The editors uttered the oh-so-tired “I” word in their latest defense of the Beauchamp Scandal, posted (deliberately?) to their site on a very quiet Friday:
“While many of these questions have been formulated by people with ideological agendas, we recognize that there are legitimate concerns about journalistic accuracy.”
I see. So it’s those ideological agendas, is it? Well, Messrs. Foer, et al, let me make myself, at least, clear. I have no ideological agenda, because I am sick and tired of ideology. Let’s put it this way. Remember the old Samuel Johnson canard “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels”? Well, to me “Ideology is the last refuge of scoundrels.” Not to mention a monumentally boring rehash of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century thought. So I don’t have an ideology anymore. I’m pro-gay marriage and pro-war on terror. What does that make me? Left of John Edwards on the former and right of him on the latter and 3.2 degrees north, north east of Boise, Montana on somebody’s worn out Mercator Projection. In other words, get over it. Ideology is not the point. The truth is.
And speaking of the truth. Here it is – or part of it – buried in parentheses five graphs down in TNR’s own vague non-defense defense of Mr. Beauchamp:
“Our investigation has not thus far uncovered factual evidence (aside from one key detail) to discount his personal dispatches.”
They themselves used the word “key.”
The reputation of The New Republic hangs by a thread. I suspect they know it.
“factual evidence”
Good gracious (as a former Sec Def might say), it was all hearsay to begin with. They haven’t uncovered any other factual evidence to contradict his fanciful imagination? The location of his sadistic banter was about the only fact that could be checked. TNR has not only jumped the shark, but Bobby Ewing just came out of the shower—it was all a dream.
So, to object to a lie is to have an ideological agenda ?
Then it must follow that the source of the problem, the lie, must be non-ideological, and that the ideology involved must be that of truth over lies.
That’s a helluva thing to admit –gotta give TNR credit for THAT truth, inadvertant tho it may have been.
Credit where credit is due, Buddy.
The BAE Systems flak shot down their dog-killing Bradley tale for Confederate Yankee. Guess they missed that “key detail.” Too ideological, I guess.
TNR (or as Kinsley renamed it, “even the liberal New Republic says…”) wrote the book on apologetic neoliberalism. So the fact that they have NOT backed away from the story yet leads me to believe the Beauchamp’s anecdotes are substantially correct. As the editorial has points out, the TNR reinvestigated and found corroboration, most importantly from five members of his platoon. What is really appalling is the “stop snitching” attitude the Army has apparently adopted towards whistleblowers.
Gosh, markus,
You’d think TNR would be able to find someone willing to go on the record, not about the bad conduct perhaps, but about the mass graves or some other corroborating point.
But what really kills the story is that the unfortunate IED woman was in Kuwait, before Our Hero went to Iraq in the first place. Instead of being a battle-damaged victim, Beauchamp either lied about ridiculing her or is a total callous a**hole.
Which do you prefer?
“…substantially correct” = “fake, but accurate” ?
Bostonian — I can see under the circumstances why people are afraid to go on the record, particularly if their superiors forbid them from doing so, or if their fellow soldiers are threatening them.
In regard to where the incident with the woman actually took place, remember that it was TNR, tattered credibility and all, that has discovered and reported that it took place in Kuwait. Beauchamp originally related it as being in Iraq either inadvertently or, more likely, to juice up his story. Assuming it is true, however, the location of where the incident occured is decidedly of secondary importance.
Now that the Army has given this story legs, by leaking a “confession” to Weekly Standard, it has an obligation to show that in fact Beauchamp was lying.
“Assuming it is true, however, the location of where the incident occured is decidedly of secondary importance.”
Really?
“The disfigured woman that he and his pal were mocking was not at the chow hall “every time” he went to dinner at his base in Iraq, but in an entirely different country, back in Kuwait – before he got anywhere near the war (emphasis added). Which demolishes the entire premise of the piece:
“That is how war works: It degrades every part of you, and your sense of humor is no exception.”
… War is hell, but, if you beat up a bloke in a pub in southern England a year before D-Day, that may not be the best anecdote to prove your point.”
