I know you don’t mindlessly “bump” administration parrots. And you didn’t uncritically repeat the words of those who disagree with them, either.

If you are in NYC, I will gladly buy you a FABULOUSLY expensive dinner, a reward for a copper age yet unminted (that’s from Finnegan’s Wake, Book I, Chapter 7). I’m particularly fond of anything Danny Meyer does.

As for the narrative moments, the material about Rosen traveling around with the Taliban — it’s interesting, sometimes funny, but it goes nowhere. At one point Rosen says he was promised that he would see the Taliban practicing their own form of government, adjudicating land disputes, as well as fighting. I especially wanted to see the former; the latter seemed doubtful. But I got neither one. The entire narrative is just Rosen getting shuffled around from one mid-level commander to another. I suppose that’s something new, but in the end it’s not a story about the Taliban or their motives. It’s a story about Rosen trying to get the story from the Taliban. Disappointing.

“If he had presented this piece as a snapshot of the war from the insurgents’ perspective, I’d be hailing it as brilliant.”

I wouldn’t have hailed it at all. But I would, and do, regard it as an essay written from the perspective of the “insurgents,” and that’s its failing, not its virtue. He had an opportunity to explore the internecine gang warfare aspects of the so-called insurgency, and whatever we glean from his piece about that, we get by almost by accident, certainly not by design.

I’ll concede the point about lying is probably over the top, but careful readers will also notice that it is strictly limited to the bit about civilian casualties. I’m quite familiar with data on tracking those—the UN’s numbers are an extreme data point, and I have to assume Rosen is excluding other credible estimates (of which HRW is but one) for ideological reasons. That he also falls for source and narrative biases does not help his case.

Which gets to the charges of deception. If he had presented this piece as a snapshot of the war from the insurgents’ perspective, I’d be hailing it as brilliant. But he is selling it as a snapshot of the war as it actually is, and in that regard I have to consider it a total failure.

Joshua, that’s why I’ve also gone after reporters who rely only on officials and dispatches from FOBistan to talk about the war. It’s one part of it, but nothing approaching the whole thing, and to pretend that the only correct picture of the war is the one that relies on officials is to mislead your viewers.

I come at people at both extremes, in other words. I feel I should also mention that I do highlight good reporting—from reporters like Carlotta Gall, and even Laura King (and a few NPR correspondents as well, and many Canadians like Graeme Smith and quite a few Brits)—because I think trustworthy reporters are literally worth their weight in precious metals.

And the horse farmer? It was the top story in Google News. If someone’s going to lecture his readers on history, he owes them knowing the actual history. Call it petty if you want—I call it preferring the truth.

The reverse is probably true in Rosen’s case. He talks to people who are against the Americans, and repeats their hype.

I’m afraid it is too optimistic to suggest the truth lies somewhere between.

But this critique is not like the horse farmer. Nir Rosen’s article is being read by everyone, and its exciting qualities could lead one to ignore some of the debatable points it raises under the guise of undebatable truths. As JustPlainDave has said, getting a bunch of perspectives is more useful than trying to attain one static, absolute image of Afghanistan.

Take issue with Josh on the merits if you prefer (I sometimes do), but trollish accusations of petty-mindedness and/or blithe negativity are way off the mark.

I have witnessed him do this to numerous reporters, scholars, and students. Accusing Rosen of lying is WAY over the top, it is actually a real shame because every once and a while Foust actually makes some valid and provocative points.

If you just review his past posts you will find his propensity to attack and focus on the negative. My favorite was his attack on a Florida horse farmer who published his opinion in an obscure local newspaper. Come on Joshua….

Here are just a sampling of the titles of recent posts: “What Did the World Do Before STRATFOR? “; “Stop Lying”; “How to be Wrong in Every Way”; “Wishing for Ponies”; “How COIN Generalists Fail in Afghanistan”; “One Reason the LA Times is Terrible”; etc., etc., etc.

Does anyone see a trend here!! Please Joshua, spend your time more creatively; nobody is impressed with constant negativity and attacks on people!

I would speculate that it is because the UN report is somewhat harder to find and because HRW has a good rep and is a good deal easier to find as a surrogate.

@ Josh

I take your larger points about Rosen – however, I tend to think it is not a matter of deception but one of source bias, probably almost unconsciously. Ride around in a hilux with insurgents all day for a couple of years and one tends to view the conflict from their perspective (not in the sense of ultimate aims, morality, etc. but in the sense of what constitutes a valid datapoint or grounding/contextualizing assumption). We see the same phenomenon with guys embedded with coalition forces, too.

IMHO this is a particular problem with counter-insurgency warfare because of the ambiguous nature of the conflict. Nir’s sources view themselves as being in control of the province because they have been [at least somewhat] successful in setting up a parallel authority structure in competition with the central government. Doubtless coalition forces tend to think they have significant control over the same area because they can patrol anywhere they want [presuming they can - not terribly up to speed on Ghazni, sorry]. Neither of these perspectives is, in fact, true – but neither is false, either. Add to all this the fact that we get to see the conflict from a significant remove through a soda straw that tends to emphasize flashy, periodic vignettes that are selected, at best, because they are thought illustrative of current trends, and understanding becomes a real challenge. All this to say, I think we need be real careful before we start leveling accusations that journos are engaging in deliberate, factual falsehood. Absolutely they have biases, both overt and covert, but that’s quite a different thing.

It’s based on history. Rosen has a knack for repeating insurgent narratives as if they are fact, and very selectively presenting information to back that up. Here, for example, he misrepresents a report to highlight just how bad the U.S. mission is. He also cites reports from October that bolster his case—some officials think more troops is a bad idea, more soldiers have died—but others, like how General Petraeus and Mike Mullen (who has actually cautiously endorsed a troops increase) agree, or that the districts he was in have been retaken by the U.S., don’t make their way into the narrative.

Then there’s also the weird contradiction that the U.S. should leave because it doesn’t have the troops to secure the country, and without more troops it drops bombs that kill civilians, but adding more troops will lead to disaster. It doesn’t follow any noticeable chain of causality.

You are right there – I didn’t read into the UN report, just skimmed the press headline. Still I wonder why Foust than uses the HRW report (with the most lowballed numbers), when he could have used the original UN report to refute Rosen.

And how he can claim that it is an (intentional) lie by Rosen. Pieces like Rosen’s get fact checked to catch such mistakes. The RS fact checkers should have caught this one. They didn’t. Well – shit happens.

I keep up all my other points.