'Restrepo' Director Tim Hetherington Killed in Libya

Seems like the only time I post here nowadays is just when I have bad news. I've held this back for a number of days, hoping that it isn't true, but it is, so here: Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya on Wednesday, along with Chris Hondros of Getty Images, when they were photographing in the beseiged city of Misurata, Libya.

Though I have yet to watch Restrepo - the documentary that he co-directed with Sebastian Junger chronicling a platoon's time in the the Korengal Valley, one of the deadliest cities in Afghanistan - I have read Sebastian Junger's book, War (and reviewed it in my personal blog). Tim is mentioned throughout and it is really difficult to connect this person in the book with the reality of him being dead. I can't imagine what it must be like for his family and friends, but as an admirer of his work, I feel so saddened by this.

There have been an outpoouring of sympathy and memories from the war journalism community, and I am at least glad for the attention that a combat zone is getting, even if it's because of the reporters. After all, it's what these men and women who work in these dangerous situations want.

From Tim's friend and co-director, Sebastian Junger:

You had a very specific vision for your work and for your life, and that vision included your death. It didn’t have to, but that’s how it turned out. I’m so sorry, Tim. The conversation we could have had about this crazy stunt of yours! Christ, I would have yelled at you, but you know that. Getting mad was how we kept each other safe, how we kept the other from doing something stupid.

From Greg Campbell, Chris' best friend who'd saw him the week before:

We talked about this special breed of journalism he was drawn to and how important it was to bear witness to atrocities that take place far most of the world's eyes. He believed entirely in the power of photojournalism to change the world, to enlighten hearts and minds, and to bring justice and possibly comfort to those who are suffering the most. His deepest commitment, from the very beginning, was to honor those he photographed and bear witness to their struggles.

Finally, CJ Chivers of The New York Times attended the memorial service in Benghazi, Libya,and the Times posted his account of the service. During the ceremony, Marc Burleigh of AFP read from Gustave Mahler, 9th Symphony, 4th Movement:

Often I think they’ve gone outside!
Soon they will get back home again!
The day is lovely! Don’t be anxious,
They’re only taking a long walk,
They’ve only gone out before us,
And will not long to come home again.
We’ll catch up with them on yonder heights
In the sunshine!
The day is fine on yonder heights!

The Runaway General

Since its publication last week, this Rolling Stone's article by Michael Hastings has been met with a lot of controversy. Not surprisingly, the 24-hour news cycle and blogosphere (hey y'all!) immediately jumped on the most gossip-y aspect of the article: the beginning that featured the General and his aides criticizing President Obama and generally maintaining a tone of derision for much of the senior administration. The Biden/Bite-Me comment was repeated throughout the interwebs and the cable news networks, followed by speculation of what the president would say to McChrystal when he was summoned back to D.C. from Afghanistan because of this article (Spoiler alert!: McChrystal was dismissed; Petraeus replaces him in the sequel.) After the dust from that settled, all of these cable news networks and websites turned their attentions back to the war in Afghanistan.

Nah, I'm only playing. Why should we focus on the true subject of Hastings' article, the international war crisis? Journalists, being an inherently narcissistic bunch, decided to turn their attentions back to themselves. For the past week, Michael Hastings' integrity has been judged by a panel of flacks sitting against green screens in their cozy offices, and his article has been dissected, exulted and assaulted by the public and press.

As a journalism student, I truly am interested in the consequences this article would have on the future quality of war reporting. I very nerdily devour blogs about off-the-record/on-the-record nuances when embedded 24/7 with a platoon and I love seeing what other war reporters have to say about this (Hi Lara, good to see you again! Even if you are dead wrong). But when the amount of articles/blogs/cable news time devoted to this "introspection" far, far outnumber the articles that actually look at the subject of Hastings' piece, I can't help but feel like we have somehow missed the point. *