(Source: Mark Steyn NRO article)
Secondary importance? I’d say location and timing was the entire thesis of Beauchamp’s piece.
After reporting it happened in Iraq, and insisting repeatedly that this was correct.
You do realize that the whole point of the story was that war had turned him into a heartless creep, right? Except it actually happened before he entered the war. I’d say that’s of primary importance. Decidedly.
Rathergate redux! “Prove it didn’t happen the way I said it happened.” Bizarro World.
“You do realize that the whole point of the story was that war had turned him into a heartless creep, right? Except it actually happened before he entered the war. I’d say that’s of primary importance.”
I must agree the excerpt you provide does weaken his point. In fact, it seems to indicate that he and his fellow soldiers were heartless creeps before they even got into Iraq. Another problem.
“Rathergate redux! ‘Prove it didn’t happen the way I said it happened.”
There were serious charges, there was supposedly an investigation, which ought to be made public, in order to exonerate that particular platoon, and by association all American soldiers fighting in Iraq. I’m sure they’ll do so if in fact they have a strong case. Mainly to embarrass TNR.
I imagine they’ll do that around the same time TNR names its various anonymous sources.
“Mainly to embarrass TNR”
Oops, no, TNR embarrassed itself.
Remember the sequence of events: TNR accuses Army, Army responds to accusation.
This is pretty simple stuff, markus. Remember, one’s pants are opaque; if one wants to show one’s ass, one must do it proactively.
Markus, I am rather surprised with your defense on this. You assume the Army is lying. Hmmm… possible, I suppose, but far from proven. We already know that Beauchamp did. On a significant matter.
But let me it put it another way from personal experience. I have not written for TNR, but I have for quite a number of well-known newspapers and periodicals. Not one of them fact-checked to any serious degree. Not a one. They couldn’t afford to if they wanted to.
TNR has already made a serious blunder in the fact-checking area – so bad they even made a movie about it.
And you’re defending them at this point?
I can only think of one reason – ideology. (see above – it’s not worth it)
Just in case someone didn’t catch the Bradley reference, this was one of the things that first convinced a lot of people that Beauchamp was lying. A Bradley is a heavy armored personnel carrier that runs on tracks. It’s loud. I mean, it’s really, really loud. Beauchamp wrote about a guy who got his jollies by running over sleeping dogs with a Bradley. In order to do that, you have to first find a bunch of deaf dogs. It was stuff like that which caused a lot of people to raise the BS flag on him.
Let’s see, Beauchamp writes about making fun of a disfigured woman in Iraq because war made him bad, except that it wasn’t in Iraq but in Kuwait before he got to war. Also, there’s the little issue that no one can find this woman in Kuwait, either. Quite likely, she’s about as real as the sleeping deaf dogs of Iraq.
Beauchamp wanted to establish his reputation as a writer. It looks like he has succeeded.
It’s ideology stupid?
TNR is throwing ideology pepper, trying to get the dogs off the scent. Ideology may be the arena, but it’s not a dog in this fight. Truth and lies are.
In Baseball parlance TNR threw a hanger right over the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and now they don’t want to accept the final score and walk off the field.
It’s not our fault they threw a beach ball.
Not even in little league do you see this kind of behavior.
Markus, would you like to explain the fantasy posts to his blog before he left Germany ? By the way, when I posted the URL to Beauchamp’s blog on Kevin Drum’s site, my post was deleted without any acknowledgement it had been made. Why do you suppose Washington Monthly would delete a link to the blog of the person in question ? Do you suppose they didn’t want anyone to see for themselves ? The guy is a creep and TNR has staked their remaining credibility (such as it is) on him.
I suspect this will go on, a la Joe Wilson, once Beauchamp gets his convenience of the government discharge. He will claim, with no evidence, that his stories were true and those who want to believe will line up with him. Nobody on the left cares about truth anymore so long as it hurts Bush.
I wouldn’t knock ideology too much.
Ideology is the hoops in my political brew, and admittedly makes this imbroglio all the more enjoyable.
