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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
I count that one as “self-inflicted”, dude.
Giving the shaft (however deserved) to your employer from work on a company computer?
Hell, that’s so dumb it’s pitiful.
SB: retches terrorism
Hey!
Having already canceled all of my subscriptions, I am once again rendered impotent in the face of manifest injustice.
I took a certain amount of glee in doing so.
Coincidentally (and thankfully), my subsription expired earlier this month.
I’ll sign up for one right away, just so I can cancel it.
Or would that be sending mixed signals?
BTW, does anyone else know that A-bot is still spouting his crap at Jules Crittenden’s site?
http://www.julescrittenden.com/2007/07/26/cracking-elusive-aqi-nuts/
mojo–
TNR just got itself fragged.
NEWSFLASH: Ordinary Men Trained to Kill Occasionally Behave in Ways We Consider Inappropriate…
When I read Scott Thomas’ Shock Troops it didn’t ring inauthentic. I’ve taught the memoirs and novels of Vietnam veterans and what Thomas described was tame in comparison. So imagine my surprise when I learned that the right had gone…
I’m safe, I think… maybe..I just ran “TNR” through a symbol search, it doesn’t exist. However, I thought Ted Turner might have ownership of that one ,if nobody else did…blows my mind…speaking of blowing, what’s Fondas daughter doing these days?
Having cancelled my subscription long ago, Happyfeet, may I suggest you browse a copy at the newsstand, identify the leading advertisers, and advise TNR of the dissatisfaction you will be expressing to same?
SEK – People would be willing to give him a break, and in fact would not be questioning to the extent that they are, had he told the truth. How fucking simple can that be?
His spouse works for TNR. He was an editor of the campus liberal mag in college. He is apparently a lifelong liberal, having been quoted by his spouse for many years.
His blog shows a fundamental disconnect from your position, as he discusses whether or not it is more important to be a good man, or a good author. He talks about using his miltary service as a shield. He is, in short, exactly what many suspected he was.
Let the TNR be the TNR. I think expressed outrage about this topic has taken the proper course, any further only helps the accused. It’s time to drop it and let the military deal with it, they know how to, I doubt our keeping his version of the “facts” in the headlines helps them.
If you don’t think you’ll get enough from Scott, you might want to check out the thread over at Obsidian Wings where hilzoy opines that we all owe TNR a big apology. Meanwhile:
I agree with you that the military is going to take care of this. I can already see the manufactured outrage on the Left when young Beauchamp gets punished. He will become a hero, a martyr to the cause, imprisoned for speaking truth to power, and as such, I disagree with not pushing this story. This really needs to go beyond the blogs, but I do not see the MSM even covering this.
Dan – Ygelsias makes the same “we owe TNR an apology” claim in The Atlantic, online. Piffle.
More than that, he talks about using it as a badge of Absolute Moral Authority™, something to be used to further his future credibility on his opining. And he does this while constructing fictional tales of American atrocities in Iraq before he’d ever set foot there.
Something tells me he won’t be finishing his hitch. And Scott, this isn’t Vietnam. This isn’t an Army full of draftees.
It all went to hell when Ruby McGowan was not the receptionist any longer. And Strout was not TRB. Perez has made major mistakes. Funny, he is a smart guy, but misread his audience.
I don’t think he’s using this as a shield. Look, what he wrote about obviously isn’t beyond the pale for soldiers in a combat zone. As I wrote in response to Pablo’s question about Barnes:
Say what you will about his connections — but as someone who taught in a literary journalism department for five years, I can tell you that all the major magazines, left, right and center, partake of more than their share of nepotism. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate what he’s said. I could link to seven guys and one girl I’ve known for more than twenty years who are on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I guarantee you they wouldn’t bat an eye at a word Thomas wrote. This isn’t to defame them. We should acknowledge the psychological toll of war on our soldiers; and we should respect what it requires for them to wake up and do their jobs every day. As for his chest-thumping:
Isn’t this exactly what conservatives have beat drums for these past six years? A liberal willing to test his convictions? He may be opportunistic, but he’s a soldier, in a combat zone; no matter what he went there to be, he’s a soldier now, and he’s sharing soldier’s stories, none of which seem the least unbelievable. Is it really that difficult to believe someone on the ground would find a graveyard and attribute it to Saddam? Even if it turned out to be an infant hospital, does it defy imagination that he’d think it “clearly a Saddam-era dumping ground of some sort”? Given what I know about Saddam, it sounds more than reasonable to me.
All of which is only to say, I don’t understand why the right wants to vilify someone who merely says what we all know but don’t want to hear: that war takes a toll on the people who fight it. If you believe in the war, then that toll is a cost; if you don’t, it’s a tragedy. But no matter what you believe, you should recognize that killing another human being profoundly changes a man; that doing it on a daily basis, or that the mere thought of having to do it on a daily basis, changes a man. Such that they might, as I wrote, “thumb their nose at the mean deaths they bring by flipping their finger at the mean death they fear.”
WAY OT. Could someone please explain what to do when the comment section,after around #85 starts to lose the left side beginning letters? At around 200,they become unguessable. I’ve tried all different monitor settings,and this didn’t begin until Jeff went to his new format. Any help would be appreciated.
later tenure…..yeah,that WOULD be the post I’m talking about!
You are saying in effect, Scott, that the right ought to validate the particular formalist verisimilitude practiced by this professional Munchausen, because everyone knows it’s true, whether the diarist’s representations are factual or not.
Bullshit.
I don’t know, Blitz, but I suspect that the comments petered out at 289 because nobody could read the captchas anymore.
Perhaps you haven’t seen this.
I mean REALLY study the best the western civilization has to offer and facilitiate the mystery and power through everything I do, but I cant do it without getting through this army experience first, which will add a legitimacy to EVERYTHING i do afterwards, and totally bolster my opinions on defense, etc, and of course its making me a lot less lazy
“none of which seem the least unbelievable.”
You all can toss out however many theories, explanations, and justifications that you want, but the simple fact is that the claims he has made seem to be INCREDIBLY UNBELIEVABLE to the people that are currently serving, or were stationed at the places this young man is at. Just because you can imagine something, and that thought does not shock you, does not mean it should be published as credible.
And, BTW, he specifically indicated in his blog that he planned to use his service as a cloak of absolute moral authority, much like Kerry, to give weight and credibility to his stories.
What have we beat the drums for the last 6 years? Someone in the media to tell the fucking truth. Is it that hard to understand?
Blitz, I have the same problem on my Windows machines (XP and Vista) with IE6 and IE7, but I don’t have the problem using Firefox on my Linux machine. Blame Bill Gates.
The “fake but accurate” meme. Bullshit, indeed.
Someone notify the MSM , PW’s commenting section is eating the left ……. no , really , Blitz called it . Started on my monitor last night .
Actually, Dan, what I’m saying is that we shouldn’t dismiss his charges out-of-hand — as many did, when his column originally appeared — simply because they present what we consider unflattering truths about life in a combat zone. Seriously, is it that damaging to the military to say that some enlisted men and women are insensitive, or have gallows humor, or do things they wouldn’t do in polite society? After all, we’ve sent them over there to do things they wouldn’t do in polite society — like kill strangers at a distance of 500 ft. Again, I’m in no way condemning soldiers, merely saying that the attempt to minimize the psychological changes required to remain sane in a war zone should be taken into account when we question the veracity of what they say.
In other words, true or not, what Thomas/Beauchamp said is absolutely believable, and ought to believed, out of respect to the men and women whose lives have been changed by the experience of war. The fact that they’re merely mocking the disfigured, or desecrating the dead, puts us in the top 99th percentile of people-who’ve-waged-war. I sound sarcastic, but I’m not: compare us to the terrorists, even after we’ve forsaken important elements of the Geneva Conventions, and we’re still among the most humane warriors ever. I don’t see why people are so reluctant to admit that, esp. as it only makes the adjustment back to normal life all the harder for the people who’ve so proudly served.
(Also, Dan, check the email address you left at my place. It didn’t look fake, but I dropped you a note there.)
SEK – Can we imagine those types of things? Maybe you can. It does not square with the men and women I served with. I suspect that the men and women that RTO and Major John served with would not have acted in such a manner, or tolerated those amongst them that did. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
“I’m in no way condemning soldiers, merely saying that the attempt to minimize the psychological changes required to remain sane in a war zone should be taken into account when we question the veracity of what they say.”
Ahhhh…… the thin line of blasphemy . Tred carefully .
War is a cool opportunity. Two years, make a name for yourself, and you’re out. You can dine out on the stories for years, and score lots of hot, literate liberal pussy.
Sorry , tread , of course .
SEK
We “ought” to believe him, in the face of evidence to the contrary, because some could believe it? Am I getting this right?
Jeff,
Is it possible that the border on the left side is not perpindicular? It’s already eating the initial letters on the left of the page. It seems to be worse than efore.
BD Cat, it started on my machines (Win2k, XP Pro) when JG switched over to WordPress. I’m using both IE6 and IE7.
Who did that, Scott? Quotes would be nice.
ccs – Firefox is way less problematic, IE seems to have issues.
For me , it was down thread (around 90) , I think where the cursor wouldn’t work .
The only people that I have seen be dismissive of the claims were the men and women in uniform at the base where this was purported to have occurred.
Thanks folks…I won’t use firefox,the kids don’t get it…but at least I know I’m not alone. If anyone comes up with a fix please let me know.
LOL!!! Scholars BOOM
29. JD:
SEK – Can we imagine those types of things? Maybe you can. It does not square with the men and women I served with. I suspect that the men and women that RTO and Major John served with would not have acted in such a manner, or tolerated those amongst them that did. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
Holy mother of…have we entered some sort of alternate universe, one in which our soldiers are John Wayne, stoic and unfunny? Seriously, everyone I know who’s served — granted, they either enlisted when I graduated from high school and are career (i.e. 1995) or enlisted and served after 2001 (when I started teaching) — but if I went to any of them and asked whether they cracked wise in ways the rest of us would find offensive, every single one of them would answer in a firm affirmative. And more power to them. We would find it offensive because we haven’t been to war; we haven’t had its toll taken on our psyches. Again, I’m not condemning them, not in the least: I’m merely pointing out that their gallows humor is a survival mechanism, what allows them to negotiate the psychological straits lying between War Zone and Home. The transition isn’t easy, nor is it clean. They can’t just wake up one morning after having killed someone and act as if it’s just another day. I’m surprised at how people are condemning our troops for what are, in fact, harmless outlets for what could otherwise be serious psychological strife.
