Interviewing Thomas Ricks

It occurred to me during last night's reading that the Noise Machine will eventually be forced to smear author Thomas E. Ricks. Simply put, a smear is inevitable because the story told in Ricks' bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq cannot co-exist with the Right's preferred narrative. I didn't realize it at the time, but that attack has already begun.

Rather than focus on the usual suspects' predictable F.U.D. campaign, check out this transcript of Hugh Hewitt's radio interview of Ricks. Hewitt has a conservative's perspective on the war, focusing lots of attention on talking-points topics like yellow-cake uranium, insubordination, Libya's nuclear program and why anyone should take a Washington Post reporter seriously. The serious conservative questions get posed in this interview, and the best part is, Ricks answers them.

Here's an excerpt:

HH: On Page 100...I think this is probably the key quote in the entire book, Thomas Ricks.  It's very, actually, upsetting for someone who has read a lot about the United States military over the years, and their code. "There is no much disdain in the service right now for OSD, Office of the Secretary of Defense, that has been reduced to '(blank) you. Whatever you want, we don't.' If OSD ordered the Navy to build another carrier, the Navy would say it wanted sail power. It was not a healthy state for a military establishment to be in on the eve of war." Key question, Thomas Ricks, why did that state develop? And in the history of the United States military, that's very unusual. Where was the professionalism to overcome it within the senior ranks of the Army?

TR: Well, you're asking it in a loaded way. I would blame both sides for getting themselves in a really difficult situation where they didn't like each other.

HH: Can we stop for just a second?

TR: Sure.

HH: Civilian control. There aren't both sides here. The Army, and every uniform in the United States, is supposed to salute or quit, aren't they?

TR: Yes.

HH: And so, there aren't two sides. If you don't like the OSD, it's not for you to undermine them. And what you describe here, and I think this has been overlooked, but I think this is the key to this book, is an Army in rebellion against its civilian leadership.

TR: I am a big fan of civilian leadership, as you know from my first book.

HH: Yup, yup.

TR: And it is key. I mean, when people say to me why didn't these guys just tell the Bush administration no, I'd say because it would have been immoral, illegal and wrong. When civilians give you the order, you salute smartly. The problem was, you used the word professional, and that's a key word here. The military felt that their best professional advice was being ignored. And here were guys who had spent their careers rebuilding the Army after Vietnam. And suddenly, they saw the mistakes of Vietnam being repeated, and it terrified and worried them.

HH: Thomas Ricks, where are those people, other than the couple...Tony Zinni, obviously, but he wasn't in at this time. He was out. Where is...you quote Maddis, Myers, Pace, Franks, Sanchez. Where is a senior leader of the Iraq war period, in saying what you say?

TR: They're saying it to me constantly.

HH: Off the record?

TR: They can't have their names attached, because that would be seen as an act of professional insubordination.

HH: But telling you that for not for attribution is an act of professional insubordination as well. It's undermining the civilian leadership that is supposed to be the touchstone of the American military.

TR: And here, actually, I agree with you. You're touching on a key theme in my second book, A Soldier's Duty, which is what do you do when your duty to your subordinates you feel is at odds with your duty to your superiors, when you think the interests of your soldiers are not being served by your superiors.  Do you take care of your soldiers? Is that your primary duty? Or do you salute smartly and execute your orders? And I'll tell you, it eats out the guts of a lot of these officers.

Read the rest of this excellent interview at Hewitt's TownHall blog... and make sure you buy a copy of Fiasco.

Comments

[chip]

You want to take a break from being a whacko, neo-con conspiracy theorist for just a little while? Nobody smeared Thomas Ricks, he said something asinine. He got called on it, end of story.

Can anything not be a part of the vast right wing conspiracy, or are you too far gone for that?

[Daniel]

Dunno. I'll ask the shrink, see what he says.

[chip]

Heh.

[Daniel]

Now really. "He said something asinine. He got called on it, end of story."

In the first place, it wasn't asinine. It was cold, it was unprovable, and even if it were true, it's not the kind of thing that gets discussed in public. But does that kind of geopolitical analysis take place? Yes. And I think whoever shared this analysis with Ricks convinced him, and he answered Kurtz's question candidly.

So some right-wing blogs picked up on this quote, plugged it into the Hezbollah=Israeli morally equivalency debate and DECLARED it asinine, anti-semetic, crazy, liberal, etc.
And I would absolutely agree with them if Ricks had said "Look, there's no difference between Hezbollah and Israel." But that ISN'T what he said. It's not even the GIST of what he said. I don't think that's what he believes.

Why did Ricks tell Hewitt that he should have kept his mouth shut? Because he realized he'd given you guys the excuse you needed to dismiss his book.

