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Stay classy, Michael Hastings! Part II
Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone had a bad weekend. First, Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post (who is obviously a shill who would never under any circumstances criticize the military when it deserves it), did a little actual reporting on what happened in Afghanistan:
The problems began on March 22, 2010, when Maj. Vanessa Hillman, a public-affairs officer in the training command sent an e-mail to Holmes asking his team to help provide weekly assessments of the prior week's meetings with visitors. "How did we do with our communication efforts and messaging," she wrote in the e-mail, obtained by The Post. "What results did we get."
Holmes fired back an hour later. "No - we cannot. We are not set up (at all!) to do assessments - nor should we assess the effects of information engagements on US or Coalition allies. We are focused on the adversary, and on the Afghan population - by both joint doctrine and US Law."
That prompted Hillman's boss, Col. Gregory T. Breazile, to respond with what Holmes calls an illegal order: "Mike, You will do the assessment piece for the IEWG [Information Effects Working Group]. You are are directly tasked to support the IEWG and all of the DV [distinguished visitor] visits."
The following day, Holmes wrote to a military lawyer, who called the order "a bad idea and contrary to IO policy."
But independent specialists in military law said Holmes's position as an information operations officer, regardless of whether he was formally reassigned, does not mean he cannot be asked to perform other legal tasks. "If you're being asked to chip in and help someone else, that's a lawful order," said Jeffrey Addicott, who was as an Army lawyer for 20 years and now is a law professor at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.
That is the same conclusion the top lawyer for Caldwell's command reached.
Read the entire article. What you have here is one disgruntled staff officer who didn't like the way he had been re-tasked by his commanding officer. Chandrasekaran also revealed that Holmes had no psychological operations training whatsoever and that the St. Petersburg Times in Florida had this information a month ago (again, leaked from the same disgruntled staff officer) and decided not to report it. (Probably because the St. Petersburg Times famously shies away from controversial reporting.) Holmes griped to Hastings, who deeply reported and wrote this article in, uh, well, actually less than a week.
‘Illegal Psyop’ Neither Illegal Nor Psyop, General’s Lawyer Ruled was the says-it-all headline of a post written by friends-of-Hastings Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman* on Wired's Danger Room. If Hastings did not have such an obvious axe to grind, he might have reached a similar conclusion. Instead, he was too busy taking cheap shots at respected officers.
Politico's Morning Defense has a similar take on all of this worth reading.
*In the interests of full disclosure, Spencer and Noah are also friends of this blogger -- and Caldwell.
I'm with you on all of this
I'm with you on all of this except one thing. It doesn't matter if the targeted officers had lousy reputations or good ones. This was bad and inaccurate reporting based on personal politics. That's what's wrong: not that Caldwell et al were the targets and that a lot of people do think they were pretty good at their jobs.
Totally apart from whether
Totally apart from whether there was anything at all to this, I've always been more than a little confused about the difference between psyops and what Don Draper (and hundreds of thousands in that industry) does professionally (though psyops sounds both more military and more powerful...).
And if I can't convince a visitor that I'm doing a good job...
So we are depending upon the
So we are depending upon the decision of the General's lawyer or a SanAntonio Law Prof from StMary's. I guess we call that "due process" now.
I love how Rolling Stone is held to a higher standard than the Business Roundtable's select media outlets. Makes one start to question what is going on?
Its time to leave Iraq and AfPak. Bankrupt both morally and fiscally.
Don Draper
Don Draper ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeKPWcmdXdg
Diffferent generation..................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Rs8aCHgRc
.............where is the time machine, I want to go home.
Your friends may be correct,
Your friends may be correct, but so far I have not heard asked and answered a critical question. You know very well that the commanding officer of a unit may not himself be specifically trained and "certified" in the technical fields of his subordinates. So the question should be were the members of the cell in Holmes command trained in psyops? If they were, then perhaps Holmes was right to refuse the order.
I'll evaluate
I'll evaluate Chandrasekaran's reporting, but don't know if the reference to "Imperial Life" was intended simply to be funny, to establish Chandrasekaran's "street cred" as a reporter who has demonstrated willingness to be tough on the military when warranted, or both. (I suspect "both" is the correct answer, although the latter is the primary answer.)
However, in the spirit of Jason Fritz's attempt to delineate clear lines of thought and clear rules of argumentation: I understand why establishing Chandrasekaran's "street cred," by noting he has been tough on the military elsewhere, bolsters the case that he is being objective here.
One should not need to invoke prior reporting, necessarily, though, to see the merits of the case on its own terms.