33. Pablo:
Try Malkin and Ace, neither of whom wanted to believe that our soldiers might be, I don’t know, soldiers and possess more than their share of battle weary black humor.
And, reading your latest comment at my place, let me just say this: despite our differences, if you had come back from Vietnam a little worse-for-psychological-wear, I’d have defended you as vigorously as I’m defending these boys. There’s nothing wrong with gallows humor. They have a right to veer from the norm; they couldn’t remain sane otherwise. I’m not trying to play any card here — yes, I’ve read a couple hundred memoirs of Vietnam vets, but I did so not to obtain moral authority in online arguments, but because people I’d grown up with were shipping out to war, and I wanted to understand what they’d be like when they returned. So discredit what I say because I haven’t been in any shit whatsoever, but don’t think that I’m trying to score points here. Unless you’re lying, you know better than most that what passes for humor in a combat zone would sound borderline sociopathic in polite company. That’s a consequence of war, not something to be blamed on individual troops.
The point of the article was not to engender understanding of the psychological plight of our soldiers. It was a bold attempt to grab propaganda marketshare from AP/CBS/CNN/NYT/NPR. It fizzled. Suck it up, loser.
Scott, I haven’t said there’s anything wrong with gallows humor. On the contrary, I defended it at your place. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re discussing whether Beauchamp’s stories ring true.
And links to people you don’t like do not fulfill your obligation to substantiate your assertion of knee-jerk dismissal of Beauchamp’s claims. Please quote it.
Oh, and I haven’t been in the shit. I’ve been trained for it, and once came within hours of deployment to it, but I’ve never been in it and I’ve never claimed otherwise. Just for the record.
war
forest
soldiers
trees
SEK – I served, and never once thought that placing a child’s skull on top of my head and wearing it for a day was a way to practice gallows humor, or burn off some stress. I can guarantee that a the NCO would not tolerate joyriding in the vehicle to kill dogs, given the IED and the threat to the crew’s life that would put them in.
The reported incidents do not ring true. Just because they could be true, in some people’s minds, does not make them true. They were not reported as fiction, and TNR did not hold them out to be fiction, quite the contrary. They insist it was fact checked prior to publication.
I understand gallows humor, and the stress this could place on people. Military men and women do conduct themselves in a manner different than civvies. However, these acts, reported as true, fly in the face of my experience, and of the experience that the people on the ground, contemporaneously, with Beauchamp.
Just because something rings true, does not mean it should be reported. His posts were purportedly a soldiers first hand account of his experience. It is beyond comprehension that what he dreamed of and wrote of prior to deployment actually came true when deployed. If they were going to publish fiction, they should have labeled it a series of short stories, with only a casual acquaintance to the truth.
I will be the first to eat crow should his accounts turn out to be true. I will not be warming up my BBQ waiting.
Is it too damn much
It sounded too pat to me, probably because I’m a hater. But I was one of those people who found most compelling the reactions of military guys whom I know who’ve been over there who felt that the details that the guy served up to lend credence to his story were not credible. And once you’re started down that path, it brings into question the entire enterprise. I think, for example, that Platoon is a great movie in many respects, even though I’m not sold on Stone’s other stuff, in part because it doesn’t claim to be a true story. It is meant to be representative. For this guy to claim he is a diarist and by strange coincidence discover that Iraq is just as he’d hoped it would be, because it proves what he’d expected when he began writing about it before he got there . . . I’m sorry, but that’s a stretch.
I get enough abuse from lefties for believing in Jeebus, as though the things we fetishize were better. And yet, I cannot help but think that truthfulness needs must be defended quite apart from that belief.
As for black humor, I’m reminded of a story, and I haven’t seen the piece, so it could be bullshit, but it’s believable.
Katie Couric is interviewing a sniper. She asks him what he feels when he shoots an enemy. His response?
“Recoil”
SEK – I understand and appreciate your defense of Beauchamp. I simply do not believe that, given the information available, he is worthy of your support. Were he in my unit, I would not support that which he described, and nobody I know would have tolerated same. That does not in any way suggest that things are not done and said within the military, and in tense situations, that simply would not translate well to the civilian world. That simply means that the ones Beauchamp claims do not appear to be true. If they wish to explore the psychology of gallows humor, then they should write an article about that, and explain it as such. That would not be too difficult, and would be a hell of a lot more honest.
Do you really believe that soldiers would mock someone that had their face blown half off by an IED, when IED’s are one of the most, if not the most, dangerous things they encounter on a day to day basis? Even further off point, there are simply not that many people walking around bases with their faces half blown off. In order to have injuries that extensive, you are more often than not headed back home, quickly.
Is it too damn much to simply report things that are true? I cannot fucking believe that is even in debate.
Verisimilitude. Good word.
Marginal left is getting eaten , again . OT but relevant , how goes the move Dan ?
Well, we’ve got some of the ground work done, Bill, but the killer days will be Saturday, Sunday and Monday–thanks for asking. I will be fit to die by the time it’s done, but they won’t let me.
SEK
Two things come to mind about this fabulist story;
“The poet is the unacknowledged legistator” (SHelley)
and
“If you’re not careful the news papers wil have you hating the people who are being opressed and loving the people who are doing the oppression.” Malcolm X
This is what I do not understand about the the Left, I would have thought you understood what Scott Thomas has done; being a really smart teacher and all.
Correction
‘the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed’
Hope it goes well Dan .
Scott Eric defends Beauchamp as if Beauchamp himself were a made-up literary character. This is not a text, as Beauchamp is slowly realizing to his growing horror. People he used to share a smile with a week ago aren’t looking him in the face today. A week ago he felt secure and smug, now he’s not sleeping well. He doesn’t know what to say to his mom, and he’s way dreading talking to his dad. He has no workable concept of his future, even though he’s still kinda sorta hoping he’ll still get some of that college money that was supposed to be part of the deal.
SEK
This is what Major John had to say about this. Just to show that my experience was in no way unique, and he speaks exponentially more nicely than myself.
Comment by Major John on 7/26 @ 9:18 pm #
…
As for Beauchamp being pitiable – NO, NO, NO! A thousand times no. He #$%&* put the same uniform on as me, took the same $#%&ing oath that I did, and agreed he would live up to the same Army Values as I did:
Loyalty
Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. constitution, the Army, and other soldiers.
Be loyal to the nation and its heritage.
Duty
Fulfill your obligations.
Accept responsibility for your own actions and those entrusted to your care.
Find opportunities to improve oneself for the good of the group.
Respect
Rely upon the golden rule.
How we consider others reflects upon each of us, both personally and as a professional organization.
Selfless Service
Put the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own.
Selfless service leads to organizational teamwork and encompasses discipline, self-control and faith in the system.
Honor
Live up to all the Army values
Integrity
Do what is right, legally and morally.
Be willing to do what is right even when no one is looking.
It is our “moral compass†an inner voice.
Personal Courage
Our ability to face fear, danger, or adversity, both physical and moral courage.
He #$%&ing violated EVERY swinging one of ‘em. I wouldn;t piss in that guy’s ear if his brain was on fire. Foer can go get stuffed too – but he is what he is – a leftist journalist with an agenda – not someone who took an oath to be his nation’s war-guardian.
Gah, I’m steamed at this.
Pitiable in the way that his self-immolation of his integrity leaves him groveling before fate like a snail shorn of its shell.
He is now that guy people read about in The New Republic. Forever.
TW: ident always
Pablo — That “recoil” joke is as old as rifled barrels.
I find it astounding that SEK is, essentially, defending this guy’s right to tell a story that isn’t true because, well, it’s the way he feels about war.
I mean, I’d defend that right, too — if he were writing the character of Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket. But this is no different than claiming that you should be forgiven for creating “composites” — the referents for which you cannot identify.
Bottom line: he made shit up. I know that’s not the most academically polished way of putting it, but why, pray tell, ought we to believe him if what he says is immediately red-flagged by other soldiers and vets as implausible — not from a human nature standpoint, but from the standpoint of how the military acts to constrain such behavior.
The fact that there will always be potential bad apples out there does not give Beauchamp the right to invent particular ones for the purposes of bearing false witness. He did not present his work as fiction — or even creative non-fiction. It was published in TNR.
This has nothing to do with gallows humor, the “duality of man,” or any such high minded literary considerations. It has to do with getting caught making shit up.
Which is what it’s looking like he did.
The rest — his connections to TNR, etc., — puts Foer in a decidedly bad light, given that he’s been working to take the magazine in that anti-war direction. At the very least, this gives the appearance that he was willing to stack the deck a bit.
We’re talking about if these regular frauds are true, as often as they’re not these days.
Pursuant #56, here’s another thought doomed to burn in PC Hell for it’s lethal combination of not-PC, not-nuanced simplicity and frankness. Can’t go around having that. In other words, SEK, I got the stress-disorder part before you explained it. Probably most do. I wasn’t convinced of a major character or scene in Apocalypse. Great production, valid point, but a technicolor reality that doesn’t hold up anymore because of if.
It goes like this: Lots of folks are sick of having it put in their faces that the nuanced view of war is perpetually and exclusively got to be some Martin Sheenist Full Metal Jacket, especially the moral equivalency part. Hollywood’s version of harsh war reality isn’t a harsh enough reality, it’s Hollywood. Probably war sucks way harder and probably, character being character, people go to the wall and beyond and simply don’t turn into liars or lunatics.
Simple. Too simple to count for much of anything in some advanced circles, but there it probably is anyway. And probably a big part of the pushback against TNR is regular humanity — especially the kind that supports their investment in actual lives — simply being nauseated once too often by sanctimonious twerps who got it all figured out at 21 and wrote some blindingly insightful fiction because they can lie, this particular episode perhaps and only perhaps notwithstanding.
I was real smart at that age too. You wouldn’t even believe how smart. The part of that I still remember is that you can think yourself into knots or you can make sense. This guy has the kind of markings that send up a lot of red flags.
Maybe the debate isn’t really about if fiction resembles reality?
Didn’t see your post when I posted mine, Jeff. I like the FMJ part…
Jeff and JHoward and especially SEK – I think this boils down to one simple idea. If TNR is going to publish a first hand account of life in war, they damn well ought to publish something true. If they want to publish the account of war as told through the eyes of a disillusioned young man, married to one of the TNR writers, a committed Dem, and an aspiring writer, they should have said that right up front, and called it what it appears to be, fiction.
BTW, the hijinks with the skull almost certainly came from here:
More Images Implicate German Soldiers in Afghanistan
More images showing German soldiers playing with skulls and bones in Afghanistan have surfaced. The site had been a regular stopping point for patrols. Those who didn’t play along were considered wimps.
