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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEric Alterman: How Low Can They Go? The Media's Afghan Coverage
The American Prospect
Altercation: How Low Can They Go? The Medias Afghan Coverage
To assess the withdrawal, mainstream media go to the experts who were wrong or lied about the war for the past 20 years.
by Eric Alterman
August 20, 2021
snip//
One could write an entire doctoral dissertation on the multiple, overlapping failures that have characterized most of the mainstream media coverage of the collapse of the 20-year war in Afghanistan. So many of the pathologies that interfere with its ability to tell simple truths about our country and our world are being run through this wringer that it would take literally hundreds of pages to do justice to all of them; to explain how they operate across our media institutions and why they operate the way they do. Ironically, the splintering of these same institutions made possible by the internet has allowed some writers and analysts to capture a few of these, practically in real time.
The most obvious among the myriad failures of mainstream coverage of the crisis is its stubborn ahistoricism. The Biden administration may have screwed up the exit of U.S. troops and the friendly Afghans who helped them, but hey, this was a 20-year, nearly $2.4 trillion war effort that was built on lies and self-delusion and that we didnt really want to win in the first place. Prospect alumnus Matt Yglesias does a fine job of laying out some of the history that ought to be included in any story about who is to blame, but almost never is, in his Substack essay Biden (and Trump) Did the Right Thing on Afghanistan.
snip//
I find myself a little shocked to be recommending a piece by someone who is not only vice president for research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute but was also President Donald Trumps nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan. But this William Ruger fellow, writing in The National Interest, is also a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and most importantly, makes a great deal of sense. He praises Biden for displaying real courage by sticking with a decision that remains prudential given the realities about Afghanistan and the United States. Biden is showing the requisite realist spine that America needs at this moment. Ruger mocks his critics who claim the U.S. could have stayed longer at a low cost, all the while preserving an Afghan government that was already teetering when even more American boots were on the ground. They also place the blame for the collapse we are seeing on withdrawal rather than on the failed two decade-long Afghan nation-building project and its architects.
Getting down to proverbial brass tacks, he indicts most MSM coverage because the critics in question were those same [Afghan war] architects, along with their advisors and supporters outside government. Indeed, these were often the very people who the Washington Posts Craig Whitlock outed in his Afghanistan Papers series as having had little clue how to find success in Afghanistan and who consistently misled the American people about the state of the war. Moreover, these critics are committed to propping up another, much grander failed projectthe primacist approach to the Greater Middle East and the world more generally.
more...
https://prospect.org/world/altercation-how-low-can-they-go-medias-afghan-coverage/
Lovie777
(12,243 posts)spanone
(135,828 posts)CrispyQ
(36,460 posts)11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)Or perhaps slightly lower than that.
dalton99a
(81,455 posts)It was beyond idiocy to try to make Afghanistan into a mirror image of the U.S.
Lonestarblue
(9,979 posts)He is the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and has been conducting investigations for 20 years. He basically said last night the the failures to accomplish anything meaningful have been known by the military leaders for years, but they were determined to spread pixie dust to make it appear as if progress were being made. It wasnt. I havent had time to read the report he has just released yet, but heres a link for anyone who wants to read it and a short excerpt.
https://www.sigar.mil/interactive-reports/what-we-need-to-learn/
The U.S. government has now spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society. The Department of Defense (DOD) has also spent $837 billion on warfighting, during which 2,443 American troops and 1,144 allied troops have been killed and 20,666 U.S. troops injured. Afghans, meanwhile, have faced an even greater toll. At least 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed. More than 48,000 Afghan civilians have been killed, and at least 75,000 have been injured since 2001both likely significant underestimations.
After conducting more than 760 interviews and reviewing thousands of government documents, our lessons learned analysis has revealed a troubled reconstruction effort that has yielded some success but has also been marked by too many failures. Using this body of work, as well as the work of other oversight organizations, SIGAR has identified seven key lessons that span the entire 20-year campaign and can be used in other conflict zones around the globe.
The Roux Comes First
(1,299 posts)Can they track down to come on in prime time and tell us how just another surge would have done it, oh HOW could Biden have blown it just before our victory was complete!?!
Moebym
(989 posts)To benefit the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about roughly 70 years ago (?) and the news media that loves to cover bloody conflicts because they know viewers can't tear our eyeballs from the shocking images playing on an interminable loop on our TVs. That's all it is.
Response to babylonsister (Original post)
BannonsLiver This message was self-deleted by its author.
Moebym
(989 posts)It's quite another for the coverage to be overwhelmingly negative while largely shutting out one perspective.
This entire situation is much more complex, nuanced and thorny than it appears on the surface. The images coming from Afghanistan were and still are shocking and heart-rending, and most of us have been on an emotional rollercoaster these past few days, but there is plenty of blame to go around for it, and there is no easy solution no matter what anyone says.
What we need are responsible adults discussing the context and background of the conflict, not irresponsible rabble-rousers playing the most shocking clips on loop in their bid to keep our anger at a high level for views and clicks.
crickets
(25,963 posts)Martin68
(22,794 posts)mcar
(42,307 posts)Thank you.
Evolve Dammit
(16,725 posts)Magoo48
(4,707 posts)I listen to Democracy Now here in SoCal as well as KPFK, listener supported radio.