Put more simply, perhaps, "What are the various accounts and how plausible and reasonable does the reporting behind each seem?" rather than, "Who were the authors and what have their track records been regarding military reporting?"
I understand one might want to bring in Hastings' reputation as support that his account is bogus. But, in theory, at least, the admissibility of Hastings' "prior bad acts" is open to question at a minimum. Evaluate the story, not the reporter, except when absolutely necessary - and I'm not sure here it's really necessary - perhaps?
Incidentally, does "Imperial Life" really establish Chandrasekaran's credibility as a hawk with respect to scrutiny of the military? If memory serves, it centered primarily on the CPA and less on the military, and did not really paint too harsh a picture of the latter, if a harsh picture at all.
ADTS
"There, but for the grace of
"There, but for the grace of God, go I..."
Fellow staff officers, read and heed. Upon completion, CONTINUE TO ROW/SHUT UP AND COLOR.
Carry on.
Time machine......climb in
Time machine......climb in and click go........
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR201102...
Salute............ have a good rest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dKxL419VMA
ADTS is correct in saying
ADTS is correct in saying that "imperial Life in the Emerald City" was about the CPA, not the military.
It's also noteworthy that it was published two years after those the book criticized had already packed up and moved on to pastures new. That isn't reporting, it's writing a history book. But wouldn't it have been nice to have some of that stuff on the front page of the Post in 2003/4? I see a trend here!
I find it interesting that Andrew holds up the reporting of Rajiv Chandrasekaran in this piece as being somehow superior to that of Michael Hastings. Yet, RC's rebuttal is based mainly on two anonymous sources - with the only person willing to actually go on the record being LTC Holmes (a man who "howls" his complaints, you'll notice).
There is another striking difference between the Anons and Holmes: they "say" things when he is only permitted to "contend" or "claim".
Lastly, how did the investigation into Holmes - for that, surely, is what it was - become, in the Post article, an "examination of the issue". Language is important, don't you think?
The piece doesn't really add anything to what we already knew from the Rolling Stone piece and still doesn't definitively decide whether the use of an IO cell to produce material that would assist in the influencing (not just informing) of the American people through their representatives was a correct use of an asset specifically designed for another, very different, use. This is still a very controversial issue and the Post article only reinforces that sense - especially by shining a spotlight on the attempt by a public affairs officer to access the IO cell's product.
"How did we do with our communication efforts and messaging," she wrote in the e-mail, obtained by The Post. "What results did we get." Is this not an unhealthy crossover?
There has been a concerted effort by a number of journalists to discredit Hastings and his reporting - the latter being no better and no worse than I see each day in the Post and in the New York Times, though Hastings seems a whole lot less enamored by the use of anonymous sources praising their superiors. Why all this effort?
I'll venture to suggest that it's because he's outside the tent pissing in rather than being an insider, on a beat, and dependent on "sources" for the next day's merry-go-round. John Burns said as much in his rather petulant comments following the McChrystal story.
But this story is a little bit different. This time the subject has a whiff of spin, political manipulation. This time, the subject calls into question ten years of reporting from inside the tent. That is why someone like Hastings has become so dangerous that he must be discredited and marginalized.
Nobody is arguing about what may be the most important issue here: that is the influencing of the VIP delegations and the press and the population of the United States. Were General Caldwell or General Petraeus or General Lynch or General ...... (fill in blank), simply in the business of delivering unvarnished truth in these briefings there would not be a problem. But they're not. This is about filtering out the unpalatable and emphasizing the positive in order to influence decision-making by the people's representatives in a democracy.
This points to a deeper trend, which is a level of distrust among the senior military officers in the wisdom of the electorate and in their will to sustain the fighting in Afghanistan. The way they have gone about buttressing that will - with a concomitant infection of the pool of open-source intelligence - also indicates a lack of confidence in the will to fight on the part of the military themselves as the troops on the ground are fed propaganda as actionable intelligence.
When so much energy, resources and lack of candor must be put into sustaining the will of a nation - at all levels - to fight a war, perhaps war is not the business that nation should be in.
Meanwhile, in other news, the
Meanwhile, in other news, the berbers are rising... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/28/libya-amazigh-identity-tribe...
NRO - bribe the Egyptian
NRO - bribe the Egyptian Military to cede to Democracy.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/260817/paying-egyptian-military-d...
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Steve C - have you ever looked at the level of propaganda from WW2 - the last one we won? The military was all over that effort. And yet at the end the peoples will was flagging. Don't doubt it. Look it up.