The skull scandal in Germany refuses to go away. Two days after tabloid Bild Zeitung published photos showing German soldiers playing with a skull in Afghanistan, the paper now says it has dozens more photos in its possession — some of which it plans to publish on Saturday.
The new images, the paper says, show soldiers staging an execution with a soldier pointing his pistol at an assembled skeleton. An additional picture shows a skull wearing a German army beret and another shows bones arranged to spell out “CSR-Team” — the abbreviation for the unit which patrols the area surrounding the German camp. The German television station RTL has also come into possession of new images, including one of a soldier apparently kissing a skull mounted on his left bicep.
One soldier told Bild that German patrols often stopped by the site where the bones were found. One eyewitness reports the site looks more like a gravel pit than a cemetary. The witness told the paper that posing for photos there had become commonplace. A number of soldiers evidently spelled out their names using the bones.
Not only a bullshit artist, but a plagiarist.
Dudes, is this any way to act, after all the energy TNR put into supporting Bush’s War? It’s like you conservatives have no memory and ethics… Oh, wait
Marty Peretz – Because they were once right, they shall forever be right? Talking about ethics when TNR did this, especially after Stephen Glass, is just rich.
–you guys are ethical! And remember your history as well as any grizzled historian. I’m glad to have met you.
I could get used to this notion of having audience intent be most important.
“Dudes, is this any way to act, after all the energy TNR put into supporting Bush’s War? It’s like you conservatives have no memory and ethics… Oh, wait”
I assume this is a parody of a leftist… but is this gent actually advocating for loyalty to media because they are ideological water-carriers, rather than impartial truth-tellers? He’s advocating for un-fact-checked stories from dubious, nepotism-found sources?
I could link to seven guys and one girl I’ve known for more than twenty years who are on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I guarantee you they wouldn’t bat an eye at a word Thomas wrote. This isn’t to defame them.
I’m calling bullshit.
Tell you what; don’t tell us about the people you could check with. Tell us that you have checked with them. Don’t prejudge their reponse, tell us what they actually said. And, be prepared to tell us who you takled to, because I, for one, will want to make sure that these people you refer to are real and that they agree with your reporting.
And don’t ask this: but if I went to any of them and asked whether they cracked wise in ways the rest of us would find offensive, every single one of them would answer in a firm affirmative. Because this isn’t even close to being the issue. Yes we are often off color and irreverent and even blasphemous, but amongst ourselves, behind the hesco barriers and the young pup who haven’t learned that distinction get snapped back into line by NOCs and officers.
Okay?
I find it astounding that SEK is, essentially, defending this guy’s right to tell a story that isn’t true because, well, it’s the way he feels about war.
You shouldn’t. But it might have to do with your deductive approach to the intentions of texts.
Because of the infinite-irony worm in intentionalism that was mentioned here earlier, Sherlockian readings don’t make sense of political speech, whose texts are performative. They’re not clues. They’re the crime itself.
The sign-exhange between Beauchamp and his preferred readers was essentially Cronenbergian:
“I’m one of you.”
“You’re one of me.”
Once that exchange had been made, arguments against Beauchamp’s credibility on any point became attacks on a shared identity. Those don’t work. So propaganda does.
The spam-block knows all: assimi become.
All you can do is marvel at how few signs it took Beauchamp to secure that identification, how predictable it was who’d identify, and how stupidly they rationalize it.
Then they’ll call you names.
I really don’t understand SEK’s defense of Scott Thomas.
But then, again, I have never bought into the “fake but accurate” meme.
This is what “advocate journalism” has wrought in American media … and it is why said media has lost so much of its credibility.
I don’t CARE whether somewhere at sometime, in a community of over 100,000 there have been Soldiers Behaving Badly. Hells bells, we just crested over 45,000 criminal cases entered in my county so I get to witness Human Beings Behaving Badly in a soul-numbing parade.
But someothing about Scott Thomas’ accounts didn’t ring “true”…not that the “bad behaviors” were the worst, but that they didn’t sound like the “gallows humor” particular to American military.
Really, considering how much Americans love and dote on pets, how could a story of joyous canine torture/murder be wellknown and uncriticized and unpunished.
Anyone remember Janet Cooke of the WaPo who won a Pulitzer for her “Jimmy the 8 y/o heroin addict” stories? They were “brilliant” and utterly fake. (the WaPo gave back the prize) Cooke’s self-justification was she had sources that someone(s) like “Jimmy” did exist; however, she couldn’t quite locate a real one and felt pressured to “make one up” to please her editors.
Even WaPo’s asst. managing editor of that time, Bob Woodward, offered this amazing bit of spin
See? As long as it is “brilliant” or reflects somesort of self-conceived “reality” … it is ok to parade fiction as non-fiction.
SEK wants to “believe” STB because it squares with his “reality” of American soldiers as “teens” and people “barely adults”, who can’t help themselves when put into war. It then becomes of little consequence that the story is “fake and fraud” because it tells Truth(tm) none-the-less.
No sir. No thank you. If you want to dazzle me with a great story, label it AS a work of fiction. If you want to convince me with something of substance, make sure all the facts ARE verifiable facts.
No “anonymous” Iraqi “captains” who always seem to be where the action is, or Iraqi “photographers” who alway seem to get the best terrorist pics, or an American “soldier” who wrote all his “atrocities” stories before he ever got to Iraq, than just patched ’em up with local “creds”.
STB’s stuff “rings true,” does it?
I haven’t served (and couldn’t for health reasons), but I do know enough about the situation in Iraq to know that soldiers there love to get Handi-wipes, because a shower is not a guaranteed thing. So when I read about someone sticking a freshly-decomposing bit of flesh on one’s head, it strikes me as not merely grotesque, but nonsensical.
For that matter, when STB writes of the site being “a Saddam-era dumping ground,” I wonder how the skull still has chunks of hair, years later. And when FOB Falcon’s PAO denies it’s a dumping ground and suggests it may have been an unmarked graveyard, that “rings true,” not STB’s account.
Same with stopping in the midst of raw sewage to change a tire on vehicle with run-flat tires.
Same with immediately concluding that Iraqi police had killed someone based on a 9mm cartridge when thousnads of 9mm Glocks are available for purchase on the street in Baghdad.
And the bits about the joyriding in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle don’t seem to “ring true” to dozens of milbloggers who have been in them and are familiar with its design and maneuverability.
If STB’s stuff “rings true” to SEK from having taught memoirs, I would suggest that he reread Jeff’s earlier piece, which notes that the style can be imitated. Indeed, STB’s blog entries suggest STB was working on that style before he ever got there.
“They were “brilliant†and utterly fake. (the WaPo gave back the prize)”
Yet the New York Times still has Walter Duranty’s.
Does SEK work for the NYT?
Wow.
Does this mean anyone can make shit up and it “ought to be believed”, “true or not”, out of respect for those whose lives have been changed by ______?
Because, if so, then why don’t you admit that facts are immaterial to you?
Ya know, folks, if the left’s standard is going to be “I believe it, so the truth doesn’t matter”, someone should get cranking on stories about various left politicians in believable, compromised situations.
You know, like a Kennedy leaving a girl to drown, or a Congressman caught with bales of cash hidden in his freezer.
So, the truth of what Beauchamp writes should not be questioned out of respect, not for the truth, but for those who have been impacted by the story and others tangentially like it. I wonder if that applies to Michael Yon as well.
Jamil Hussein, believe it! How about Frank Wutterich?
If STB wanted street cred for his fiction, he should have just been upfront about it and let the chips fall where they may. War fiction, like historical fiction, is a genre with both good and bad writings.
IMO, STB is trying to pass this off as non-fiction because he’s just not that hot a fiction writer.
You know, I was just thinking that if I could write, I’d brew up a tasty little nugget about how a bunch of people died suspiciously during the Clinton years and how a bunch of FBI files were found on Hilary’s coffee table and how she made a 900% return on a small investment and and ran drugs out of Mena and how Bill got attacked with a lamp once and how she hung condoms on the Christmas tree that one year and then they carried out a big plan to muzzle the Press.
I could get it printed as fact at NRO or maybe Townhall. I’d certainly present it as fact. And then if I got outed, SEK might defend me.
Because it’d damn nigh resemble fact.
“Does this mean anyone can make shit up and it “ought to be believedâ€Â, “true or notâ€Â, out of respect for those whose lives have been changed by ______?
Because, if so, then why don’t you admit that facts are immaterial to you?”
Well said, Rob C.
A bit more seriously to the Clnton analogy, SEK, take a look at the book, The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton and kindly explain to me how it is that in this country we can invent and defend fictions about the liberation of Iraq but we cannot present facts about the career liars running for highest office. That is, if we expect to retain any credibility at all with huge swaths of “progressive” America.
Because that stuff, all of which is true, would condemn anyone to never run for as much as dog-catcher, yet HC will likely be the next POTUS.
So. Leftist fiction = all the credibility of fact. Facts about the Left = all the credibility of fiction. You figure it out; I cannot.
It’s easy to figure out, and psychologizer hit on it earlier in a comment that echoes a whole host of posts I’ve written on the subject: identity politics, once embraced, allows for such things as “consensus truths” — which is essentially the natural order of things, only without the grounding of rationalism, empiricism, and scientific principles to hold it in check. It is pure democracy — mob rule will to power. The truth belongs to those most willing to declare, profess, and guard it. Even if it is not truly “true.” It’s “truthiness” — the Emperor isn’t naked if enough people claim he isn’t.
That little girl who says he is? To the reeducation camps with the little whelp!
I see. I have to wonder about the country’s lifespan. Seems to me a civil structure such as this one can’t withstand this common self-deception and survive indefinitely in any form resembling its origins. This sounds parasitic.
SEK, I would really like to know who these people on active duty you say wouldn’t bat an eye about Thomas’s BS. I would have had that little #$%@ eye deep in trouble as fast as I could. I am almost shaking with anger when I think that he pawns off that crap about mocking a disfigured woman as he did. I was at Ft Sam Houston last summer – the Army Burn Center is there – when the recovering wounded went to the PX, they got one of two reactions; respectful silence, or treated like any other soldier – depending on the comfort level of the individuals involved. If someone had openly mocked them, the janitorial staff would have been mopping blood off the floor.
