Yessirree, them wingnuts be lovin’ their Michael Yon. Yon’s latest missive is a two barrel blast at the “MSM” for misreporting all the wonderful success we’re having in Iraq and creating a misimpression that Iraq is, you know, a major clusterfuck:
But it wasn’t until I spent that week back in the States that I realized how bad things have gotten. I believe we are witnessing a conspiracy of coincidences conflating to exert an incomprehensibly destructive force on the free press system that we largely take for granted. The fact that the week in question also happened to be when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were delivering their reports to Congress makes me wonder if things are actually worse than I’ve assessed, and I returned to Iraq sadly convinced that General Petraeus now has to deal from a deck clearly stacked against him in both America and Iraq.
The free press is being destroyed because the free press should be sharing Yon’s “Iraq is a success” narrative and backing General Petraeus’s views (shared by the Bush administration) that we’ve taken a 180 degree turn in Iraq from bad to good, even though most conservative narratives never conceded that it was bad in the first place.
Further problems arise because the press’s “misreporting” has (in his view) created an unfavorable impression of America’s good deeds in Iraq:
As I travel around the world, I see that even many of our close allies have a false impression of American soldiers as brutally oppressive towards people. Even our great friends in Singapore and the United Kingdom, and the pro-American people on the island of Bali, Indonesia, think we are savaging people. This loss of moral leadership will be costly to Americans on many fronts for many generations to come.
This loss of moral leadership, naturally, stems not from the false accusations which led to this war, not from incidents like the recent Blackwater shooting spree, not from the Abu Ghraib scandal, not from policies legitimizing torture, not from our boorish and immature Chief Executive, and not from the inevitable civilian casualties which result from the use of bombs and rockets in an urban guerilla warfare. Naturally, it is the press’s bad coverage of these events, and the failure to cover the good stuff, which is responsible for America’s image.
Wingnuttia eats up stuff like this.
Naturally, the only place to turn for real, unadulterated-by-conspiracy-of-conincidences news is places like Yon’s site, which, coincidentally is expanding and needs money:
The only antidote for this toxic press is a steady dose of detailed stories about the amazing men and women who serve in the United States military.
Amazing men and women, it turns out, whose accounts are very favorable towards the war, and are published on Yon’s site. But it turns out freedom isn’t free.
As with the syndication project, there will be costs. The total reworking of the website including accrued bills, and the initial translation from past and up to about six months in the future, is roughly $100,000. One thousand people supporting the effort with $125 contributions would make it all happen.
In Right Blogostan, Yon holds a special place, dearer to God even than General Petraeus. His narrative is scripture, unquestioned and unimpeachable. At least as long as the message is one the right wants to hear.
I don’t doubt Yon’s sincerity, but I have serious doubts about his infallibility. Mostly because the whole “media is getting it wrong” and “Good News From Iraq” memes have been so badly overplayed, for years and years and years. Yon may be an optimist, looking for things to improve, or an ideologist who believes that framing positively the narrative forms the reality.
It was a compliant press which helped pave the way for this invasion. It was the failure of the press to question assumptions voiced by the administration that this war would be cheap, quick, and easy. If the press is, as Yon claims, stuck focusing on the past failures in Iraq, this is so because it was duped, over and over, broadcasting administration memes of “dead enders” and Iraqis “standing up” during campaign cycles. If the press, and the American people, aren’t as trusting and positive as Yon would like, it is because both have been lied to repeatedly, and because the latest, greatest story of success in Iraq seems over-scripted, and, despite all the effort put into differentiating this from all the previous claims of success through new faces, all too familiar.
Like John Cole, I would like to believe Yon’s account, but too much has transpired, and too many dissonant voices conflict with his narrative. 2.2 million Iraqis aren’t refugees living abroad because of what ABC, the Post, or the New York Times reports. And hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, more didn’t flee their homes and become internally displaced because Paul Krugman made a harsh assessment on Iraq.