Yes, Hastings has written a profile of McChrystal, but it was not to showcase the General's insubordination. The article is about how our military is coping in what is now the longest-running war since Vietnam with a controversial strategy that Obama has supported with the 30,000 troop surge last fall. This military strategy is known as counterinsurgency, or COIN, and it is not something that will solve the war's problems with one fell swoop. Hastings describes it:

COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps

One of the biggest problems with COIN is that its success is hard to gauge. Dexter Filkins, an amazing war reporter for The New York Times, took part in a Q&A session over at the Times' At War blog and he said:

I think the best evidence of COIN working, at least marginally, is Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Remember how the Iraq war unfolded: In the first three and a half years, American troops concentrated mostly on killing insurgents. They did that, but they profoundly alienated the Iraqi population. The result was the apocalyptic levels of violence that we saw in 2005 and 2007. In 2007, with the surge, the strategy was fundamentally changed. The overriding goal became the protection of the population.

What is immediately alarming is Filkins reached for the Iraq war as the clear example of COIN working (according to Filkins, who said "best evidence" not "only evidence"), meaning that there are still really no successful long-term results that we can confidently point to.

Another thing that is disturbing in Hastings' article is how there is a disconnect between what the soldiers understand their role to be and how they wish to carry their roles out. Hastings gave several anecdotes of how soldiers are angered by the stringent directives from McChrystal to avoid civilian casualties. These young men believe that these edicts – that are probably distorted from having been passed down the ranks – put them in greater danger in an already-deadly war zone. Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks said:

"I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they're all fucked up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don't understand it themselves. But we're fucking losing this thing."

I may have to spend a little more time reading up on COIN but there seem to be an almost contradictory quality of a military invasion coupled with the COIN beliefs. By holding back the pressure because of McChrystal's understandable worries of civilian casualties, the soldiers believe that they are also allowing the insurgency flourish. Yet if they were to open fire on insurgents and kill a single civilian by accident, there will be ten more insurgents created because of the outrage over the civilian's death. This tug-of-war for the hearts of the Afghan people is really confusing to me, a reader. I can only imagine how it must feel having to try and fathom this while carrying out the duties of a soldier.

Finally, there is the problem of the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's presidency in Afghanistan. Last year, Karzai won the presidential election, an event that has been accused of electoral fraud rife with government corruption. He is also not a reliable ally to the U.S., and is without the support of the Afghan people. Unfortunately, in order for the U.S. military to help rebuild a government in Afghanistan, they will need the support of a strong leader who holds the faith of his people and shares the values of Americans. Hastings said:

This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tin-pot leader we've backed.

It angers me, looking at these three main problems outlined in Hastings' article, that we can spend such a significant amount of time going back and forth about whether or not Hastings had betrayed an "element of trust." President Obama may or may not have dismissed McChrystal because of his Bite-Me jokes – but my guess is that the sloppy handling of this war showcased so clearly in Hastings' article is probably what convinced him that there needed to be a change in the commander executing a strategy that will very likely keep American soldiers in Afghanistan for an indefinite amount of time.

I'll leave you with the passage that broke my heart. It is about a visit that McChrystal made to the White House in mid-May with Hamid Karzai. Exultant praises are made to each leader and at one point, President Obama said, "There is no denying the progress that the Afghan people have made in recent years – in education, in health care and economic development," he said. "As I saw in the lights across Kabul when I landed – lights that would not have been visible just a few years earlier." Hastings follows the president's quote this:

It is a disconcerting observation for Obama to make. During the worst years in Iraq, when the Bush administration had no real progress to point to, officials used to offer up the exact same evidence of success. "It was one of our first impressions," one GOP official said in 2006, after landing in Baghdad at the height of the sectarian violence. "So many lights shining brightly." So it is to the language of the Iraq War that the Obama administration has turned – talk of progress, of city lights, of metrics like health care and education. Rhetoric that just a few years ago they would have mocked.

(*And yes, I have not missed the irony in starting this post with some media criticism.)

