is actually a disaster of incompetence, cruelty, and corruption, but at this late stage, it's pointless. You are apparently oblivious to anything that discomfits your own smug self-satisfaction.
Take it from me and most everyone else, from the Iraq Study Group, to Baghdad Burning, to Reuters, to the unwittingly revealing trysts of Repugnican politicians hiding out in Kevlar vests in the Green Zone, Iraq is a mess.
Yon's little world of heroic US soldiers and their good deeds is an irrelevant droplet of delusion in an ocean of misery.
By this point, I am completely uninterested in investigating your claims about Yon's writings on Afghanistan.
It's simply not worth my time.
You could argue that I'm revealing my refusal to see all sides, my tendency to make judgments based only on my approved sources, blah, blah, blah, Frankly I honestly don't give a shit what you think.
You're a sad dolt, and you can go on reading Yon's nonsense, and the world will progress as we on the Left, we in the reality-based community call it, while you and all of your ilk will rail futilely in your incomprehension.
Sadly though, you and your witless ilk remain in the drivers seat, and millions more will continue to suffer and die as your idiotic schemes and hollow ideals crash against the rocks.
Thwap, you sad little trifling twit, you said the following:
"But these feel-good stories are DISHONEST if they're not situated in the context of the dismal failure and the growing anger against the Canadians in Afghanistan and the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq."
That means you are admitting you need to have your information spoon fed to you in a manner predisposed to your thinking. And you wrote it, not me.
The greatest part of this whole argument is you have no idea what context Yon provides because not only are you unfamiliar with his work and yet arguing about it--and you admit you wont try to find out--but he gives exactly the context you claim to need. But you refuse to actually know what you are talking about because it is easier for insignificant dummies like you to jump to unsupported conclusions and then hang yourself from them.
You didnt even understand the work you cited to me. I explained what it meant and you saw it as a "pro-war" cheerleading piece. My god, man, you are as dense as Bush. Yon was quoting from an anti-war book about Desert Storm, for God's sakes. It seems to get through to an idiot like you he needs to spoonfeed you little dribblets of anti-Bushisms. No subtlety ever gets through to good old Thwap: he's too dumb to know, too lazy to learn, and too stupid to realize it.
Thwap, you are as shallow, wretched and stinking as a dirty puddle leaking from Ted Haggard. You have no idea what my political beliefs may be and yet you claim to and then lump me in the same boat you throw Yon into.
Why dont you explain what my ilk is now, Thwap? Hint: you will be wrong.
I was merely curious why a mildly amusing little Canadian blog was trying to be a mini-Tbogg and regurgitate his posts about Michael Yon, but it seems I have found an internet idiot to play with, instead.
Oh-ho-ho! So the veneer of civility comes off, 'eh?
No, you lazy, pompous oaf, I've read enough of Yon to understand where he's coming from. (Your sputtering incoherent protests notwithstanding.)
You, apparently are thick as a brick, and need Yon to type: "UNNH!!! DAHHH!!! I'M PRO-WAR, UNNH!! DAHH!!!" before you'll admit that he supports the war.
That page that I linked to is entirely about the good work that Americans are doing and about how they must be allowed to stay and finish the job. If you're too slow to get it, that's you problem, and you might as well give up on reading anything else for the rest of your life, 'cause it'll be useless.
Oh yeah,
P.S. - You say that I don't know what your political persuasion really is.
Fine. I'll be willing to concede that it's incoherent and pointless.
Who cares? As for anything else you have to say or ask; I honestly don't give a shit what you think. [repeat as necessary.]
"it seems I have found an internet idiot to play with, instead."
Afraid to disappoint you my friend, but except for a summary of this little exchange that I've already started for my own blog, I'm done with you. (I'll recognize your clueless, passive-aggressive tone if you continue to haunt this comments section, I'm sure.)
"and the growing anger against the Canadians in Afghanistan"
Which stats or poll are you using to make this statement? Before thwap wigs out again, I'm not the same anon as you've been insulting all along.
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