The trouble is: Leveraging Sunni tribes against al Qaeda is not the stuff of which war-stories are easily made. -AS
My objection to Kaplan is more fundamental than that. How does one square, "It's my job to fight." (his quote) with 'I'm your hero' (his hope)? I can see if it one said, "It's my duty to fight", but ...
Not that I don't think there are some soldiers who feel as he says. God knows, we got a good dose of that when that crew from the guard put up the sign to candidate Kerry, that basically said, "F-U, John, we're not stcuk in I-rak".
Meanwhile, I cannot believe he wrote that whole piece and ignored the "phase" of the conflict that brought us the DoD's wartime propaganda at the expense of every major media outlet, namely the "rescue" of private Lynch. It's 2007. No one is going to go for 1940s "Newsreels", although I have no doubt that SecDef may have thought he might just get away with that.
Last, and most importantly, I don't think that people are uninterested in wartime stories of valor or that such stories are being censored by frameworks of 'victimhood'. It's just not clear that they are the news that people want, need, or are getting fed.
Here is a sample of what I mean. It's worth the scan, trust me. I'd love to have Kaplan's thoughts on this simple comparison.
