"... In recent days, much of the mainstream media has comported itself as the Pentagon’s Pravda. Reporters have indignantly asked the White House how it could say that America doesn’t have a vital national security interest in maintaining a military presence near Tajikistan. NBC’s Richard Engel has devoted his Twitter feed to scolding Biden for suggesting that America’s nation-building project in Afghanistan was always hopeless, and that the Kabul government was “basically a failed state.” CNN’s Jim Sciutto lamented on Twitter Wednesday, “Too many times, I’ve witnessed the US military attempt to dutifully carry out difficult & dangerous missions left to them by the miscalculations of civilian leaders.” This sentiment is disconcerting in the abstract, since it seems to suggest that civilian control of the military may be unwise. But it’s even stranger in context. As we learned just two years ago, American military leaders in Kabul systematically lied to the public about how well the war against the Taliban was going, so as to insulate their preferred foreign policy from democratic contestation." -- New York Magazine's Eric Levitz, in "The Media Is Helping Hawks Win the War Over Biden’s Withdrawal." Levitz critiques the actions of both the Biden Administration and the endless war proponents, many of whom can be found in the ranks of media who have become personally invested in the war in Afghanistan (looking at you, Engel, and you, too, Ian Pannell of ABC News). Perhaps, in addition to their ire being directed solely at the actions of President Biden, they should direct some attention to the military leaders with whom they've become cozy, who lied to them for years about how the war was going. We won't hold our breath, though.
