I don’t drill down into one place in particular wtih the goal of becoming an expert

Which is an admission that Totten knows just enough about the places he covers to be dangerous, but not enough to write anything halfway accurate or intelligent.

I can’t say why some might want to have a beer with Totten & consider him a nice guy. I’m only interested in what he writes & how woefully inadequate it is. I wouldn’t have a beer with him if he was the last person on earth (well, perhaps a slight exagerration).

As for who I am, I’m a former UN employee who now teaches writing and a course on violence in the 20th century here in Beirut. I came across this blog because ever since I spent several weeks in Uzbekistan back in 2005, I’ve been fascinated with the country.

I’m not too big on 4th of July celebrations, and besides, even if I were, I don’t eat meat, so BBQs always leave something to be desired.

Michael: I’m not going to get into any more Lebanese stuff on here, but if you have written critical pieces about March 14, I’d be genuinely curious to read them, because I’ve never come across a single one on your blog that I can recall.

And finally, about Georgia, have you guys seen Babluani’s film L’Héritage? I’ve been trying to find a copy of it for ages…

Nathan Hamm, this thread, 7.2.2009: “Come on Michael, that guest column was pretty hollow. He made a cheap, inaccurate swipe, which one might expect to elicit a negative response… If you liked it better when I was the loudest voice, this is one of those times you would have seen me go for the throat.”

Seriously, Nathan takes editorial control and ownership of this site — if I step over the time (and I’ve done it on occasion), he’s had me walk back or even remove a post. Your site bears your name in the URL — accept some ownership of what gets written there. But that is beside the point.

Judging by your comment, you found an indication that the Georgian government was lying about what happened during the war, but got distracted by newer work and didn’t have a chance to put any more work into the story. That’s actually perfectly fine… now that it’s in the open and we know it. But what is this?

I don’t remember banning you, but you probably deserved it…

Anyway, you did far worse than note “slipshod coverage.” You put words in my mouth and “quoted” me in the Columbia Journalism Review saying something I did not say. You should have actually quoted me — using quotation marks — instead of paraphrasing and distorting what I actually said.

From the Columbia Journalism Review, 8.2.2008:

The advent of citizen propaganda (as compared to media) is an important, and often neglected, phenomenon of modern warfare. During the recent hostilities in the Caucasus, this phenomenon was manifested in various ways—whether independent blogger-journalists like Michael J. Totten writing 5,000-word press releases with the help of official Georgian media representatives, or Blake Fleetwood accusing the GOP of orchestrating the war for their own election prospects. But this angle has largely been excluded from discussion about how the war has been portrayed.

That is the only time I have ever mentioned you there, and that is the only place in that piece where you appear. You just admitted that the Georgian government fed you a line (this was in our email exchange as well), yet insist I inaccurately portrayed your LONG recounting of a paid Georgian official account of the way by calling it a press release?

Again: gimme a break! Your email at the time complained that you didn’t have the “help” of any Georgian representatives, just a long sit down where they spoke and you transcribed. Okay, fine, it’s a semantic distinction perhaps. You also disputed the term “propaganda,” though I doubt you actually read the whole piece to see the phenomenon I was trying to describe. Again: fine, I’m sure you run into that all the time.

Then there was this:

I apologize for getting pissy at you in my comments section, but I was traveling at the time, was not able to argue with you on the merits or engage you at any length, and I was justifiably peeved that you said I self-identified with the buffoons who showed up in Georgia without having done any research.

This is not to belabor the point, but all of this happened well after you told me explicitly I was never welcome on your blog again. “I’m tired and snapped” is not quite the same as “why are you so mean to me you should be nice like we’re drinking.”

Make up your mind. Note I’ve never disinvited you from voicing your opinion here, no matter how disingenuous you’ve been about this. Nor did I call you a “completely full of shit individual,” as you did to me on your blog.

Like I said: courtesy goes both ways.

Which is still, I should repeat NOT THE TOPIC OF THE POST, which was Michael Cecire being a douche in accusing me of drawing a moral equivalence between Saakashvili and Ahmadinejad simply because I felt the riots in Georgia were not receiving enough attention as I felt they should. I’m sure you could agree, Michael, that that is a ridiculous thing to accuse someone of, tantamount to accusing them of writing Georgian government propaganda. More importantly, I would wager it is probably not something a professional, ethical journalist would want written on his named blog.

Agreed, I’m done with that. Sorry.

MT, Nathan has vigorously and consistently defended you, even while we had an angry email exchange last year. That being said, in this specific instance with the good Michael Cecire, he would have chosen a much more vigorous, angry response for his petty sniping.