As for the completely stupid stuff – square backed rounds for 9mms, rampaging M2/M3s blasting through infrastructure and trying to squish dogs my frustration mounts when people say “plausable”. The skull stuff makes me want to puke that someone thinks that happened. This ain’t an anecdote about the South Pacific from Stud’s Turkel’s “The Good War”. Oh, and try wearing an AC helmet sometime and doing that. Bah.
The one dog was smiling after being squished by the soldier. Frankie Foer probably appreciated this ironic flourish. But now that a soldier has squished his credibility, Frankie is not smiling at the sun as if nothing had happened at all. No, Frankie may not yet quite grasp what has happened here, but somehow, he instinctively knows that smiling at the sun would probably not convey a very truthy picture of his situation. Our little Frankie is growing up.
My head is filled to the bursting point with information and thoughts. Much of what Jeff and Dr. Brand wrote is beyond my Capitali$t centered education but I’m starting to get the shadows of meaning.
First of all, even though I’m going to disagree with much of what he wrote, I appreciate SEK actually engaging in an argument devoid of name calling with some attempt to back up his assertations. After reading Prof Ric’s last attempt at “deconstructiing” Jeff over diversity and set asides by taking the first four paragraphs to snarkily and boorishly show how Jeff was a “cool guy,” SEK is like a breath of fresh air and always engages honestly.
Even if I think that he’s mistaken.
It is a tell tale sIgn of trouble when SEK is writing about viewpoints and plausability based upon his editing experience and his certainty that if he were to ask people, they would agree. In contrast those raising flags are questioning the plausibility of the facts of the story as pointed out several times above. SEK fails to convince because most of the people here are more interested in facts than in an intellectual exercise like “plausibile narrative” based upon historical experience and idealogical conclusion. Rather than wringing one’s hands at the “horrors” of war, we prefer to examine the facts, background and opportunity to reach a reasonable conclusion as to the veracity of said tome. Let’s leave the “war is hell” canon for another day and not imbue its framework with journalistic integrity.
At least until the inconvenient facts have been addressed.
Again, with all respect and admiration, SEK has wandered into this territory before. He and I clashed (politely) a while back on his assertation that Radical Muslims rresent our “Economic Imperialism.” There is a real danger of self delusion when handy doctrinal terms are dusted off and displayed when fact checking (the very thing, BTW, that TNR states they are doing now) is the canon of choice for this particular puzzle. I’m not prepared to crown Beauchamp with The Narrative™ “those who have been scarred by war” award just because, in some fuzzy sense, it sounds and seems real and truthy.
Given the stated idealogical bent of both author and publisher, you’ll have to pardon me if I chose to wait for some real answers to troubling questions and ignore the “greater good” of progressive TalkSpeak. Just this once…
Cap: sociale renowned that I am…
It is left to the happyfeet to martyr himself on the altar of incivility and say to you that our Scott Eric is a dishonest monkey fart what sees an opportunity where others see a fiasco. He would have you revel in the psyche of young Beauchamp for your edification. Just a tweak of this narrative, you will yet see teh truthiness. Piss on him.
Young Beauchamp found a story in Iraq that was exactly what he anticipated, his studies and writings had well prepared him to perceive teh truth. It is the same dynamic with Scott Eric and his hundreds of memoirs, and myself, not having a freaky war porn fetish, I think he just sounds like a very silly man.
Hmmm……I suppose it is plausible that Bill Clinton could be faithful to Hillary…….
Husband of the Year it is!!
and put me down for “left border not perpendicular”.
Well, here’s the way I look at it: when an account written by a pseudonymous source seems tailor-made to fit some absurd leftist preconception of how casually brutal our troops are or can be, that should raise an eyebrow or two, particularly from those predisposed to lend it any credence.
Small wonder that it raised thousands of eyebrows among people who actually work with and around soldiers.
SEK, I don’t think anyone’s saying that awful things don’t happen in war, I think people are a) declaring dogshit, possibly prematurely, before having to execute the “taste” step, and b) declaring bullshit because although soldiers have done and probably will continue to occasionally do the sorts of things described by our fabulist fraud, they don’t tend to write proudly about it.
Just to hit that first point for more effect, I just got done listening to a bunch of aircrew, support personnel, and special forces guys talk about what information they need in order to do close air support effectively, and how to work through the decision process more quickly. Anyone who has actually been around this kind of conversation and actually listened, and hold that we’re casually bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan has more than a few fasteners loose.
And, yeah, I tend to think that Thomas’ work is that of a propagandist with an agenda, not that of a (typically) casually cruel US soldier.
Oh: “leftist preconception” is inapt; there’s a number of antiwar right-wingers out there Who Shall Remain Nameless, so leftist doesn’t really work, there. My apologies, but I’m unable to come up with a suitable replacement adjective.
JD:
This was what I was really addressing, outside of the circumstances swirling around Thomas. As I wrote, what bothered me was the knee-jerk reaction among those on the right to the possibility that, well, what you said above.
I can see them mocking someone precisely because it’s the one of the most dangerous things they encounter daily. Staring death in the face and laughing, as it were. Nor would I think a whit less of them for doing so.
I don’t doubt that people are upset by what he wrote — but if it were true, they’d be equally upset because they want to be seen living up to their professed ideals. Another way to say this: as a teacher, I know I shouldn’t mock my students … but sitting around in the break room, shooting the shit with other teachers, I sometimes succumb, out of pure frustration, and mock away. (Never by name, of course.) Were someone to overhear that venting, they’d likely think I violated my professional ethics. But every teacher sometimes becomes so frustrated with a student that they vent — and I’m talking about teaching here. So do I think soldiers in the field sometimes become so frustrated that they violate their statements of professional ethics? Certainly. They’re human beings.
Point of fact, I’m arguing they deserve more leeway in this regard, given the rigors of their lives and the importance of their mission.
Granted. My fear is that in the current environment, if that truth is equally unsanitized, Malkin and Ace will go after the man or woman who says it just the same.
Jeff:
What I’m defending is the soldier’s right to tell stories that, as JD put it, “would not translate well to the civilian world.” The reaction among conservatives was that Thomas has somehow slandered the troops: I don’t think he did. The problem, as I see it, is that the reactions of Ace, Malkin, et. al make it far more likely that soldiers will return from the war and bottle up. That Thomas’ may have invented or embellished makes this even more likely; however, he was attacked before that fact was discovered. That was my complaint.
That last sentence touches on what I said above: the military “acts to constrain such behavior,” but it occurs. More to the point: the military tries to avoid publicity of that behavior, because it shows them in a poor light. Thing is, I don’t think it shows them in a poor light. The belief that young men and women can fly halfway around the world and kill strangers without blowing off steam strikes me as preposterous; as does the corollary belief that those who fly halfway around the world and kill strangers would blow off steam in ways approved by people who hadn’t flown halfway around the world and killed strangers. As I wrote, there wasn’t anything particularly disturbing about Thomas’ revelations — the acts he documented were uncouth, but I expect them to be. Malkin and Ace don’t. They should. It’s about giving the benefit of the doubt to men and women who have done what is, for most us, beyond comprehension.
RTO Trainer:
Absolutely not in public. I could email Dan the names of the people I know and he could verify their existence if that’d satisfy you. But I’m not going to cause friends trouble for telling me things that will make them Malkin’s next target.
This is my point — such things are said, such things are done, only usually not in public. Soldiers ought not be demonized for thinking, saying or doing things which wouldn’t pass muster among the general populace.
Darleen:
The people I’m talking about — the ones I grew up with — are barely adults … but they’re not teenagers. Most are career military, as you’d realize if you thought about how old I probably am.
Karl:
I don’t think those paragraphs are related.
I really didn’t need Jeff to tell me that. My point is that, when true, such accounts are equally likely to be dismissed. They shouldn’t be.
Rob Crawford:
Until evidence to the contrary arises, yes, soldiers should be given the benefit of the doubt. Thomas wasn’t, and it may turn out he’s lying. But what of other soldiers, who aren’t lying, who will be attacked for what they write?
(Upon preview, I see some more responses, to which I’ll respond in kind later.)
This is my point  such things are said, such things are done, only usually not in public. Soldiers ought not be demonized for thinking, saying or doing things which wouldn’t pass muster among the general populace.
If you insist on arguing this point, then you are rhetorically safe. No one will disagree with you as far as this goes.
But it’s got nothing to do with the present controversy, so I fail to see why you keep bringing it up.
Absolutely not in public. I could email Dan the names of the people I know and he could verify their existence if that’d satisfy you. But I’m not going to cause friends trouble for telling me things that will make them Malkin’s next target.
However you want to manage it, but at the moment this smacks of the “Some of my best friends are gay/black/whathaveyou,” dodge.
On to the actual point;
Soldiers should must and will be demonized for making things up in public, especially, but not exclusively when they wouldn’t pass muster among the general populace.
There are plenty of great stories that have actually occurred, some of which, I’m sure, even fit PV2 Beauchamp’s chosen narrative, that he could write about. Instead he chose to fabricate stuff.
You start addressing the truth or falsity of what Beauchamp wrote and you’ll finally be on the same page with the rest of us.
There are no “unflattering truths” in what PV2 Beauchmp wrote, just lies. That they are unflattering lies makes the outrage deeper, but is not the cause of the outrage.
Had he done that, then truth, no matter what the subject, would be his defense. And he’d be right, and we’d support him for it. Until then, Uncle Jimbo’s characterization of the Private as “dung beetle” seems more than particularly apt.
Scott, I’ll ask you again to please quote some of that knee-jerk, out-of-hand dismissal for those of us who haven’t read any of it.
SEK: If this shit had rang true with the troops, the shithead wouldn’t have been found out. Who do you think raised the initial uproar?
B Moe, you mean the same people who have raised the initial uproar in every real or suspected attrocity, malfeasance and misdemeanor since the war started? Whether we be discussing Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Tillman…?
Wow, there are far more good apples than bad ones. Whodda thunk it?
Shouldn’t that benefit of doubt evaporate once knowledgeable people call bullshit? Shouldn’t STB’s claims have originally been given a deeper investigation than “well, he’s married to one of our people” and “I let some reporters look at it, and they didn’t complain”? Shouldn’t TNR have run the claims past a few, well, hostile reviewers?
If a piece of information that precisely fits your preconceptions comes along, do you embrace it unquestioningly, or do you take the time to make sure it’s true?
SEK responds to me:
Oh really? For the benefit of everyone, here are the grafs, which appear one after the other in TNR:
So, SEK, if those grafs aren’t related, where did the Private find the skull, if not at the “Saddam-era dumping ground?”
If that’s the best response you have to the multiple points of patent BS I identified, you may want to quit now.