Give you another example from the world of sports i.e. TNR’s excuse for delay. Is as if Michael Vic were to claim his prosecution over illegal dog fighting on his property was racially motivated.
Of course he won’t, because as well know…. that dog won’t hunt
Sorry.
Marcus, Confederate Yankee found one of those experts TNR takled to. They questions they asked him were very general and vague. Read his account. My take, TNR is just trying to CYA, nor really verify (or refute) the stories.
The most telling fact is that TNR experts and witnesses are all anonymous. TNR won’t name any of them. Yet the expert Confederate Yanke found is perfectly willing to be named. it’s just that when you talk to Doug Coffey (the Head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems), he doesn’t support the stories like TNR implies he does.
See…. here’s the thing I’ve been struggling with since the beginning:
1) The training and ethical standards of the *modern* military are a lot higher than in the past. Information technology makes it possible for us to keep a better eye on them, and for them to police themselves. (I have much more faith in the UCMJ at this point than all the conventions and protocols in the world).
2) The New Republic has really, really screwed the pooch in terms of journalistic professionalism. When you make claims like these, burden of proof is on you. Full stop.
3) When you can get inside the bank and interview an armed bank robber, that’s a scoop. When you do the same for a jihadi sniper, that’s providing propaganda for the enemy. The modern mass media seems infuriatingly unable to make the distinction. They are ethically bankrupt, and that’s part of the reason they’re getting hammered in the marketplace.
Now with all this said and out of the way (deep breath)….
I’ve known trigger pullers from every single war that America fought during the 20th century, including the Great War and that little debacle in Nicaragua in the 20′s. I know — knew by the time I hit puberty — that any given group of men in combat are fully *capable* of the stuff that Beauchamp describes. Yes…. yes, I’m fully aware of what I’m saying. Yes, go ahead and read it again, carefully. Get mad. Flame away. “Why, our clean-cut lads would NEVER — ” “Why, I was in the military, and I never — ” Yes they f*cking would, YES THEY DID, YES THEY DO. In every single war to date.
Shooting teenage girls by accident. Hanging teenage boys from the muzzles of Sherman tanks. Men fragging their own ambitious lieutenants that think they’re the next Patton (very difficult in WW2, as German grenades leave different entry wounds, so you have to scrounge around and find one and hope it ain’t a dud). Shooting prisoners in the ass; shooting prisoners in the head. Stealing stuff to build distilleries from the local farmer, and if he starts waving a shotgun around, shoot him. Dusting a local wedding and having the guys in the back moon the bride. Busting every window on the street just because you’re in a bad mood. Posing for photos over a dying enemy, with big smiles (this from the first Gulf War. Yes, I saw the picture. Yes, at the time I was familiar enough with doughboy/doggie/GI humor to see the humor in it). Etcetera.
No rape. Combat infantrymen seem to regard that crime in the same light as most prison gangs. But plenty of violence by God, and plenty of violent soldiers’ humor that by civilian standards seems totally bent. I know this. I have always known this. There is no clean war. Taunting your own casualties? Desecrating graves? Running over dogs? Those are NON-ISSUES, people. Even if it’s all true, nobody got hurt except the dogs. Jesus! Get a GRIP.
Better yet, go talk to some old infantrymen.
Yep, every large gathering of young people is gonna have its Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. But, American (& Commonwealth) soldiers do have a solid reputation–where it counts, among civilians in war zones–for being humane and just. Historically, when there are refugees, they flow toward the Amis and away from the others.
If TNR wanted to develop the war-is-hell theme, it could’ve chosen fiction; war fiction being a very flexible, powerful, and recognized literary tradition. The problem of course is, having chosen fiction, TNR presented it as reportage.
And now TNR adds insult to injury by implying that the injured party, the Army, is responding dishonestly. This is a double whammy, like shooting somebody and then suing them for bleeding. TNR should come clean & apologize.
Roger — I’m more or less with you on the question of ideology. People tend to read and write about happenings that confirm their prejudices, and avoid those that don’t. Let’s assume that no one had questioned Beuchamps allegations at all. Would you or anyone else now fixated on this matter be paying ANY attention to it? Doubtful.
