[Peace-discuss] Disgusting flack
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Tue May 26 22:37:42 CDT 2009
One Ricks Makes a Wrong
by Jeff Huber, May 26, 2009
Thomas E. Ricks, erstwhile journalist and author of The Gamble: General David
Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, has become the
embodiment of the warmongery’s moral and intellectual duplicity.
Ricks’ most recent 15 minutes of fame involved an appearance at a
FireDogLake.com book forum. In reply to a commenter who asked if "more deaths in
Iraq are worth it," Ricks said, "I think staying in Iraq is immoral. But I think
that leaving Iraq is even more immoral." In a nutshell, Ricks framed the core
fallacy in the long-war philosophy: that two wrongs can make a right. This theme
dominates Ricks’ work these days. The Gamble and the media blitz that
accompanied its debut were dazzling examples of what Voltaire was talking about
when he said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities.”
Ricks continues to exalt Gen. David Petraeus, who he has known since Petraeus
was a colonel or a light colonel (Ricks says he can’t remember which). Ricks
became King David’s chief legend-maker when the Iraq surge began in January
2007. In a radio interview that month on WNYC in New York, Ricks described
Petraeus as a "fascinating character" and "just about the best general in the
Army." He specifically cited Petraeus’ "very successful first tour" as commander
in Mosul after the fall of Baghdad, but he made little mention of the fact that
the general tamed the city by handing out guns and bribes, and that months after
Petraeus left Mosul the chief of police defected and the place went up for grabs
again. (Mosul remains a major trouble spot to this day, and Petraeus is still
arming and bribing militants.)
By August 2007 Ricks was waxing giddy over Petraeus’ persona. On NPR he called
the general "a force of nature" and gushed as he described the sight of Petraeus
engaging in pushup contests with privates less than half his age. A veteran
Pentagon reporter like Ricks should have seen the pushup prank for the used
chicken feed it was, but by then Ricks was already sleeping in the general’s
field cot.
Freud would have a field day with some of Ricks’ latest disclosures. In The
Gamble, Ricks flat out admits that Petraeus deceived Congress (and betrayed the
country) by telling the House Foreign Affairs Committee he aimed to create
"conditions that would allow our soldiers to disengage.” Petraeus’ plan all
along, Ricks confesses, was "not to bring the war to a close, but simply to show
enough genuine progress that the American people would be willing to stick with
it even longer." How does Ricks view this Promethean abuse of power and trust?
"The surge was the right step to take," he says. It was "the least wrong move in
a misconceived war."
The "least wrong move" mantra might carry Petraeus’ water if Ricks backed it up
with a sound argument, but his justifications are a logic lizard that consumes
itself from the tail forward. Ricks warns that if we leave Iraq, things will
almost certainly go back to the way they were under Saddam Hussein. But he also
asserts that things are worse in Iraq than they were before we invaded because
"Saddam was kind of an aging, toothless tiger" and "wasn’t a threat to anybody."
So we have to stay to keep things from getting better.
Ricks also echoes the ghost story that if we leave Iraq, a regional war is a
"live possibility." None of the countries in that region are capable of
projecting conventional force much beyond their own borders, and the only nation
in that part of the world capable of nuking anyone else is Israel. Terrorist
organizations are already in place, and we’ve seen what they can do, which is
nothing compared to the havoc we have wrought with our preemptive delusions.
Ricks judges that it was "quite noble" of surge proponents like Ambassador Ray
Crocker who "allegedly opposed the initial invasion of Iraq" to "step into
something they thought was a mistake." As if deliberately perpetuating a mistake
could ever be a noble thing.
Ricks has evolved into such an incorrigible bull-feather merchant he’s taken to
lashing out at anyone who presents a viewpoint different from the one he and his
masters are shilling. He decries refutations of his rhetoric as "personal"
attacks, and he harangues his critics with angry e-mails. At the FireDogLake
forum, a guest asked Ricks to comment about criticisms of Lt. Gen. Stanley
McChrystal, our new commander in the Bananastans, made recently by my colleague
Gareth Porter. Ricks replied, "If Gareth Porter is reporting it, then it’s
probably wrong. ‘Nuff said?" ("’Nuff said" is one of those macho expressions
guys like Ricks use when they want to sound like Ralph Peters.)
I am familiar enough with Porter’s methods to know he practices sound
journalism. Ricks, on the other hand, has succumbed to the access poisoning that
plagues most of the mainstream Washington media. He spent decades courting
inside sources. They have now become the movers and shakers of American
hegemony, and he is their court stenographer. The most blatant example of this
was his "transformation" of Gen. Ray Odierno from the raging ox whose
incompetence was the main cause of the insurgency to the genius who "conceived
and executed" the surge strategy "by himself in Baghdad." The sources of this
revelation were Odierno’s subordinates and mentors and Odierno himself.
In response to an Antiwar.com piece criticizing Ricks and his colleagues at the
Center for a New American Security, Ricks growled: "This is what happens when
someone writes about an area about which they know absolutely freaking nothing."
What Thomas E. Ricks knows about national defense he learned from a flock of
tank thinkers and Pentagon desk rangers who don’t know their centers of gravity
from their elbows. If Ricks limits himself to writing what he knows about, we’ll
never hear from him again.
Let’s hope that happens real soon.
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/05/25/one-ricks-makes-a-wrong/
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