I discontinued my TNR subscription yesterday.
Here’s my problem with the story: It made substantial accusations without proof. Furthermore, the accusations were serious enough to require investigation by the military authorities. Personally, I didn’t want to believe them, but felt that “Thomas” story merited further investigation. And so what happens? Further investigation leads to the mess that seems to be unfolding. I want to know the truth about the original accusations, and I hope that in fact we discover it.
But I don’t think that we’ll get the truth from TNR.
Typical RTO:
Well, in a nutshell everyone would, you flag-waving goon. No one of substance denigrates our soldiers and Marines. Their service is lauded and they are personally thanked for their sacrifice. Get this: the Democratic Congress, you know the party controlled by the Taliban, has recently offered to increase service members’ pay, has held hearings on how to better to treat them physically and mentally when they return, and has tried to stop the war which keeps maiming and wounding them.
But, unless you’re standing on top of an your “W ’04” adorned car, weaving a flag, screaming Lee Greenwald’s “Proud to be an American,” and wearing an “Iraq: We lose only if we leave T-shirt” then you’re just not patriotic enough for the RTO.
Well, RTO, I won’t bow to your convictions that someone is lying just because you don’t like what he said. And, I’m a bit tired of you smearing a political movement representing the 59% of your countrymen and women who want us out of Iraq. That’s a helluva lot of traitors…
Don’t you all hate when a mosquito buzzes past your ear?
Timmah! writes:
Unless you’re a US Army Signal Corps soldier, in which case you will be attacked as a “flag-waving goon.” Alternatively, it could be that the US Army Signal Corps soldier was attacked by “no one of substance.”
59%? Poll numbers! More poll numbers! I guess being an apparatchik requires knowing poll numbers. Who’da thunk that?
Wow. It turns out that SOME soldiers, in moments of monumental stress, do bad things. Everyone can agree there. However, I am a bit disheartened that SEK would even entertain the notion of “fake but accurate”. SEK, being the lone democrat/liberal that brings “it”. STB is a lying opportunist who probably miscalculated and will pay for it accordingly. TNR just dropped, feet first, into the den of partisan shit purveyors. Funny, I didn’t agree with them regarding the war, but now find myself on the opposing side again. I can’t even say “fake but accurate” without giggling. My, how the times are a changin’…
“…it could be that the US Army Signal Corps soldier was attacked by “no one of substance.â€Â
That gets my vote.
Though the first alternative lends itself to a big ol’
…BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!!!
BJTexs:
It is a tell tale sIgn of trouble when SEK is writing about viewpoints and plausability based upon his editing experience and his certainty that if he were to ask people, they would agree.
Not editing: reading and teaching war memoirs; talking to friends who’ve been to both Iraq and Afghanistan; and discussing the validity of war stories with a former roommate who was a Gulf War vet working on an oral history of the Vietnam War.
SEK fails to convince because most of the people here are more interested in facts than in an intellectual exercise like “plausibile narrative†based upon historical experience and ideological conclusion.
The two are related — I found Thomas plausible because of what I’ve read and heard. This has nothing to do with ideology; at least, not mine. I think the issue of Thomas’ integrity is scuffling the general point (or my general point, the one I wrote about, which people began to debate here): namely, that people on the Right were disinclined to believe Thomas because they believed his an unflattering portrait of the troops. Before Pablo asks again, here’s Michael Goldfarb’s “Fact or Fiction,” in which he immediately challenges the truth of the then-still-anonymous Thomas:
He then goes further, demanding corroboration:
Look, I’m not defending Thomas here, nor am I claiming the call for corroboration a bad thing. I am, however, questioning the motivations of someone who, immediately upon hearing tame tales of combat pecadillos, challenges the credentials and integrity of the soldier who told them. That’s what I mean when I say they didn’t give the soldier the benefit of the doubt. As the servicemen in this thread acknowledged, much of what happens in a combat zone isn’t fit for general consumption — demonizing the soldiers who try to make sense of what happens in a combat zone by automatically dismissing any unflattering thing said about the troops does them a disservice. Yes, Thomas may be a liar — most of the evidence I see points to his character and motivation, or is hearsay, so I’m holding out until I hear something official — but even if he wasn’t, he would’ve been attacked.
Which, as I said above, and at my place, is supremely uncool.
Slartibartfast, this is what I don’t understand:
It doesn’t make them look casually brutal; it makes them look like troops. If they’re casually brutal, well then, from all I’ve read and heard, casual brutality goes with the territory. It’s a cost of war, and one we should confront, since the soldiers will when they return to civilian life.
RTO Trainer:
That’s easy: because it was the point of my post, the discussion of which moved over here, then back over there, then back over here, &c. I’m only defending my words.
I suppose you’ll just have to trust me when I say that someone who graduated from a public high school in the Deep South, of which he was one of only 20 or 30 kids in his class of 300 to go to college, knows a lot of people who ended up in the military.
Rob Crawford:
For him? Yes. If he’s found out to have invented or embellished, his benefit should be revoked. But all soldiers?
Karl:
It’s a product of the piece being poorly written: the transition’s ambiguous, as he could be talking about another soldier at another time, which he does later in the piece. Also, the top of a child’s skull wouldn’t fit on a grown man’s head, I don’t think, which is one reason I didn’t think those two graphs related.
Obstreperous Infindel:
I’m not. I’m saying 1) they didn’t strike me as inaccurate and 2) until someone proffers hard evidence that the claims of any soldier are inaccurate, I think they ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. The questionable authenticity of Thomas’ claims are gumming up the works. Other soldiers have told me other things akin and far worse than what Thomas wrote, and I neither think less of the teller nor am I inclined to disbelief.
but even if he wasn’t, he would’ve been attacked.
You base this conclusion on what?
ended up in the military.
Great. So we’re back to the theme of military as predator on those who have few other choices?
Whatver, back to the subject: The stories didn’t ring inauthentic to you. Fine. They did to people who, say have actually driven Bradleys. You don’t grant greater weight to that?
As for the rest, you can quite defending your words, at least with regard to “demonizing” someone for black humor in the face of adversity. No one disagrees with you and the demonization (on those grounds) is a product of your imagination.
It’s not about the content. It’s about the substance. If Bradleys were built to allow for the maneuvers and visual capacity described and if gangs of Privates were allowed to roam unsupervised, and if people were routinely mocked in public without reprimand and the content had been identical, no one would have complained.
But those things aren’t true.
Or if the content had described humane and courageous activities of the subjects, yet could still be shown to be probably untrue, the reaction would be the same though, unless it were done as a coverup of a bad action (witness the pending reprimand of General Officers who tried to portray Tillman’s death as a heroic action going so far as to award a Silver Star to divert from the reality of fratricide), probably less rancorous. But people tend to be more animated about a malicious lie that tars others, so that seems forgivable to me.
Karl,
If dimb were to develop a capacity for following a logical progression through a conversation and perhaps cultivate a little knowledge (or at least use the vast resource of the Interwebs to check what he thinks he knows) then he might actually develop some substance.
Well, that also assumes that such growth would also be accompanied or engender sincerity and good character as well. Which may well be a trait too far.
Thank, Scott. Unfortunately, there’s not an ounce of knee-jerk dismissal in the Goldfarb piece. He’s skeptical and therefore he’s asking questions. You can recognize them by this thing “?” at the end of the sentences, each of which seek information he doesn’t claim to have. You’ll not both the title of the piece and the subhead “A mission for the blogosphere”. He’s not stating that the piece is false, he’s asking for some fact checking, that which TNR should have done before they ran STB’s work. And you’re a smart enough guy to recognize that, so I’m wondering why you seem not to.
Now it’s a disinclination to believe? Just a while ago it was an out-of-hand rejection. For my part, a couple of things created a bit of dissonance, but my primary reaction was basicaly “Ewwww”. It wasn’t until the milbloggers; Bradley crewmen, people stationed at FOB Falcon and the like chimed in with their opinions of the plausibility that I called bullshit in agreement with them.
And I haven’t seen anyone of any substance who did otherwise. Have you?
SEK:
So now you’re speculating about an entirely unnatural reading of STB’s writing, as there’s nothing in the text sugesting they are two different incidents.
As for a child’s skull not fitting, I agree… and so did a lot of other people, which is why people have been questioning the articles. It’s not just a case of right-wing motive; it’s a case of specific details in the articles looking fishy to people who have served in Iraq, are familiar with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, etc.
And this is not taking place outside a historical context. I think most people questioning the STB articles admit that soldiers at war will, on occasion, behave in coarse or tasteless ways. Most would also admit that in a group of about 150,000 soldiers, some will engage in misconduct. Many of us, otoh, are well aware of the often fraudulent Winter Soldier claims made as Vietnam dragged on. We’ve also seen the likes of Jesse Macbeth in this conflict.
Despite the protesteth-too-much blatting done by STB and Foer now, the underlying theme of the “Baghdad Diarist” series is that all of this behavior is occurring and no one ever reports it. Ever. Now they claim that this was not intended to reflect on the US military generally. And the notion that the former editor of the U of MO’s liberal magazine, former Dean campaign worker and husband of a TNR reporter had to be dragged into an ideological battle only further damages whatever credibility they had.
“Get this: the Democratic Congress, you know the party controlled by the Taliban, has recently offered to increase service members’ pay, has held hearings on how to better to treat them physically and mentally when they return, and has tried to stop the war which keeps maiming and wounding them.”
OH, government will give me more $ and benes because I am an unfortunate victim of BushitliburtonCo, eh? You may be startled to learn that we aren’t a bunch of Late Middle Age Italian mercenaries or free Companies of the Thrity Year’s War looking for cash and a promise not to fight. Being called failures, hindered in our duty and talked down to might make us a bit leary of the people like John Murtha, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, and their ilk.
Didn;t Jeff tell you not to post here anymore when you crapped on a thread when SWINTBN started making trouble again? I wish that was still in force, as with heet – you have ceased to offer anything but bile. Once, in past, you tried harder – why the surrender to the easy way out?
MAJ John,
I’m firmly convinced that it’s part of the “slow bleed” strategy. Keep voting more money into maintenance acquisition, pay and benefits (and who would vote against these things) and force DoD to pay for it all from their general appropriations with no commmensurate increase. The result being dwindling funds for operations.
Make having a military too expensive to use.
BTW:
At #35 Pablo:
#40 SEK:
If one follows those links you will find that neither supports SEK’s accusation.
