Yon Owes Us More
For years, I’ve argued with Michael Yon. I’ve also defended Michael Yon. I’ve even tried to settle milblogger spats involving Michael Yon.
But I’ve never been disappointed with a post submitted by Yon until his recent telegraph to our readers, “Time to Leave Afghanistan.”
Perhaps “Time to Leave” was hastily scribbled. It’s certainly brief. And both of those factors might’ve conspired to make the effort so lamentably bad. But we can’t end our criticism of it there.
That’s because Mike apparently is now making statements he’s never trotted out so prominently before: 1) In the balance of expenditures and benefits, the war now costs us too much blood and treasure; 2) By spending billions of dollars there, we’re losing out on opportunities more valuable to American security; 3) It’s time for Afghan security forces and the central government to stand up and fight, and we’re retarding that; 4) Pakistan shall never become an ally of the U.S.; 5) We’re not “serious” about winning the war; 6) The mostly Pashto-speaking peoples in rebellion have a home court advantage we can’t surmount; and, between the lines, 7) Much of our failure in Kabul can be traced to the change in leadership from U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus to U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen.
I’ve been highly critical of the way the International Security Assistance Force has sold their lint-brained measurements of “progress” in Afghanistan and the so-called “strategy” confected by our betters, not to mention the careerist and financially-motivated salesmen pushing a generation-long conflict there. But I’ve remained agnostic on the question of whether our nation should be fighting the Taliban, largely because I think to express an opinion one way or the other on that would put me way out of my lane.
The strong distaste I have for Michael’s piece isn’t based on my own beliefs about staying in one’s lane, however, but rather is tied to the lack of seriousness in his analysis and an even greater deficit in personal accountability for his past statements.
I say this because Yon consistently has been one of the loudest cheerleaders for the very policies that led to the downward “trajectory” he now derides and he has to own that.
This isn’t to say that I hate flip-floppers or the art of waffling. I’ve sure changed my mind on any number of issues over the years, which might explain why I’m driving a car with a freakin’ bud vase in it. But when someone as prominent as Yon comes out with a call to speed the withdrawal of American forces we deserve more than a shrug and a retort, “because I said so.”
Yon should tell us when the tipping point came that made our blood-soaked expenditures override the benefits of continuing the conflict. He should pinpoint the opportunity costs lost elsewhere by investing billions in Kabul. He must explain how the American government, military and people lack “seriousness” in a war that has killed or maimed many thousands of our troops and consumed hundreds of billions of our tax dollars, not to mention how greater effort could overcome other problems he has identified as today’s deal breakers.
Moreover, if we accept Michael at his word here, then he seems to be seriously suggesting that things were going swimmingly under Petraeus and on Sept. 7, the day after King David was sworn in as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, it all went to hell.
That’s so implausible that it causes us to question his ability to analyze the war he’s been covering for the better part of a decade. If he can’t come up with smarter analysis than that then we’re left with the uncomfortable fact that Yon has other reasons for asking us to leave Kabul.
And they’re not pretty.
*****
Gentle readers, as you know I’ve published many critical articles here about Yon’s recent toil in Afghanistan. While I’ve praised his reporting on the scourge of IEDs and his gritty combat correspondence with our junior troops, I’ve long challenged his rosy assessments of success in the murky counterinsurgency war and his call for us to keep fighting for decades there.
In June, for example, Michael was telling us that ISAF was making “undeniable progress” and we could never leave Afghanistan because we can’t “unjump” from our decision to “Surge” troops there.
“Our people are fighting as you read this,” he added, draping himself in Old Glory and the troops. “When we ordered our military to go, we cloaked ourselves in great responsibility to support them and to achieve success.”
When it came to questions about the perfidy of Hamid Karzai’s kleptocracy in Kabul or our own efforts to grow competent and tough Afghan Security Forces, Michael merely blurted that “shouting at an oak tree will not make it grow faster,” and begged us to sit back and enjoy this “century-long process” to success.
