Column Intro of the Day: Robert Kagan in the Washington Post
Great question (HT Hugh Hewitt):
A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn’t work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy.
It’s really a business question too, and it applies a bit more to papers and media outlets other than the Post, which has shown occasional sanity (starting at the link’s third paragraph) while others have totally lost their bearings. If the Surge succeeds (and it’s barely started, so who knows?), aren’t readers, listeners, and viewers going to wonder who’s been feeding them a load of rubbish about “the hopeless situation” for 3-plus years?
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
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UPDATE, Mar. 12: Michael Fumento criticizes Kagan for “boosterism” (HT Captain’s Journal) and at least one factual error. Fair enough; yours truly certainly isn’t counting any chickens before they’re hatched, so to speak. That doesn’t change the fact that the Formerly Mainstream Media has put itself on a limb, and it will be a very painful fall if it is sawed off. It should never have gotten to this point, and never would have, if they had stuck to doing their real job.
[…] I wonder if it will make any difference. The only way it could is if the White House or the GOP were up to pushing the positive story. Evidently they aren’t, and never have been, which is an utter mystery to me. And we might well say that if you don’t have the ability not only to sell a war before it begins, but also during its course — you are not prepared to wage it, or to win it. Hat tip to Bizzy Blog. […]
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