Look, that’s fine. I haven’t read Nathan’s take on this since he seems not to have written one, and I’m not going to take sides on the dispute in advance. Cecire asked if I would publish a guest piece by him on the topic and I said sure. I would have done the same for Nathan had he asked instead. I didn’t tell Cecire what to write, nor would I tell Nathan what to write. Those two can argue about that amongst themselves. I’ll be happy to publish a response by Nathan if he wants and if it’s polite.

HOWEVER, at the time you mentioned that you were working through some new information about that war, specifically that Georgia was lying about being a hapless victim of rampaging Russian aggression. Whatever happened to that?

I did follow the information as it developed, and I agree that it’s possible the Georgian government lied. I don’t know whether or not that has been definitively established because I moved on from that topic when I flew to Sadr City, Iraq.

Yet all that shows up in public is me noting some slipshod coverage and you banning me from your comment section.

I don’t remember banning you, but you probably deserved it. I have critics in my comments section who have been arguing with me for years, and I appreciate their constructive feedback. I’ll lift the ban if you ask me to and if you argue with me as though I’m sitting next to you in a bar.

Anyway, you did far worse than note “slipshod coverage.” You put words in my mouth and “quoted” me in the Columbia Journalism Review saying something I did not say. You should have actually quoted me — using quotation marks — instead of paraphrasing and distorting what I actually said.

Courtesy goes both ways, dude.

I have been far more courteous to you than you have been to me. Look at the thread above. You accused me of publishing Azerbaijani ministry propaganda in the Wall Street Journal, which is not even in the same time zone as what actually happened. If I were as discourteous to you as you are to me, I’d be accusing you of doing the same for Vladimir Putin.

1) This is not a forum for debating one’s position within Lebanese politics. You two take that part of the discussion elsewhere.

2) MT, Nathan has vigorously and consistently defended you, even while we had an angry email exchange last year. That being said, in this specific instance with the good Michael Cecire, he would have chosen a much more vigorous, angry response for his petty sniping.

3) Our dispute over the Georgia crisis, if I recall it correctly, related to me accusing you of “not doing your homework” during your dispatches from Tblisi because I felt blockquoting a Georgian official and a renown anti-Russian partisan was one-sided. You told me you take your job very seriously, etc. etc.

HOWEVER, at the time you mentioned that you were working through some new information about that war, specifically that Georgia was lying about being a hapless victim of rampaging Russian aggression. Whatever happened to that?

This is like your trip to Azerbaijan. That is something that matters, and is apparently secret information that makes you more, not less, legit in the eyes of people like Sean. If you do indeed wrestle with the tenets of a story, especially after it’s been published, that is a mark of integrity, not weakness or lack of skill.

Yet all that shows up in public is me noting some slipshod coverage and you banning me from your comment section. Plus, as Noah pointed out, yelling at people for pointing that out (or here calling them “shit flingers”) really doesn’t elevate the discussion in the way you seem to want to elevate it. Courtesy goes both ways, dude.

Lastly, what the hell are you people doing on a blog comment thread today? Sean I can understand since he’s in Lebanon and maybe not American (seriously, who the hell are you?) but the rest of you should be grilling or frying things. I made a big pile of root chips—potaotes, turnips, and beets—and they’re quite delicious. And beet-butt chicken, which is better than I expected it to be.

And Robert Kaplan is a douche if he thinks reviving MacKinder is hip or novel. Sorry, it was done during the big geopolitics revival in the 90s. MT, that’s my big problem with Kaplan. He just magically “discovers” things that have been around for years, only instead of doing due diligence to see if anyone’s ever written about it before he either publicizes it as if it’s some new HUGE THING (as Nathan points out), or he semi-plagiarizes existing work and reacts to it like he’s really clever and inventive. The Indian Ocean was important in the 80s’, then again in the late 90s, and now he’s making it important again. Got it, been there and done that.

It’s annoying to “specialists” (I am not a specialist in the Indian Ocean, but I’ve been buried in geopolitical theory for some time) when someone like Kaplan (a “generalist,” though lots of people use less charitable language) steals the thunder of an entire field and takes credit for it. I’m not talking about myself here—I’ve never written anything about the region—but he’s sidelining a whole field of research. That is what Nathan and I find so deeply frustrating and dishonest about him. He rehashes the work of legit experts but gets 100% of the credit and nominated to the Defense Policy Board. That’s crap, and you know it.

