As it turns out, John Barnes had some of it right – he applied the ethos and culture of MFA schools to the Scott Thomas columns. We can find on military blogs (and here) more substantive critiques of the specifics, while keeping in mind that soldiers, being human, can be assholes and that war is not the most positive experience. Still and all, the truth is important and much looks like these were, at best, tales embellished beyond recognition. The narrator seems quite confused about guns, Bradleys and life. TNR’s firing of the “whistleblower” is also not particularly attractive. It’s hard to take the youthful editor seriously.
Media
Tales That Should Not Be Told
In one of the comments to my post Telling Stories, Veryretired said something very wise:
There are myths so entrenched in our national psyche that facts are simply insufficient to change the story that “everyone knows”.
As H. Beam Piper said in “Cosmic Computer“: “Well, always take a second look at these
things everybody knows. Ten to one they’re not so. ”
Over time that damage to the collective mental model of how the world works can be repaired, but in the short and intermediate timeframes, myths are dangerous. One of the great boons bequeathed to mankind by the scientific method is the creation of a class of people who question received wisdom all the time. One of the recurrent complaints on my blog is that many scientists don’t lead the way in this regard. Oh, sure, we question each other deeply about matters in our own fields, but we don’t carry this over to other areas in our own lives, to say nothing of trying to spread the method to laymen.
Thanks to Gateway Pundit
- Update: Today, Gateway Pundit‘s concludes descriptions of various participants, heroics of Iraq’s Mithul al-Alusi and Garri Kasparov with the understated: “Certainly, Prague is not short on heroes this week.”
Countering the posts we’ve been doing on Cuba and Venezuela, across the ocean Sharansky, Havel & Aznar organized “Democracy and Security: Core Values and Sound Policies.” (In Prague, June 5-6, hosted by Prague Security Studies Institute, Jerusalem-Based Shalem Center’s Adelson Institute For Strategic Studies and Madrid’s Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies.) Gateway Pundit is covering it and includes a moving speech by Lieberman and a rather rousing one by Bush – described by Gateway Pundit as “Bush Rocks the Czernin Palace”. The conference is full of people who have taken great risks and lost much for the cause of democracy and liberty.
This doesn’t seem to be getting the coverage one would think it should. For instance, dissidents from seventeen countries sat in the front rows for Bush’s speech – these people are, by their presence, interesting. The stories need not really say that Bush met with them privately or that he got a standing ovation – we understand why that is not news.
Gossip as Gospel
This should probably be filed under new examples of age-old conflicts – a discussion which gets us nowhere:
The lack of response to the “torture manual” by so many who decry the very existence of Guantanamo is discouraging, but the comment string on Surber’s post raises a different (more theoretical if perhaps no larger) question. An early comment by Talboito argues:
Yes, the United States must be above even “false stories” of torture.
We are the United States.
Most of us (probably all) would agree that the United States needs to hold itself to a higher standard than such barbarism. A telling if minor reason is that while beheadings may be seen as a recruiting tool in some cultures, they are not likely to be in ours. Recruiting people drawn to swear allegiance to the party of the torture manuals is not likely to lead to a very disciplined or very intelligent army. Then of course, as my student said of Hester’s “adultery thing”, there’s always that “moral thing.” And, of course, we become what we do. A country that values both self-consciousness and action needs to intertwine the two.
Cheap Cynicism
Kerrey’s editorial made me wonder how often he is asked for an opinion, how often his point of view is solicited in the constant attempt by the mainstream media to balance out panels, to seek other views. Here is a Democrat – not one running for President, but then neither is Hagel. Perhaps he is asked but my sense is that a certain framing of debate, by both right and left, is less likely to seek out his voice than that of, say, Kos or Ann Coulter, those who repeat the Democrats’ talking points and those who repeat the Republicans’. Nuance isn’t entertaining. This partially explains the complaint of Steven Schwartz in his “The Myth of Muslim Silence” at TCS. And the absence (or twentieth paragraphing) of the turnover of Maysan Province to the Iraqis in Michael Yon’s “A Small Battle in the Media War.”