Embedding With The Taliban Make You A Traitor?

Does Embedding With The Taliban Make You A Traitor?

By Noah Shachtman
October 30, 2008 1:10:00 PM
Categories: Info War
Courtesy Of Wired Blog Network

Two weeks ago, Rolling Stone published the most detailed Western account to date from within the Taliban insurgency. Now, a fighting has erupted in military circles over the story, "How We Lost the War We Won." Is journalist Nir Rosen a traitor, for telling the Taliban's story? Or are his critics the ones spouting anti-American tones, for ignoring the 1st Amendment?

On one side, we've got Small Wars Journal's Dave Dilegge and Bing West. "Just call me old fashioned – I have serious misgivings respecting and tolerating journalists who embed with an enemy," Dilegge writes.

West, for his part, implies that Rosen should be shot:

Rosen described how he and two Taliban fighters deceived the guards at a government checkpoint. Suppose during World War II an American reporter had sneaked through the lines with two German officers wearing civilian clothes. “When we caught enemy combatants out of uniform in the 1940s,” a veteran wrote in The American Heritage, “we sometimes simply executed them.” The Greatest Generation had a direct way of dealing with moral ambiguity.

Spencer Ackerman is not amused by the analogy. "So there you go. Try to understand the Taliban on its own terms -- ask questions that offend the Patriotism Police -- and, in West's moral universe, you should be executed. Now there's a sentiment the Taliban would recognize."

Andrew Exum, over at Abu Muquwama, ain't happy, either.

The thrust of West's op-ed is that journalists like Dexter Filkins and Rosen have failed the patriotism test. By not taking sides in their coverage, West argues, they have abdicated moral responsibility. Worse, they are not American enough because they dare approach and analyze wars involving Americans in the same way they would approach wars involving exclusively foreign powers. This is the same crap of which the Vietnam generation accused the media in the 1960s as well. And look how well it worked!

Who's right?

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