Another Runaway General? Hardly…
Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators says Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone. My first take on the article boils down to this – Hastings did not write this story, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Holmes did and right now that is all we have – along with a few quotable quotes by Major Laural Levine, who worked for Holmes. Hastings provided the sensationalism and now this story is viral.
It’s time for a timeout on this. General Petraeus has ordered an investigation so let’s back off the prosecutor, judge and jury speculation, please. I want the Paul Harvey version of the ‘rest of the story’.
Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell has, arguably, the toughest and most important job in Afghanistan — training the Afghanistan Security Forces so they — not us — can fight the good fight. General Caldwell, I know him and respect him, takes his job to heart and frankly, given the cards he has been dealt, is doing a damn fine job.
Andrew Exum, at Abu Muqawama – Stay classy, Michael Hastings! – has given us permission to repost his first take on this affair:
One of the ugliest sentences you will ever read in a piece of journalism:
Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban.
That is not a quote from someone else — those words belong to the journalist himself. Classy. I would recommend reading Michael Hastings’ dispatches for Rolling Stone not as sober journalism but as particularly poorly sourced policy papers. Essentially Michael Hastings is doing bad think tank policy analysis with a little character assassination thrown in for extra measure.
When policy analysis is done well, it starts with a research question and then constructs methodology and accumulates data to test an initial hypothesis. When policy analysis is done poorly, the researcher just cherry-picks data to support his desired argument and doesn’t ask basic epistemological questions that might call into question the researcher’s assumptions or conclusions. Michael Hastings is doing the latter. He obviously has a desired policy preference, and he is cherry-picking the sources that would support that preference. He’s obviously not above taking a grotesque cheap shot at a respected senior officer, either.
[In the interests of full disclosure, I should add that Joe Busch, who is one of the officers mentioned in the cited article, is a friend of mine. Also, I once met with LTG Caldwell at CNAS before he took command of NTM-A. But the number of times I have met LTG Caldwell at CNAS is equal to the number of times I have met Michael Hastings at CNAS.]
I’ll also leave you with some food for thought from Tom Ricks at his Best Defense blog:
… The article is by Michael Hastings, who popped Gen. McChrystal and seems to be looking for another scalp. That is OK by me. Aggressive journalism is a good thing, and has a role to play especially when the military falters in self-examination.
The cowpie Caldwell stepped into is that there is no clear bright line between using “public affairs” to manipulate Americans and using “information operations” to manipulate others. The skills employed are basically the same, and the internet has ensured that information flows easily and quickly across national borders. Plant a story in an Iraqi paper, and the Baghdad bureaus of the major American newspapers would read it and perhaps write about it within 24 hours. Not a problem — unless the story were false. Not supposed to lie to the American people.
This ambiguity has been hanging out there for several years. It is aggressive generals like Caldwell who are running afoul of it. Guys who simply are passive don’t get into trouble in today’s military…
That’s right guys and gals, being aggresive is NOT bucking for the next star – it’s putting it on the line. Give me an aggressive general anytime over a passive risk-adverse company man.