Which is what I see when I click back through the link chain and read the threads. Here are some choice comments and descriptions of Ricks via the sites to which Chip linked. Smear? Or just getting called on saying something asinine?

Liar, idiot, nutjob, "This kind of thinking is the result of modern American higher education," Machiavellian, twisted, anti-semetic, nutcase, Islamic shill... "Ricks is saying basically, '... the Jews caused 9/11.'"

"I opine that there are no military analysts. Much like Dan Rather's Lucy Ramirez, Ricks made this up. It is a fabrication. It would not surprise me if Ricks was paid by some unknown parties to do so."

"I would venture to guess that Ricks was sitting around shooting the breeze with some friends, and a couple of them, who just happened to be ex-military, said in an off-handed tongue-in-cheek fashion that they wouldn't be surprised if the Israelis were doing that for PR purposes...without actually believing such a thing."

"RICKS CANNOT NAME THE 'MILITARY ANALYSTS' HE ALLEGEDLY SPOKE TO, BECAUSE HE MADE IT UP. The only "analysts" he talked to were in offices with nice couches and doctor of psychiatry degrees on the wall."

"In Ricks' world ... when he hears hoofbeats, he thinks not of horses, not of zebras even, but of unicorns. The man is demented. What other crap has he foisted on the journalistic universe?"

shameful, utter stupidity, deceitful, foolish... "This exchange just illustrates the emotion-driven lefties' inability to think clearly. Next, they will blame Karl Rove."

"The whole thing is a propaganda exercise to make Israel the bad guys for defending themselves against terrorism. If they succeed, the US will be next. It's not that complicated. It's the Goebbels Big Lie technique at work..."

Smear, or something else? Call it whatever you want.

[chip]

How am I responsible for the comments of other people on other blogs? You equate me with the Republican Noise Machine, just because I linked to a post which detailed the quote. I still say the quote is asinine. He is trying to say that Israel would deliberately allow civilians to be killed just for world sympathy contained in the action. Israel doesn't need to establish moral equivalency with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a terrorist group that hides weapons and bunkers in civilian areas where they know that civilians will end up dead. They sacrifice their own people purposefully, and Ricks was saying that Israel was doing the same thing. Despite the fact that Israel even bothers to warn Lebanese citizens about future raids, he wants people to believe that Israel doesn't care about Israeli deaths, because it's good public relations. I don't see why you think it's not asinine for him to say that, but he can do no wrong for you, can he? He wrote a book attacking the US Military policy and procedures in Iraq, a war you obviously don't agree with, and now any attack on his stupid statement is an attack on the book. He hurts his own crediblity. It's not the right wing's fault that he made the statements, is it? Or did the neo-cons put him up to it? Is that your theory? That neo-cons made him say stupid shit so they could attack it later? Geez...

[Daniel]

How am I responsible for the comments of other people on other blogs?

You're not, and I apologize for phrasing my comment in a way that could be interpreted that way.

You equate me with the Republican Noise Machine, just because I linked to a post which detailed the quote.

No, that's not it, and this distinction is significant. You are not the Republican Noise Machine: your post was an outcome of the RNM. As were other comments, and the general holding up for ridicule of Ricks. You're not the machine: You're an amplifier, and that doesn't particularly bother me. We're all amplifiers for opinions that match our own.

Israel doesn't need to establish moral equivalency with Hezbollah.

On the contrary: Israel needs to establish moral superiority vs. Hezbollah. The difference is, while they've already established that with us, the rest of the world is still skeptical. So whether or not we think it's silly, the point is still politically relevant for Israel.

He wrote a book attacking the US Military policy and procedures in Iraq, a war you obviously don't agree with, and now any attack on his stupid statement is an attack on the book.

I originally agreed with the war, but by late 2003 I was feeling pretty foolish about that. I've fallen on that sword many times. What counts right now is that we're stuck in a bad spot and we need the best outcome we can get -- but US policy since the summer of 2003 has been to pretend that things in Iraq are better than they appear because the media is exaggerating the bad news. We cannot get a better outcome until we start dealing with the real problems instead of the pretend problems, and for that to happen, we've got to stop shooting the messengers. And I think Ricks is an honest messenger, so yes, I intend to defend him.

It's not the right wing's fault that he made the statements, is it?...Is that your theory? That neo-cons made him say stupid shit so they could attack it later?

Nope. That's not my theory. And in comments on your site, I told you what I thought: That Ricks made a PR blunder by saying something in public that could be used by his enemies to change the subject and ascribe motives to him that are not in evidence. It's a standard debate trick you could learn in high school.

Here's the irony: One of the great and valid conservative critiques of mass media has been that it's shallow and addicted to "gotcha" games. And that's what this is: the Noise Machine playing gotcha with an "outrage" that only looks outrageous in the most shallow of contexts.