Despite being the Stupidest Man on Earth, I’m sometimes right, and it hurts every time.
Last week I predicted that as the demand for news from Iraq drops, the hacks now covering that war will emigrate to Afghanistan. Now it turns out that, after pronouncing the Iraq war “won”, the inimitable Michael “We’re Winning” Yon is on his way to Kabul and beyond. I guess we’ll be winning that one, too, in no time.
To be honest, I haven’t read Yon for a while. He’s well connected within the top echelons of MNF-I, some of his dispatches are diligently researched and not badly written, and the INTSUMs he published were priceless to detail freaks like myself. I can even put up with his self-aggrandisement and melodramatic embellishments. But then there’s stuff like this:
Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory – and a democracy in the Arab world – is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.
I have no other way of saying this: You haven’t won shit. You’ve just cleaned up after yourselves. Yes, your military has proved flexible and imaginative beyond all expectations. But you don’t deserve praise for that any more than my five-year-old does for putting his Legos back in the box after a day’s play.
I find this extremely funny. Yon is a propagandist. Goodluck building a case for that to any of his friends; you can’t actually get a word in edgewise over the “BUT HE EMBEDDED WITH THE TROOPS.”
Actually Josh if you read Yon’s work you’d know the military refused to let him embed because he wasn’t a propagandist but rather openly discussed the many failures.
Also Yon went to AFG in 2006 and wrote 5 dispatches opened a Pandora’s box when he wrote that Afhanistan was failing and we were losing that war quickly.
Might me nice if both you and Jari actually had your facts straight. But why deal with facts when you both worship at the alter of jealousy and stupidity!
Yon is hardly a propagandist – unless you call his dispatches from both Iraq and AFG in 2006 which spotlighted bad news and failures, as propaganda.
But then again most asshats think that anyone that speaks of success ALONG with failures is promoting propaganda.
As for not winning…seems like the entire Mainstream Media, and even the Messiah himself, Obama, not only acknowledge we have won but NOW want Petreaus to implement a similar surge in AFG.
Who the f&*k do you think you are, douchebag? Yon a ‘propagantist’? Are you kidding me? You don’t deserve to lick the boots of this great man. What a tool you are.
Thanks for the lively comments, and apologies for my belated response.
I don’t know if Yon is a propagandist or a great man (I guess one could be both, depending on the perspective), but I think we agree he sure commands a dedicated following!
Yon has done a commendable job in portraying the modern U.S. military at war, and I’m sure future historians will deem his first-person contributions valuable. The fact that he comes across as a bit of a buffoon in no way diminishes this. Actually, I think it’s kind of entertainingly American…
But if he aspires to become the Ernie Pyle of his generation, he has a long way to go. First and foremost, he should cut down on the patriotic huffing and puffing. It’s okay when reporting on Afghanistan; after all, it’s your war (I assume you guys are American). But when it comes to Iraq, you’re not going to get any breaks from me. You had no business invading that country, and after screwing things up (most of your national security establishment now agrees you did), you expect a big hooray from me for cleaning up???
There’s no reason for the “we’re winning” baloney. What I want to hear instead is “sorry for the mess, we’ll do our best to put it right”. If an apology is not forthcoming, just shut up and concentrate on the job at hand, which in Yon’s case is reporting the facts and just the facts.
I’d like to add that as it happens, I was also in Afghanistan in 2006, and you had to be blind not to realise the war was going to hell. There wasn’t a day the flag in the Finnish camp in Kabul wasn’t flying half mast for an ISAF casualty somewhere. To continue the slightly out-of-whack metaphor, there was no “Pandora’s box” for Yon to open — the deteriorating situation was big news.