And if you read Malkin’s first post on STB, the very first thing she wrote is:
Which reads very much like someone not questioning whether STB was in fact a soldier. But then again, I’m nat an academic; I’m sure if you run that text through the Foucault Po-Mo Gisgronificator, it will totally support SEK’s accusation.
BONUS: Michael Goldfarb’s post that got the ball rolling never questioned whether STB was a soldier either. Moreover, in that post, Goldfarb allows that the stories may be true. But I want to highlight how Goldfarb came to write the post:
In short, Goldfarb began questioning the stories, based on things he heard from people with experience in Iraq. He then raises some of the questions I’ve repeated here, and on the basis of whether they make sense; not summarily dismissing them based on some fantasy about what soldiers’ behavior in war is like.
So who is it making the knee-jerk assumptions about others here — Malkin? Goldfarb? Or SEK?
It’s SRK, Karl. And you shouldn’t be questioning stuff like this because people’s lives have been impacted! Have a little respect, buddy.
For what, I’m not sure. But I know you should be having it, because I’ve been told so. Perhaps Scott will be so kind as to stop by again and explain why you shouldn’t question things that strike you as questionable. And if we’re lucky, he’ll exonerate Michael Yon in the process for the benefit of his moron commenters.
tw: rebuffed Germans
It might be nice if Scott addressed the sentiment of his commenters that the outrage over Beauchamp is akin to a form of “Holocaust denial” or else intended to divert attention from the Pat Tillman investigation. It would be even nicer if he weighed in on the name-calling and questioning of people’s credentials his minion Rich engaged in as part of that same comment thread.
RTO Trainer:
You base this conclusion on what?
The response by right bloggers to almost any criticism of the troops, be it from within or without: attack the critic.
So we’re back to the theme of military as predator on those who have few other choices?
I didn’t say that. It’s true that a larger majority of my graduating class enlisted than, say, that of the magnet or gifted schools. But that’s not to say the military “preyed” on them. You look at your options, you make your choices; limited options leave you with limited choices.
They did to people who, say have actually driven Bradleys. You don’t grant greater weight to that?
Obviously, I credit them. But I also trust my eyes to some extent: I think a vehicle that can do this or some of this could, in the hands well-trained and experienced soldiers, do what Thomas says they do. As for the complaint that they never would for fear of IEDs, well, if a place has already been cleared, or if in they’re somewhere they feel confident, I can easily believe they’d behave as Thomas says they did.
Still, I’m reserving judgment until I know more, since what we have now doesn’t even qualify as hearsay — we don’t know what kind of Bradley they drove, whether it had the same upgrades as the ones Thomas describes, &c.
Pablo:
Unfortunately, there’s not an ounce of knee-jerk dismissal in the Goldfarb piece.
You talk about question marks, so let me ask you:
Where were you at 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon? Do you have people who will attest to your being there? Are they trustworthy? Does anyone else know where Pablo was at 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon or know of anyone who does, and could you please email me with information or how to contact them?
Sure, I’m not calling you a liar, but I certainly am not giving you the benefit of the doubt. If this was the first thing I did after I heard about a robbery at 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon, you wouldn’t think me the most generous reader of your claim to have been at work, now would you? That is why I called it a knee-jerk reaction: their first instinct was to debunk, because it flies in the face of the image they want to protect.
In that Malkin post I hadn’t seen — I thought the one I’d linked to was her first on the matter — she even says: “To question the veracity of a soldier’s accounts of war atrocities in Iraq is not to question that such atrocities ever happen. They do.” Because they do, I’d add, our first instinct shouldn’t be to condemn the person who blows the whistle; nor should it be to punish those believed responsible for it. War is ugly, and all soldiers deserve the benefit of the doubt more than the fifth degree. (Which is what the right’s full-court press amounts to.)
You’ll note both the title of the piece and the subhead “A mission for the blogosphereâ€Â. He’s not stating that the piece is false, he’s asking for some fact checking, that which TNR should have done before they ran STB’s work.
As the entire tenor of the article shows, the “mission” was to debunk stories he’d rather not believe true. His “is it possible, well yes, but these are enlisted men” routine shows from the get-go that he’d rather not believe that enlisted soldiers could be as cruel as high schoolers in a cafeteria. That’s not “human depravity,” it’s ordinary cruelness, of the sort seen every day in lunchrooms, boardrooms, classrooms, and offices across America.
And I haven’t seen anyone of any substance who did otherwise. Have you?
As I’ve explained above, I haven’t seen anything of substance period. Some people claim Bradleys can’t be driven that way; others say they can. I choose to withhold judgment until I hear something solid. You’re free to choose to believe those who flatter what you’d like to believe, however. The world won’t end if this matter isn’t settled in the next three hours — let the military investigate, let TNR investigate, then we’ll see where we stand. (Granted, the Tillman case has horrified me, but rotten apples don’t spoil the barrel, &c.)
A. Pendragon:
I don’t need to take up for my commenters — I don’t have “minions” — they can take care of themselves. As for the charges, well, it is odd that Malkin’s said nothing about it since before the story broke, in a piece in which complains about Ted Rall; that Hot Air hasn’t covered it since April 6th, in a story about Ted Rall; that the Weekly Standard hasn’t covered it; that Instapundit hasn’t covered it — and yet they’ve all had continuing coverage of Beauchamp. Don’t you find that mighty odd? They’re not ignoring something, are they?
In short, then, I think that comment’s warranted.
And no one said it’s “akin to a form of ‘Holocaust denial'” — what was said was that it was a classic denialism — of which anti-vaccination, Holocaust, and moon-landing denialism are all also forms:
No one called anyone a Holocaust denier, as you suggest.
Still, I’m reserving judgment…
Now, that I have not seen. Especially jugdment of the monolithic “right wing bloggers” who have demonized a Soldier for telling off-color stories. That that’s not the reason for any demonization (another non-judgement judgement that I cannot credit), notwithstanding.
I’ve tried 5 different ways to explain the basis for any ire that’s been expressed and you either can’t or won’t consider it. And that’s just my meager part of this conversation.
I’ve tried to be charitable. Dan and others here credit you with an open mind; I was happy to accept their opinion. I just haven’t seen it in operation in this conversation.
Anti-war propaganda deserves every benefit of the doubt. We must reserve judgment. Beautiful Meadow’s blogging prior to his TNR writings are entirely non-dispositive. You pitiful right-wingers need to look at yourselves and ask if a victory in Iraq is worth it if it comes at the expense of maintaining an illusion that our soldiers are honorable and decent men, for that would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed. Memoirs will be written!!!11!!1!
The fascinating thing is that if no one had ever questioned the stories, the articles likely would have faded away without ever getting official attention. Instead, there’s an official investigation. If there’s truth to the claims, then the people involved will be punished. So the “fifth degree” could result in the accusations being proven true and those involved being punished.
Which, BTW, is more than STB or TNR managed to do before the doubters took notice.
Based on the comments of the milbloggers, I’d argue that seeing the guilty punished, if the accusations are true, is as much a part of the motivation as disproving the accusations. And based on the arguments of folks like SEK, I’d say it’s in the left’s interests to leave the accusations both unrefuted and unpunished; they don’t need to see the accusations proved to believe them, and if they’re real and people are punished, that makes it a bit harder for them to claim it’s condoned.
exactly. Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette touches on that in this post.
SEK,
Nor should our instinct be to accept anything we hear, without reservation. But since you’ve argued that it should, at least in the case of Beauchamp, tell me, how do you feel about Michael Yon and his reportage? Do you accept it unreservedly, and if not, why not? And if so, would you be so kind as to explain your rationale to your commenters?
And for the record, there’s still not an ounce of kneejerk dismissal in the Goldfarb piece, or from Ace or from Malkin, and yes, I can fully account for my whereabouts at 4 PM yesterday.
I was drunk as a skunk and balls deep in one of three strippers. Is there any reason for you not to believe me?
That’s just a tweak shy of iambic pentameter. I believe you.
Shorter SEK: It is perfectly legitimate for my commenters to question the credibility and motivations of current or former military men RTO and Pablo in the context of a post condemning those who question the credibility and motivation of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, anguished soldier. My commenters did not say that questioning the veracity of Beauchamp’s account was “Holocaust denial,” just that it is akin to Holocaust Denial, or doubting the truth of Apollo 11. It’s hardly surprising that military people would behave in a chow hall like high school kids.
Can’t you see he cares for the poor, misbegotten killbots?
Odd, I’ve never known SEK to wander off on random rants; not, at least, without some intimation of what the resulting point might be.
So, something like that might be in order, Scott. Because what Pablo may or may not have been doing at some random time of your choosing has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand, as far as I can see.
RTO Trainer:
Yes, you have seen me reserve judgment: ask me whether I think STB’s account is 1) accurate, 2) accurate but embellished, 3) inaccurate, or 4) we lack evidence enough to make such a determination at this time.
Rob Crawford:
You #120 makes a damn fine point, one that we ought to keep in mind before slipping into partisan rhetoric: namely, that from the get-go, it was impossible to predict the political fallout from STB’s stories. They were published in a pro-war liberal magazine — which says something in and of itself — and they belong to a literary genre which has as many, maybe even more, fans on the right side of the aisle than the left. In other words, I don’t think you can say, as in #119, that this is patently anti-war propaganda.
Pablo:
I’m not saying “accept anything we hear,” although it’s an odd sentiment to hear coming from a conservative. I don’t mean that as slander, merely that after years of saying we ought to trust this administration, despite the fact that they’ve regularly and depravedly misled the public again and again. Another way to put it: I have more faith in the words of a soldier serving in Iraq than I do in any politician, but especially any of them who have worked in this administration.
I don’t accept Thomas’ account, or anyone else’s, “unreservedly.” I’m “reserving judgment until I know more.” You act as if I’ve said “believe whatever the troops say, even — nay! especially when weaponized unicorns are involved. I’m saying, to repeat myself, “until someone proffers hard evidence that the claims of any soldier are inaccurate, I think they ought to be given the benefit of the doubt.” Is this clear now, or shall I continue to quote myself ad infinitum?
A. Pandragon:
Before I begin, way to acknowledge you dropped the ball on the Tillman thing. I think one of the reasons people here can stand me is that I admit when I wrong — as I did above, when I made an effort to note that I hadn’t seen the first Malkin article. Honesty’s not a requirement for online debates, but it does make them more constructive.
As for your point: I’m not questioning the credibility or motivations of Pablo or RTO Trainer. If they offerred a firsthand account of what they’d seen, I’d put stock in it. In this situation, they’re doing the same thing I am — namely, commenting on something they read. His exasperation notwithstanding, I’ve treated RTO Trainer with respect, i.e. given him the same benefit of the doubt I gave STB. And Pablo? Well, I treat Pablo like Pablo, but such is life.
