The New Republic Is A Joke
Posted by TF Boggs at 7:20 PM, 7/19/07 |
Much talk has been made recently about the write up in The New Republic from a supposed soldier who tells some outlandish stories about his time in Iraq (you can find a good write up about the story here
). I cannot offer much more than has already been said about the “soldier” author in question as I was never at FOB Falcon but what I can do is share some stories about some questionable soldiers that I have had the pleasure to be around.
For starters I believe the entire New Republic story to be a fake, no soldier would ever be able to get away with the things that the author says he did. Not even taking into consideration that most of what he said is basically impossible i.e. running over dogs in a Bradley (a Bradley cannot maneuver quick enough to run over a moving dog), a soldier wearing a human skull on his head (how exactly does a human skull fit like a hat?), and making fun of a woman scarred by an IED (a soldier who said something like that would get his ass kicked by anyone in the vicinity, including me).
With that out of the way I do know some soldiers who are far from the label of “the best and the brightest”.
On my first deployment I was in a unit with a kid who believed that he could curse other people. If he put a curse on you it was as good as gold to him that whatever he said about you would come to pass. Needless to say this kid provided enough material for us to laugh about daily, but in reality I could see him making up a crazy story like the one the soldier did in TNR just to get attention.
On my second deployment I was in a unit with a kid who was a Wiccan and we had to keep taking away his sacrificial knives that he had for his “altar” in his room. Although this kid needed constant watching he wasn’t that bad of a guy, and most of us liked him, and got along with him. However, I could see him making up stories to get attention as well.
I was also with soldiers who told their family members back home that they were going on secret missions with generals, and were single handedly killing al Qaeda on a daily basis.
These types of soldiers are few and far between, but they do exist and they give all soldiers a bad name.
I share this information just to make the point that there are bad seeds in the military who act on their own, and sometimes unbeknownst to their higher ups. We try to keep as tight a rein on them as we can but we cannot be everywhere at once.
If the “soldier” who “told” TNR these stories is real, his stories are not. Sure there have been some unfortunate occurrences in Iraq but nothing like what the author of the article talks about. A story like this one will only do harm to the reputation of American soldiers abroad, and could quite possibly cause physical harm to them as well.
The New Republic should be ashamed that they were suckered into publishing this story. They should be ashamed because they seemed to have been a respectable publication in the past, but they will no longer be thought of as so. That their fact checkers and editors let this one slip by speaks very poorly of them. Their unprofessional decision to go ahead with this story speaks ill of the vast majority of American soldiers who sacrifice so much to bring much needed change to the world. TNR owes an apology to all American fighting men and women for their hurtful story. If you have a subscription to TNR cancel it today and send them a message.
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