The reason I am inclined to believe this guy is that I subscribe to the point that Jay Stranahan makes, which is that fighting in a war makes lots of people crazy. It’s human nature.
And why do I believe the Army is lying? Because in situation like this, they have the power to, and because discrediting a liberal organ like TNR would be in the interest of the Bush Administration as we get closer to September and the Petreus report.
So, Beauchamp set-up Army, in order to set-up TNR, which was really a way to set-up Army by setting-up Army to discredit itself by challenging TNR? Oh, I GET it!
Did you ever see that scene in “Little Big Man” where Custer is looking down into the valley of the Little Bighorn, and he asks half-breed Little Big Man whether or not he should ride into the valley?
LBM says something like, “No, don’t ride down there, because you’ll get wiped out.”
Custer responds, “Aha, you want me to think you’re lying, so that I won’t ride down there, so I WILL ride down there!”
And of course he got wiped out.
But not crazy enough to make stuff up, huh?
Many of my left-leaning pals are saying that TNR is about as liberal as Joe Lieberman. That the left wing hasn’t cared about the magazine for a long time, and that this story in particular is a dud. That anybody who thinks otherwise is a “winger” and so forth. So: Welcome to Wingnuttia!
Marty Peretz’s silence during this whole thing is somewhat puzzling (at least I think he’s been silent because I haven’t seen his name mentioned at any of the sites I frequent, and I’m not about to spend any time on the interweb seeking information on Beauchamp’s 15 minutes of undeserved semi-significance). Even if he’s hanging Foer out to dry so he can fire him (which he could have done at any point during his tenure; Foer at best comes off as a not-particularly-bright partisan hack), why subject your publication to additional ridicule?
“discrediting a liberal organ like TNR would be in the interest of the Bush Administration as we get closer to September and the Petreus report.”
Why is it so easy for people to claim that people in our military are somehow less Americans than the rest of us. This is the “if you don’t go to school you get stuck in Iraq” JF Kerry charge all over again.
If they are so good at covering up why was there an abu-grab, a Walter Reed, why didn’t they find the WMD for Bush over there in Iraq? Could it be possible that they actually try not to be “ideological”.
If there is a Discredit the MSM desk at the pentagon they need to fire somebody.
Franklin Foer sounds like an O.J. Simpson lawyer.
His approach to the evidence mirrors the behavior of an attorney desperate to defend a clearly guilty client.
Anyone who honestly reviews the evidence against Soldier Beauchamp can easily conclude that he is a liar. The only legitimate question remaining is whether he is lying to the U.S. military or TNR.
the latest
The New Republic has new owners. Marty Peretz has less influence, I suspect, and may even be letting the new owners find out the hard way that their new strategy (a hard left turn) is not working well. Markus shows us the mindset of the lefty reader who will defend Beauchamp even if the guy comes out and says he lied. Markus doesn’t care that the Army has responded. He would rather believe a punk who fantasizes about shooting kids before he ever gets to Iraq. And then there is the girlfriend who wasn’t. He lied about that too. This is not a guy to hang your reputation on.
Marcus, you’re really being dense.
Consider the IED victim with the “melted” face. She doesn’t exist. Do you really think none of the other contractors would have remembered her? Or Army personnel moving through that base? People with no vested interest in the story:
Bob: “Yeah I knew Karen. We worked on the medical billing contract together. Whenever our crew got homesick and started feeling sorry for ourselves, she would shame us with her upbeat attitude and strength of character. She’s quite an amazing lady.”
“I suspect, and may even be letting the new owners find out the hard way that their new strategy (a hard left turn) is not working well.”
The hard left may be the center of today’s Democratic Party. Neo-Liberalism, for whatever it’s worth, is a distant memory. The Daily Kos is more welcomed at Democratic party functions than Marty Peretz. The latter gentleman is perceived as something of a war monger and defender of alleged Israeli imperialism.
Ahh, Roger: Small detail, Boise is in Idaho, not Montana
…don’t like Boise…too noisy.