Slartibartfast:
Sorry that wasn’t clear: my point is that rattling off a list of questions doubting the authenticity of a story is a way of communicating disbelief. It’s the knee-jerk reaction of someone who believes, in their gut, that someone else is lying. Pablo said otherwise, so I thought I’d remove the STB issue from its context and place it in another, i.e. a dectective questioning a potential suspect because he finds his story, well, potentially suspect.
All that said, I thought it might be constructive to look at the evidence again:
First, there are the anonymous stories from soldiers currently stationed at FOB Falcon. They put “Scott Thomas” in quotation marks. This could mean many things: FOB Falcon is large enough that they don’t know STB, since they didn’t recognize his pseudonym. It is, after all, nothing but his name. If they don’t know STB, that suggests that there are enough people moving in and out of FOB Falcon that the woman STB described could have been there and been unknown to the people who also don’t know STB.
Second, the anonymous soldier writes:
The anonymous contractor agrees:
They say this as if it refutes STB’s story. It doesn’t. Last we hear, “[t]he disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.” For all we know, the beatdown the two anonymous conrtibutors suggest should take place did take place. So that’s an evidentiary non-starter.
Third, STB claims to find “children’s bones: tiny cracked tibias and shoulder blades.” He continues: “[n]o one cared to speculate what, exactly happened here,” then he does exactly that, speculating that “it was clearly a Saddam-era dumping ground of some sort.” As to the evidence, the first anonymous correspondent verifies it as fact:
Soldiers in STB’s unit did find the remains of children. The issue then is not whether STB is lying about what he found, but whether his interpretation of it is incorrect. So STB’s factually accurate, but he misinterprets the evidence. Is it possible that he was simply never corrected, i.e. that no one ever informed his unit that they’d found a cemetary instead of a dumping ground?
Fourth, the anonymous soldier writes:
He did so, however, before Thomas identified himself as STB. Presumably, STB knows what this anonymous soldier does about the ACH, since they both wear them. You’ll note, though, that STB says “[t]he private wore the skull for the rest of the day and night,” i.e. on his head, without his helmet. You can tell because it sets up the contrast in the next sentence: “[e]ven on a mission, he put his helmet over the skull.” No one would refute that a person can place a piece of skull on the crown of his head and walk around with it, so as the verifiable part of the story, STB is in the clear. Furthermore, no one would refute that a person can’t see what someone else has on under his or her helmet. In the next sentence, STB relates that “[the private] observed that he was grateful his hair had just been cut.” In other words, the private is talking about wearing the fragment under his helmet. Whether he actually is is another matter entirely from him saying he is.
The Bradley thing’s debatable — I’m still waiting to hear back from a friend who drives one, both about the possibility of doing what STB described and on the differences between Bradleys — so I’m reserving judgment on that one. But as it stands, there’s no proof STB lied, only that he may have wrong and/or misled. All the rest is speculation (as to the beatdown that did/did not follow the mockery), speculative character assassination (“He must be lying because he wants to be a writer,” &c.), and bizarre wishful thinking (there are bad apples, shit happens, but the brass doesn’t stand for them or allow it to happen, therefore there are no bad apples and no shit happens).
I’m not all that much of a conservative, though I don’t see that as a conservative trait, either. I see that as the mark of someone who already knows what they want to believe, before ever analyzing the new information, regardless of political stripe. It exists across the spectrum, and it’s intellectual laziness/dishonesty more than anything else.
While “politician” is nearly synonymous with “bullshit artist”, the case for particularly egregious prevarication is largely overstated. I generally find this to be true because upon asking someone selling it to quote the particular “lies” they’re paraphrasing, they nearly always fail to do it. “Bush lied!” about WMD in Iraq, and Saddam being behind 9/11 are terribly common refrains. But the former was widely believed to be true and I’ve seen little to no evidence to indicate that Bush knew it wasn’t any more than the dozens of Dems who said the same thing did. As for the latter, he never said it, nor did anyone in his administration. I think the guy believes the vast majority of what he says and if there’s a higher standard for measuring honesty in a politician, I’d like to know what it is. But I don’t blindly accept anything, and I haven’t seen a persuasive argument that anyone should. When you have to invent lies to put in his mouth, the problem is not with the president.
How can you say that when you object to the simple fact that people questioned his account? And if I may quote you, on this thread:
What is that if not unreserved acceptance? Even of it isn’t true, we ought to believe it. What reservations underlie that statement?
No, you can simply explain the quote above. And, if you would be so kind, you can either identify the knee-jerk, out-of-hand dismissal you objected to but that has not yet been found, or acknowledge that there was none and tell us what’s really bothering you.
SEK: so your thesis is that Beauchamp just happened to innocently misinterpret the situation, and that this…er… ‘misinterpretation’ just happened to be the one that reflected the maximum possible discredit on U.S. forces?
At the very least, that would seem to call Beauchamp’s journalistic skills and objectivity into question, wouldn’t you say?
I suppose we could accept your hypothesis (followed by returning to a belief in Santa Claus, since it’s impossible to disprove that he exists).
Alternatively, we could take the advice of William of Ockham and conclude that the most parsimonious hypothesis that fits the known facts is that Beauchamp is a lying shitstain.
You don’t believe that line of BS yourself, SEK. Why in the world would you expect anyone else to believe it?
Pablo:
Further upthread, I already clarified that:
That’s conditional belief as a moral imperative, i.e. don’t disbelieve what a grunt says because a grunt’s saying it. That’s not unqualifed, unreserved, unfailing belief forever. You can harp on what is, admittedly, a poorly worded sentence, but I think my point is abundantly clear.
As for the knee-jerk, it’s already been explained and reexplained, so I’ll quote myself:
That’s knee-jerk disbelief. And before you start screaming that “SEK wants it to be true because he hates the war/soldiers/&c.,” pray keep in mind my original post, in which I argued that, if true, nothing in STB’s account should turn you against the war or the soldiers. In fact, I said exactly the opposite. Perhaps others do, but I don’t. If you want to follow that line of thought, I recommend you speak to them instead of me.
Same goes for the motley lot of Spies, Brigands, and Pirates:
My thesis, such that it is, is that even if what Beauchamp said is 100 percent true, it doesn’t do any discredit to U.S. Forces. A representative quotation:
Another:
You can read my first post and all my comments for further verification if you so desire.
As for this:
It’s a first-person account of the war on the ground. When the person reporting’s a soldier himself, what he knows will necessarily be limited to, well, what he knows. If those above him don’t want to answer his questions, they don’t have to. You can question the value of a first-person account, certainly, but you also have to accept its limitations. For example, someone recounts an acrimonious divorce in his autobiography. He couldn’t go interview his ex because she wouldn’t talk to him. So he recounts, as best he can, what he remembers happened. He dies. His biographer approaches his ex, gets her story, and weaves the two accounts together. Now, the latter’s more accurate, more objective; but does that make the autobiography useless? Isn’t his emotional account of what happened important in and of itself, inasmuch as it tells us about him? Same thing for STB: he might not have been told what they found, but his reaction to what he thought it was — a Saddam-era dumping ground — is important.
All that said, for the reasons listed above, I don’t think anyone can prove STB lied, at least not yet.
It’s a first-person account of the war on the ground.
Uh-huh. And the tooth fairy really put that quarter under my pillow when I was six. Disprove it if you can.
Next.
Do you really want to get into this?
It’s not a first-person account of the war on the ground? It’s not written in the first-person? It’s not written in a section called “Baghdad Diarist”?
Consider yourself disproved.
Indeed.
It’s my first-hand account.
Tooth Fairy Diarist
The tooth fairy left me a quarter. I saw it.
First-hand account (I was there, man!).
Written in the first person.
I even entitled it “Tooth Fairy Diarist” for that extra dollop of credibility.
So, if I send this to TNR they’ll publish it, and you’ll assume that it’s true until proven otherwise. Right? Right?
As already noted, you don’t even believe your own bullshit.
So, how do you feel about Michael Yon’s dispatches?
No one questioned it because a grunt said it. It wasn’t believable to people in a position to know, and some of it was simply too overwrought. Do you really think Beauchamp is a good writer? Does his prose not strike you as overly purple? I mean, dismembered doggies smiling at the sun? Come on, now.
So it’s your first-person account of the Tooth Fairy, written in a first-person column entitled “Tooth Fairy Diarist.” The issue isn’t whether it’s in the first person, but whether you’re a credible person. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But you have written a first-person account.
What you’re saying is either 1) that first-person accounts are inherently worthless — which I’d disagree with — or 2) that this particular first-person account is suspect because of the person who wrote it — which I’ll neither agree nor disagree with yet, as there isn’t enough evidence. I’ll add that, so far, STB’s hasn’t been caught lying: first, the right said he didn’t exist. He did. Then, the right said he lied about the finding children’s bones. He didn’t. Now, he’s being challenged on every last detail, and so far, he’s come up clean: the “square-backed” issue fizzled, and it appears he was wrong about the Iraqi police only having glocks … but being wrong isn’t willful deception. You can’t prove his actions are akin to those of the “Tooth Fairy Diarist.” The most you can do right now, with the evidence available, is say that he’s made some mistakes. Unless, of course, you have access to information the rest of us don’t, in which case, and by all means, share.
Sorry, forgot to address this. I don’t read Yon regularly, but I’ve always found his stuff worth the time it takes to read it, even if it is a bit too passionately Semper Fi.
As I mentioned earlier vis-a-vis the ambiguous paragraph transition, no, I don’t think he’s a particularly talented writer. He aims for a style and misses, mostly wildly.
Quick note: I said those two paragraphs weren’t necessarily related, Karl said they obviously were but presented no evidence outside of one-follows-the-other. (Which isn’t much in a genre that values juxtaposition.) Turns out, Karl was correct: the mention of the shovels and sandbags in both paragraphs means that they were part of the same scene. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s poorly written. It is.
This is why the benefit of the doubt is important: we have no idea what the dynamics in that unit are. It could be that this private’s not altogether there, you know, mentally, and that other people choose to laugh at him because he also happens to be large and prone to violence; or it could be that he’s the son of someone up the chain of command and they have no choice but to play along; or it could be that they aren’t laughing with him but at him, because they know some formal reprimand is on the way; or it could be that their sense of humor has taken a turn for the absurd; &c. All I’m saying is, I see no indication in the article that STB respects this private, all I see is that, for some reason, no one feels the desire to rat him out — for whatever reason: loyalty, black levity, you name it. Who am I to question these soldiers when I don’t know the context in which these actions occurred? (And, as I’ve said, even if the context is “merely” war, that’s context enough for me.)