"Held By The Taliban" series

The New York Times is currently running a series that is a cross between a journal entry and narrative reporting by David Rohde, a journalist who was captured by the Taliban in November 2008 and was released over 7 months later. There are five parts to it, and (right at this moment that I'm looking at it now) there are only three parts up.

What's interesting to me is that his account is being showcased on page A1, just right before the fold (at least for the installment in Monday's paper.) The formatting of his article is distinctively different from the other stories, with the words spaced more apart and each line is half a double space. I mention this only because this immediately drew my attention, and it was like the editors were announcing that this is not an ordinary article, certainly not one that follows the vein of objectivity. From the very first sentence, I felt like I was reading this on a computer, on a blog of some sort – and not on the front page of the paper.

You can see the difference between Rohde's piece and the other articles below.

This is not a criticism – more like an observation. I really enjoyed the article, and I am really glad that I managed to read it in the paper instead of online. For some reason, even though online news can easily reach new readers, I like the finality behind having something printed on a page. It makes it seem more official and much more important.

And this is important. The column/article (I'm really not sure what word to use for it) allows us an insight to the Taliban and the terrain of Afghanistan. I don't consider myself an expert at all in war news (or any news for that matter... hence, this blog) but I know that reading Rohde's account is going to stay with me more than reading a run-of-a-mill article about the current situation in Afghanistan. That's because instead of making use of numbers and statistics to convey how horrible and desperate the situation is in this "forgotten war," Rohde's personal account is able to transfer that statistical horror into images and voices and people.

In the first installment of this series, titled "7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity," Rohde seems to issue a disclaimer by saying that everything he has written is from his memory, and therefore from his point of view.

What follows is the story of our captivity. I took no notes while I was a prisoner. All descriptions stem from my memory and, where possible, records kept by my family and colleagues. Direct quotations from our captors are based on Tahir’s translations. Undoubtedly, my recollections are incomplete and the passage of time may have affected them. For safety reasons, certain details and names have been withheld.

I thought that Rohde's was brave to admit this, and also in turn, to cover his ass. There are some insane readers of the Times (Have you read any of the letters sent in by readers? There are some close, close readers who really seem to have a vendetta against reporters) and if Rohde's haven't admitted that all that is written is in a first-person view, he would have gotten some pretty scathing emails about how flawed his "reporting" is.

However, his admission did not allay some readers' criticism. Rohde's answered some readers' questions over at the At War blog and the first (like, eight) questions addressed how Rohde was naive about the Taliban, how his depictions show how ignorant he was of them, and how he was stupid and selfish to have gotten captured, along with the Afghan journalist and driver who accompanied him.

Actually, the blog has been updated since I checked it earlier today, and the first questions now seem to actually be from readers who are concerned that Rohde's account does not belong in the hard news section of the paper and website since it does not really broadcast larger issues in terms of policy/decision making in Afghanistan. It is really interesting to see that put in words since I touched upon it earlier except did not really go into the significance of it beyond "Wow, it looks really different." But I do stand by what I said earlier, which is that I like it. Reading Bill Keller's answer to the readers, I think he summed it up pretty well why I do not think it is a "travesty on journalism" that Rohde's account is front page and in installments:

As I hope the series makes clear, this is not a story about David Rohde, it is a story about the character, strength and organization of the people the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It provides detailed insights into the minds and motives of the Taliban’s footsoldiers. It also reveals the extent to which the Taliban has, with impunity, colonized a swath of Pakistan. Yes, it is a hell of a story, but it also adds rich detail to our understanding of the Taliban.

Why, thank you, Mr. Keller, for explaining it so succinctly. Whenever something like this happens, there is always a fear of the reporter becoming the story, and thus hindering the actual importance of the story. However, in this particular instance, I really think that Rohde's first-hand experience has enhanced the image we have of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Anyway, I really recommend reading this series, and following through to Part 5. This reminded me a little of Kate Webb, a journalist who was captured by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War for 23 days, and how the short time with her captors made her later reportingof the Vietnam War much more nuanced.