Or the level of Propaganda from Vietnam on mounted by the Media and Academic Left to inspire defeatism and destroy morale? And lose wars. A proud tradition carried on by Hastings and Rolling Stone. Now that's the real central question. Frankly we should be mounting IO operations, just not with PYS-OPS (or MISO). We don't have to lie, just emphasize what's right - and we are probably the most candid part of government at any level on mistake made at this juncture in History. As far as not fighting wars...yes..you see the end of it when your dead, or someones Bitch. Like most of our putative allies.
There's always the MILBLOGS!
"and lack of candor.." Short
"and lack of candor.."
Short of publishing our missions online (we have the NYT for that) we couldn't be more candid.
Tom Ricks adds some
Tom Ricks adds some background on this today: http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/28/the_caldwell_information...
Note that one of the comments in response to Ricks' post apparently comes from Lt. Col. Holmes himself.
I will add to what I've said before on this subject just two things. One, it isn't clear to me that the question IronCapt asked on an earlier thread (why does a training command need an information operations team on its staff) has been answered. Two, it's obvious that Gen. Caldwell has fierce partisans among admiring former junior officers, some of whom appear to nurse resentments over the McChrystal affair and Michael Hastings role in that. While I'm not yet persuaded of the merit of Lt. Col. Holmes allegations, I doubt that some of these people are anything like objective judges of them.
Elf, I once looked through
Elf,
I once looked through every copy of Newsweek magazine from 1965 through to the end of the Vietnam war (sad, I know) and they were pretty much on-message until about 1972 or 73. The "stab-in-the-back defense isn't appropriate.
According to Robert MacNamara's estimates, upwards of 3 million Vietnamese were killed in that war against the US. How many do you think it should have been?
As for WW2: different time, different threat. You may wish to re-evaluate your nostalgia.
I don't have an argument against the military being the most candid part of government (is the military a part of government? You may wish to ruminate on that awhile). That isn't a high bar, is it.
Don't believe I used stab in
Don't believe I used stab in the back, although they certainly were.
Pacifism is a spoiled child's dream. I'm out of the business of humoring them. If they want to deny all of human history up to and including now this moment...have no respect or use for them. They simply want to escape reality and responsibility. We can't, that's for the Euro's. For now. As long as we protect them (why I don't know).
Only the Dead have seen the end of War. They, and the far too protected for too long. Sheltered is a better word.
Including too many in the US. Well, that's ending and ended. Enjoy being "more like the world".
The most insane slogan ever uttered. And they voted for it.
Smith-Mundt upsetting you
Smith-Mundt upsetting you again? Here's a decent review of the basic issues:
http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/04/21/pentagon-propaganda-may-have-been-illegal.htm
[Defense Secretary Rumsfeld personally authorized the Strategic Command] to engage in "military deception" -- defined as "presenting false information, images or statements." The seventy-four-page document, titled "Information Operations Roadmap," also calls for psychological operations to be launched over radio, television, cell phones and "emerging technologies" such as the Internet. In addition to being classified secret, the road map is also stamped noforn, meaning it cannot be shared even with our allies.
Let's consider what the officer in question had to say:
"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."
I submit the following
I submit the following quotation from Tom Rick's blog on incestuousness in the Airborne:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/28/comment_of_the_day_is_th...
"KILGORE_NOBIZ
9:54 PM ET
February 28, 2011
Spec Ops has the same problem
Reading this made me think about the same issue in the spec ops community. Having just spent a year in Afghanistan watching the McChrystal-Mayville-Flynn leadership model at work, and corroborating my observations with those of fellow officers who have worked with this group in the past made me realize that maybe a certain Rolling Stone reporter did us all a favor. I realize there is a certain RHIP prosess that is somewhat necessary that allows a 4-star officer to choose their staff. But when your staff is comprised of the same cast of characters over and over again, well you tend to believe you are always right and you lose a sense of what is going on outside of your little clique. Perhaps the rules of the game need to be changed and senior officers need to be forced to change their lineup. Then again MacArthur was allowed to have the toxic Ned Almond follow him around the Pacific so it seems to be a lesson we can't quite force ourselves to learn."
It's even more clear that Andrew's continuing to whine about Michael Hastings has far more to do with politics and his funding than reality or moral superiority.
RH
You're better off working
You're better off working with people you know when it's life or death, staff or squad. Do you wanna find out who someone is the hard way? Our personnel system causes more chaos with it's mad rotations then enemy artillery.
Which has been recognized for years. And if someone's not strong enough to get rid of someone he knows is not right, what makes you think he'll do it to a stranger? As far as challenging assumptions of a superior - they'll take more input from someone they know than a stranger, if the stranger even has the nerve to bring it up.
We're a collection of people, not systems.
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