I don’t know, nor does anyone who doesn’t belong to those categories. For all we know, he could’ve told the people in his unit what he was doing, and they behaved how they’ve seen soldiers behave in war movies.
Yes, but these are people who admit to not knowing STB either, ergo he wasn’t stationed at FOB Falcon? No, he was, that’s been confirmed. Since the three people — and I’ve only seen three other people from FOB Falcon say anything, and one of them was a contractor — who didn’t see that women also didn’t see STB, it stands to reason that they weren’t there at the same time STB was, and therefore didn’t see the people STB saw. The fact that three other people haven’t been able to corroborate STB’s account isn’t surprising.
There are only a hundred people in my department, but if I teach Tuesday/Thursday mornings and someone else teachers Monday/Wednesday/Friday afternoons, there’s a good chance I’ll never cross paths with that person. If someone who also teaches Tuesday/Thursday morning is in a wheelchair and you ask all the people who teach Tuesday/Thursday afternoons and Monday/Wednesday/Friday afternoons, they wouldn’t be able to corroborate my statement that one of my coworkers is wheelchair bound.
That doesn’t cut it in today’s military, and you’re also talking about not just one or two, but at least several comrades who turned a blind eye to this behavior, if it occurred. As many, if not all, of the active duty people who have chimed in have said, someone would have delivered a smackdown upon these wayward privates. That no one did, especially in the crowded chow hall, does not ring true.
You would if you listened to what they have to say. You don’t need to wait for a memoir. You may listen to them now. Many of them have spoken about this. And I can assure you that if these stories are true there are numerous UCMJ violations detailed in them and disciplinary action will ensue.
The vast majority of soldiers are going to behave as they’re trained to behave. Neither Full Metal Jacket nor Band of Brothers is going to be a driving frame of reference for them. Intensive training will be, which is why we do so much of it.
No, a typical Private is like a grain of sand on a beach of grunts to most people other than those in his unit. You wouldn’t pay particular attention to him unless there were a reason to. This mystery woman is a freak with a half melted face. Let’s go to Beauchamp:
That is a woman who stands out in a crowd, especially given that military personnel in Iraq wear nothing but their uniforms. Civilians wear no uniforms. Do you not see the difference between having seen her and knowing who Beauchamp is? Of course you do.
Do all of the people in your department live, eat and sleep on campus? Obviously not, but what happens to the odds you speak of if they did? And what are the odds that if one of them were hideously disfigured that you’d be completely oblivious to that fact?
You want Beauchamp to be telling the truth, Scott. All indications are that he is not, and I expect that we’ll soon have that confirmed. Meanwhile, if you want to see some of the potential nastiness you’re talking about, you can find it realized here. You’ll also see a story that was initially reported by a soldier, was put into the public domain by the military, was all too true, and in which people turned on the soldiers involved and were perfectly justified in doing so.
Our own Major John and RTO Trainer are among them, btw.
Please note that SEK’s sole response to the points I made was to admit that I was right about the graveyard story. Which means that, by SEK’s own admission, the skull story seems fishy. Which is what what many thought, which is what got the ball rolling here. SEK is arguing this was knee-jerk, all evidence to the contrary. And for someone who claimed to be not defending Beauchamp, he’s expended enormous energy doing so. Sadly, my estimation of SEK drops with just about every post he’s made on this. Which I mention not because SEK would care what I think, but given that he misread STB’s piece and others did not, he might want to reevaluate whose biases are more evident here.
Karl, yes, I admitted I was wrong. That means I must be dishonest in everything else I say because, well, because I’m honest when I make a mistake. Proof positive that I’m fraud and liar — defending Beauchamp, despite all the evidence not against him! — and a bad reader to boot. If I had stuck to my guns, insisted on winning an internet debate, I could’ve kept the appearance of dignity and integrity. Alas!
Also, I love that you’ve turned STB’s ambiguity into evidence of my bias. I’m biased against what now, exactly? Wait, I thought a soldier merely took the skull of long-dead adult, as opposed to a more-recently killed child. That shows that I hate the troops, because, um, because I think better of them instead of worse. You sure as shit showed this liberal, let me tell you.
Seriously, if you really want to use the fact that I admit my mistakes against, go ahead. I’m sure that has traction among those who want it to.
Pablo, at this point we’re circling the drain. You say we’ll find out soon enough, and as I said above, “The world won’t end if this matter isn’t settled in the next three hours  let the military investigate, let TNR investigate, then we’ll see where we stand.” I’m reserving judgment for the moment, 1) because the evidence against Beauchamp isn’t persuasive, much less conclusive, and 2) because my sympathies always set on the soldiers in the field.
I suppose I should believe, I don’t know, someone other than the soldiers from now on, as they’re all partisan hacks with hidden agendas, unlike Malkin, Ace, and that lot, who are objective and know what it’s like for, um, someone or other on the ground.
Don’t forget to accuse Ace, Malkin, and partisan hacks like myself to be focused on this because of our grand effort to obscure the Pat Tillman story, SEK – your commenters floated that theory, and you’ve pretty much endorsed it as such in your comments here.
While you’re telling us how fair-minded and reasonable you are, that is.
That should be “accuse …. Of being focused,” but I was distracted by an IM from the Dark Lord Rove informing me of the next phase of our ongoing plan to cover up the facts regarding the death of Tillman.
And, of course, that should have been a lower-case “o” on “of,” but I was busily engaged in hacking into various Right-leaning blogs and removing any mention of the Tillman story from them.
As directed.
As part of the conspiracy.
…even if what Beauchamp said is 100 percent true, it doesn’t do any discredit to U.S. Forces.
Your thesis is flawed. You can decide that you don’t find discredit, but you can’t decide that no discredit accrues. Especially not through the prism of the values that US Forces are supposed to live.
If absolutely nothing else, it does discredit to US Forces in the eyes of US Forces.
And perhaps that’s the disconnect, if not just between you and me, but between the commenting public and the military (milbloggers in particular). I’ve got a set of rules that I’m supposed to live by and that I’m supposed to ensure that my subordinates live by and that I’m supposed to help my superiors remember too. Civilian anaologs are more vague and generally multiple choice or buffet style, or simply not uppermost in the civilian mind or something.
PV2 Beauchamp screwed the Army Values, in a big way, no matter how the veracity of anything he wrote shakes out. Even if 100% true, he described conduct that was not courageous or selfless. Perhaps by not ratting his frineds out or issuing the correction himself, he could be said to have shown loyalty to his immediate peers, but he failed in that respect to all other servicemen. If, as you suggest, he simply didn’t tell about the ass chewing that should have been received over the (and a zero for respect) chowhall incident (and not knowing his sobriquet is an indication of nothing–there are Soldier’s I’ve known for years by nothing more than rank and last name, let alone having a clue as to anyone’s middle name) then he still failed in the honesty department–portraying that that kind of behavior was, or could be tollerated.
No values. No integrity. No class.
If we drop these standards, then it’s easy to grant “benefit of the doubt” I suppose, but that’s not negotiable. All of us miss these marks from time to time, and a junior troop is expected to. But to completley miss on all 7 counts, and to do it so publicly and in such a climate…. And that’s if he’s told the truth 100% in what he’s written.
TW: margins degree Nope. Just a bright line.
first, the right said he didn’t exist.
Who said? Other than the monolithic “right.”
Is there something inherently wrong with questioing the veracity of this? You say you want more evidence, but you yell every time a pertinent question (to include, is this guy even real, apparently) is asked.
Benefit of the doubt, does not mean to cease articulating doubts.
This is why the benefit of the doubt is important: we have no idea what the dynamics in that unit are.
No. It doesn’t matter what the dynamics in that unit are. The dynamics that are important here are not a matter of choice. They either follow or fail to follow the Army values. If they fail to do so, this is not an excuse and no benefit of the doubt can or should shield anyone.
I note that you are now making a laundry list of suppositions that (to anyone not familiar with those values) might exculpate. How is this different than making a list of reasons that might indict? You’ve condemned the latter.
And, as I’ve said, even if the context is “merely†war, that’s context enough for me.
But it’s not your judgment to make.
Pablo, Civilians wear no uniforms. Yeah, they often do. They are issued DCUs and the tapes say CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR or USACE on them. Thety are not required to wear these, but they may. It’s another thing that doesn’t ring true that this strange unform would be unrecognizable. My initial thought was that she might be a member of a foreign service, but then she’d be armed (another “not quite true” detail–not being able to tell if civilian or military–firearms are a fairly obvious shiboleth).
The whole “you people doubted he existed” line is a red herring. Sure, people doubted he existed; the details were off, the language was off, the behavior was off. There’s nothing invalid about starting the inquiry from the first, critical point: does the source actually exist?
To proclaim that, because people doubted the jerk’s existence they’re somehow not acting honestly is to try to shut down debate. The left desperately wants STB’s stories to be true; if not, then why are they expending so much effort defending him?
The issue isn’t whether it’s in the first person, but whether you’re a credible person. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t.
What you’re saying is either 1) that first-person accounts are inherently worthless  which I’d disagree with  or 2) that this particular first-person account is suspect because of the person who wrote it  which I’ll neither agree nor disagree with yet, as there isn’t enough evidence.
Of course, I’m saying neither of those things. Don’t give yourself a hernia setting up those straw men.
It seems to me that you hold two theses: 1) “I won’t accept the Tooth Fairy Diarist because I have no evidence that the story is true, or that the narrator is credible” and, at the same time 2) “I will accept the Baghdad Diarist, because I have no evidence that the story is false, or that the narrator is unreliable”.
Nice trick. I’ll bet you get dizzy a lot, huh?
Scott Beauchamp is circling the drain. I’m just watching.
Are you seriously that comprehension challenged, Scott? Or are you just slinging strawmwen due to your lack of a credible argument to support YOUR COMPLAINT which has mow morphed so many times you don’t even seem able to recognize it? I distinctly recall saying, in my last post:
Military members, not pundits, scant few of whom are proffering first hand knowledge. There are plenty of them you can listen to, right now, and yet the strength of their convictions seems to move you not at all whereas you crumble in awe before the honesty of Scott Beauchamp, who, we’ll recall, did not simply report the chow hall incident, but was the primary participant:
Now, you can choose to believe that, or you can choose to believe this:
You can’t believe both.