After months of wrangling over Scott Beauchamp’s disturbing little war story entitled “Shock Troops“, The New Republic has acknowledged that it cannot stand behind the facts of the story as printed.
The repudiation piece is about 10 times longer than the bit that sparked the controversy, a sure sign that there’s some excuse-making to be done. TNR concludes thusly:
in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.
No, I’d say not.
Publishing “Shock Troops” in the first place was a case of bad judgment, one that it seems to have been motivated by TNR’s desire to malign U.S. troops and the war effort in Iraq.
Why else would a reasonable, professional organization put its seal of approval on an otherwise unpleasant, amateurish piece of no strategic or practical import whatever?
Assuming soldiers’ stories check out, it could be important for a news agency to publish a front-line soldier’s account of how the brass is botching the war effort or one revealing that enemy strength is vastly greater than what military commanders report publicly. But what value is there in a story about driving over feral dogs?
Personally I’m inclined to believe the spirit of Beauchamp’s story even if the specifics are not accurate. So what?
Troops in harm’s way are under stress that writers such as TNR’s editors or yours truly cannot imagine. What of it if they make jokes, shout insults, or perform antics that would be considered disgusting in a civilian situation? Are we in a position to judge them?
True, I would think that there would be discipline in regular military units. Then again, nothing written about in “Shock Troops” was even remotely criminal in nature and therefore not worth commanders’ efforts to stamp out.
In my opinion the whole Beauchamp/TNR episode has been a waste of too many people’s time and mental energy. I for one am glad that it seems to be winding down.
h/t memeorandum
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There is a cottage industry by aspiring wannabe journalists who are conscientiously in their twisted moral mindsets toiling to discredit the American effort in Iraq.
Once again, like Stephen Glass and other bogus “journalists” like the NYT fellow whose downfall greased the skids for Howell Raines’ departure, Beauchamp has been found out.
The context is an effort to discredit American troops, whom up to now have benefited from good public relations from the MSM, more or less. In order to destroy GWB, the misfits and ideologues on the left are discrediting the American armed forces.
I have been reading some Vietnam fictionalized memoires, among them “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. I myself was nine months with a MATS team in a small village in Vietnam with a US military that had small faults, but behaved in an honorable fashion—I was with them 24/7 for three-quarters of a year. The suffering of the Viet vets had until recent kept the rabid anti-war types like Frederick Foer from yapping at the heels of the brave US troops in harm’s way.
I have thought about my year-and-a-half in Vietnam for thirty-five years, and am now coming to the strange conclusion that our efforts there might have been worth it. Here’s why: my brother is currently head of a huge USAID project remaking Banda Aceh in Sumatra after the tsunami. He speaks & reads Indonesian fluently. He tells me [and he also served in Vietnam] that our efforts in Vietnam might have been the key to preventing the overthrow of the Indonesian government in 1974 by Chinese Communist insurgents—-the “Year of Living Dangerously” is a small peephole into the gigantic upheaval that resulted in the slaughter of 500,000 Chinese living in Indonesia.
The world press and historians of that era do not afford much ink on the thwarted Commie takeover of Indonesia, with its hundred-million-plus population. Not even speculation that the US South Asia effort might have kept “wars of national liberation” in check and given the Indonesians the incentive to crush the foreign-inspired insurgency. Instead, tons of ink & man-years of whine-fests [symposiums and colloquiums] are expended on Vietnam & how useless the entire expedition has been.
I wonder why.
The First Amendment doesn’t mean guaranteed employment as an Editor if you eff-up royally by allowing garbage and lies in your publication.
Frederick Foer should be unceremoniously cashiered and an example set for journalists who attempt to advance odious inaccuracies in respectable publications.
Ditto for Hollyweird, but Box Office Vox Populi and the people have spoken by staying away from the silly anti-war flicks infesting the multi-plexes over the last year or so.
Who’s gonna be in the movie? My guess is Seann Penn is Scottie…maybe, Jeff Daniels as Frank? You know, very all american, sincere, and…liberal.
The story line is…how TNR stood up to those nasty rightwingers!
“Personally I’m inclined to believe the spirit of Beauchamp’s story even if the specifics are not accurate. So what?”
The Dan Rather approach.
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Now that he’s been outed, the unhappy [according to the latest Gallup poll!] Democrat left will rise in unison to say that in principle he was right, but the facts just didn’t seem to fit. Thus the solecism:
“Personally I’m inclined to believe the spirit of Beauchamp’s story even if the specifics are not accurate. So what?”
Sounds a lot like Newsweek’s Managing Editor Evan Thomas when explaining why he went in favor of that Durham DA against those lacrosse players.
They were rich, white, spoiled and that poor lil black girl was being exploited—the narrative line was a liberal trope from the beginning to the end. They were slam-dunk guilty. Except she made it all up……
Just like Beauchamp’s Hate America trope.
The unhappy lefties need to hate, and America makes them feel bad, as it’s successful and they are not. So blame America—masking their own self-hatred and giving them that momentary rush.