So Colonel Daniel Davis criticizes the American effort in Afghanistan (a criticism I don’t agree with, by the way)? Watch as (it sure seems) the Pentagon media machine spins up to discredit him through cooperative media folk, in this case, Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy (and formerly the Washington Post). First comes the reasoned response, from a professor at the National War College:
I was prepared for a real critique and came away profoundly disappointed. Every veteran has an important story, but [Davis’] work is a mess. It is not a successor piece to HR McMaster’s book on the Joint Chiefs during Vietnam, or Paul Yingling’s critique of U.S. generalship that appeared in Armed Forces Journal a few years back. Davis is not a hero, but he will go into the whistleblower hall of fame. If years hence, he doesn’t make full Colonel, it will be construed as punishment, but there is nothing in this report that suggests he has any such potential.
Then, two days later, comes the character assassination:
For a reservist, Lt. Col. Danny Davis (author of the recently touted and then critiqued report on the Afghan War) sure gets around. I was told yesterday that when he was a major, he proposed that the United States conduct a ground invasion of Iran by air dropping an armored division northeast of Tehran and then doing a tank assault into the city.
I also was told that he proposed to General Abizaid that he be promoted to lieutenant colonel and put in command of the lead tank battalion in the assault.
Note the blinding passiveness of “I was told” and “I also was told.” Note how Ricks refers to Davis as “Danny” (in the text and the title) a diminutive coinage that seems to be particular to Ricks. Other news stories have (as far as I can tell) universally referred to him as “Daniel Davis.” Note how Ricks finishes him off by quoting an awkwardly-written email from Davis. Davis shouldn’t have sent the email that way, but Ricks quotes the whole thing, grammatical errors, capitalization problems and all.
All this doesn’t make Davis correct, of course, but it’s an impressive effort nonetheless.
Welcome to the big leagues, Lt. Colonel. I trust you’ve given up on your ambitions to make full Colonel?
(See also this fascinating comment in the post thread.)
The Edge of the American West 
7 comments
February 23, 2012 at 7:43 am
Anderson
What in particular do you disagree with, Silbey?
February 23, 2012 at 10:38 am
silbey
My quick and dirty way to tell how things are going in a US counterinsurgency effort is American fatalities, figuring that killing an American soldier is always a valuable achievement for an insurgent, that American soldiers (especially in the respective surges) are in harm’s way, that killing one requires mobilizing a certain amount of effort on an insurgency’s part, and that (perhaps most importantly) the Pentagon can’t really fudge the number of deaths (they can with wounded; the definition of “wounded” changed in the middle of the Iraq War to, shock! surprise!, reduce the numbers). It’s not perfect (not nearly so), but it worked pretty well for me looking at Iraq in 2008 and 2009.
In Afghanistan, 2010 had the highest number of fatalities while 2011 dropped substantially, on an annual, seasonal, and monthly basis. That suggests to me that–like Iraq in 2008-09–things are improving.
(fatality figures here: http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx )
February 23, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Anderson
Interesting. But the more we stay on bases, the lower our casualties should be, and we’re not going to accomplish much confined to base.
… Also, I thought you and some commenters were a tad unfair to Ricks, who didn’t merely repeat gossip, but contacted Davis and asked him to rebut or verify the rumors. Just b/c a reporter is obviously being fed something, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It is not Ricks’ fault, surely, that Davis turns out to be inarticulate at best.
February 23, 2012 at 2:33 pm
silbey
But the more we stay on bases, the lower our casualties should be, and we’re not going to accomplish much confined to base
In both surges, the military made a conscious effort to get out of the big forward operating bases that they had been using. That’s what made the fatality drop even more striking (especially in Iraq): the Americans had just spread themselves piecemeal in small units, made themselves much more vulnerable, and yet fatalities still dropped. Same thing in Afghanistan.
As to Ricks: eh. He reached out to Davis, but he did not point out the fact that he was being fed things, probably deliberately, and he didn’t need to quote Davis’ email in all its ungrammatical glory to make the point.
February 24, 2012 at 9:20 am
Anderson
I am not quite buying that “protecting the subject from his own inarticulateness” is a journalistic canon. At least, not with an officer in the U.S. Army. You’re interviewing meth users in Appalachia, then maybe.
February 24, 2012 at 9:52 am
silbey
I don’t think it’s canon, either. I do think it’s a choice that reporters make. Ricks chose inarticulateness and made that (rather than Davis’ denial) the main focus.
Writing the last part as: ‘In an email, Davis denied the story: “the one quote you cite below is a gross mischaracterization of a private, classified document I did in fact write, and contains blatantly inaccurate information.” The Lt. Colonel would not, however, discuss the document because it was still classified.’ That gets Davis’ denial firmly across in a way that doesn’t undercut it.
February 29, 2012 at 4:06 am
ajay
I am not quite buying that “protecting the subject from his own inarticulateness” is a journalistic canon. At least, not with an officer in the U.S. Army. You’re interviewing meth users in Appalachia, then maybe.
It is with a spoken conversation, just because an accurate transcript of a spoken conversation is almost unreadable. With a written statement, I’d be inclined to be slightly generous with typos and with non-English speakers. You wouldn’t write Mr Montez added: “I am hope that the uh the investment will be bring some benefit you know for the city as well” even if that is what Montez said, unless you were a complete tool.