In yesterday’s piece Michael fretted about “wasting lives and resources,” but only six months ago he urged Petraeus to forgo “any consideration of the U.S. economy, the debt or jobs in America” when advising the president because the general “is the man in the arena” and the rest of us just don’t count.
He closed his June piece with a saccharin admonition to keep fighting and dying so that a 4-year-old tot playing near his laptop could grow up and go to college.
Well, I said it then and I’ll repeat it now because my perspective hasn’t changed:
I just think our dead and those who are going to die tonight deserve a damn bit better than some hokum about a 4-year-old girl in Kabul, giddy hero worship of a four-star and a hollow pledge to give a century-long commitment of our nation’s best men and women to everlasting war in Afghanistan, a nation that really doesn’t seem to care as much about the war as we do.
On the bright side, I guess Yon has 100 years to get it right.
A few weeks later, Michael doubled down on his pitch, assuring us in July that the “war in Afghanistan is turning around in our favor. After nearly five years of yelling at the top of my lungs that we are losing, it’s a relief to write these words with confidence.”
Well, Mike’s confidence didn’t last 100 years. His over-the-top horseshi**ery didn’t survive a whopping six months.
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So, what happened in those weeks? I mean, how did we go so quickly from certain victory to absolute defeat?
The oplan Gen. Allen is using is pretty similar to the one cooked up by Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal when the former was running CENTCOM and the latter was running his big, fat, stupid mouth to Rolling Stone. So that ain’t it.
The brutal recession the U.S. is mired in isn’t all that better or worse now than it was in July, and I can’t imagine that there have been any urgent global crises demanding more American ground forces, unless Mike knows something I don’t about Korea or Iran.
Pakistani perfidy is no more obvious today than it was in July. There likely are just as many Pathans who hate foreign occupation and Karzai’s kleptocracy now as there were a mere six months ago, too.
Sure, our SEALs double-tapped Osama bin Laden, but that had zero effect on the larger counterinsurgency fight against the various Taliban.
While I respect Yon very much, it would be intellectually and ethically wrong for me to hold back. So I’ll just put it out there: The only freakin’ thing that’s really changed over the past half-year in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that the U.S. Army disembedded Michael Yon.
His slot got nixed three weeks after Petraeus left for Langley.
I strongly suspect that the primary reason the Army pulled it was because Michael asked hard questions about the service’s Medevac policy in the wake of the tragic death of Chazray Clark. When I and Military.com demanded the Army explain why they booted Yon, they wouldn’t even respond , so the lingering suspicion holds and it’s not going to change until commanders answer a few simple questions about their decision.
All of this nevertheless puts me in a pickle.
On one hand, I think the Army’s decision to remove Mike was cavalier and – without any explanation for the embed’s termination — it borders on cowardice. So I can’t fault him for that. I also would have to admit that his writings on this blog have been some of the best things posted here, so I’ve benefited as much as anyone from Mike’s time and energy. Plus I think that he’s identified an ongoing Medevac problem in Afghanistan, sparking a wider public debate on a crucial issue. And I like the guy personally because he’s one of the nicest, most decent men I’ve ever met.
But that still doesn’t mean that Mike has a right to huff and call for an end to the war just because he got kicked out of Afghanistan and the Army slaps at him instead of dealing with the Medevac crisis.
Normally, I wouldn’t challenge him on this point, but he often makes his journalism as much about him as the war so I think it’s fair.
Sometimes that emphasis on personal reporting is great because it gives us a unique perspective on the war from the eyelevel of the grunt. Other times, however, we’re left with him essentially yelling “trust me!” as he calls for a century of bloodletting because we’ve turned the corner and we’re winning and he swears Petraeus is a genius and blah blah blah.
When you personalize your journalism and your battlefield predictions you must make yourself accountable when both of them fall apart.
So the time has come. Michael Yon, you should admit that you were wrong on Afghanistan. If you can’t do that, then you have to better explain why you were right and it all went to hell anyway.
Either way, you must get off your ass and give your readers here a little more than an index card worth of analysis and a whopping thimble of accountability.
And they shouldn’t have to wait a century for it.
Tags: Afghanistan, CIA, David Petraeus, Michael Yon