To be more accurate, Kaplan does something more broad than I said, especially with his more recent work — he overstates the wisdom and relevance of classical and 19th century geopolitical theory and practice. Sure, there are lessons to be drawn from these periods of human history, but not especially so despite our cultural fetishization of political thought and practice of those times. When he sticks to ideas, I rarely find too much to worry about, even if I disagree with him. When he adds in evidence from his travels or current events though, I find that he tends to overstate the historical importance of events and he seems to have the stunning knack to find absolutely no evidence counter to the argument he makes. I don’t think we want advice made on such suspect grounds to inform US policy.

On the other hand, during your trip to the south, you thought it wise to be shown around by “professional enemies of Hezbollah,” who I imagine were from the mountain and not the south.

Maybe you should ask instead of imagine. They were from the south, not the mountain. It’s not that I thought it “wise” to be shown around by “professional enemies of Hezbollah.” Rather, they were the only ones I could find who would take me down there on my schedule.

Meanwhile, Nir Rosen “embedded” with Hezbollah in May 2008 when its fighters attacked the capital. I wouldn’t have done that, but it’s a way to get a story and learn something.

I’d be willing to go on a Hezbollah-led tour of the south if they would let me, but that wasn’t an option. I tried that more than once. It was one of the first things I did when I arrived in Lebanon, long before I ever wrote one word about them.

Anyway, I had been down to the south previously with a Shia woman who was also from there and more sympathetic to Hezbollah. I’ve been down there many times, sometimes escorted and sometimes not. I took my mother down there once when she visited me on vacation when things were more mellow. I have a number of friends who were born and raised down there, and I long ago lost track of the number I’ve spoken to who are Hezbollah partisans.

Anyway, I know how to do my job better than you know how to do my job. I don’t need you to tell me how junkets work, as I have participated in the process and you have not. You’re an English teacher, not a journalist. I assume you know how to do your job, just as I know how to do mine. One reason I was happy to go on a junket to Lebanon is that I knew I could write whatever I damn well pleased without creating an incident as I did when I wrote critically of Azerbaijan.

I have criticized March 14 without getting any grief whatsoever, but I was threatened with violence by Hezbollah after cracking a joke on my blog. The really dumb thing about THAT incident was the joke was at the esxpense of right-wing Americans and in defense of Hezbollah. You just can’t please some people, and after a certain point there is no use trying.

Anyway, let me know if you feel like being cool and discussing this stuff agreeably and without hostility. Until then, I have work to do and should stop wasting my time and the time of Registan’s readers. Signing off…

As for being taken seriously by Sa’ad Hariri, I imagine that’s true, but not quite in the way you mean. The Satchi and Satchi crowd and Now partisans et al. take these junkets pretty seriously, which is why people like you and Judith Miller and that dreadfully ignorant wine guy Osborne were offered paid trips to Lebanon. They probably even trotted out some token Shi’a, like Lokman Slim (whom I respect, by the way), to convince you that they were being even-handed and non-sectarian. The truth of the matter is that you’re extremely partisan, and are likewise handled by partisans, but you either don’t want to admit it or don’t even realize what’s happening. Honestly, why do you think they pay for these junkets, if not to lobby on behalf of their cause.

You don’t have to be an expert or specialist to be critical of your sources and try to get several points of view on a story, so hiding behind the defense of being a generalist doesn’t really cut it. To my mind, being a good journalist involves empathy with the people you’re covering while doing your best to not be an active party in the conflict. We all have our partis pris, but when we’re incapable of seeing past those, then judgments becomes clouded and reporting turns into partisan shilling.

Of course I ask area specialists. I just didn’t ask Josh Foust about Georgia. Is he an expert on Georgia? Maybe. I really don’t know, and don’t know if he has even been there. All the people I quoted either live in Georgia or have lived in Georgia for years. I can’t do my job if I don’t quote such people, and I can’t ask every person who thinks of himself as an expert.

Anyway, expert or not, Josh does follow Georgia more closely than I do. And like I said, it’s not the criticism I mind, it’s the attitude. I interview, quote, and even publish people whom I don’t necessarily agree with, so I don’t see why the bad attitude is necessary. I sometimes roll my eyes when a journalist briefly parachutes into a place I know reasonably well, but I help when I can rather than mock or attack.

I apologize to readers for what must be a boring and seemingly sectarian argument. Josh and I are colleagues of sorts, and my purpose here is to change the tone of our “relationship” to one that’s a little bit more constructive. I recently managed to repair a much more hostile relationship between myself and Juan Cole, and I think it’s worth the effort with some (not all) people.

Okay, I don’t exactly have a dog in this fight either–God forbid getting involved in a thread every time Josh pisses somebody off!–but seriously, it’s not the job of area specialists everywhere to fix the mistakes of “generalists.” If any journalist wants help from area specialists, ask before publishing stuff instead calling people who call you out on your mistakes “shit flingers.”