The Fall of Kabul, Washington and the Guys at the Fancy Magazines

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Josh Marshall
@joshtpm
Virtually everything you've seen on TV about Kabul for the last week is driven by two pent-up decades of denial, deflection and evasion of responsibility. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-fall-of-kabul-washington-and-the-guys-at-the-fancy-magazines… via @TPM

The Fall of Kabul, Washington and the Guys at the Fancy Magazines
I wrote at the beginning of the week that the lightning collapse...
talkingpointsmemo.com
8:47 AM · Aug 21, 2021

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-fall-of-kabul-washington-and-the-guys-at-the-fancy-magazines

I wrote at the beginning of the week that the lightning collapse of the Afghan Army and the Afghan state, far from making me question the decision to withdraw, had removed any doubt in my mind that it was the correct one. The subsequent week has only deepened this judgment. Since then I’ve been wrestling with and trying to make sense of the elite or prestige national media response to the unfolding events. TPM Reader GF captured some of this on Tuesday …

I had to laugh at your post today titled “DC Press Bigs Escalate to Peak Screech Over Biden Defiance” as it made me think of a Punchbowl news article I read first thing this am. The article said the execution of the withdrawal has been awful, Biden has played it poorly etc. etc. The truly gold statement in that Punchbowl article just after saying how poorly Biden has managed the execution of the withdrawal was “There has to have been a better way.” None of these folks know or can suggest what would have been the better way except to make such silly statements as Biden did poorly because there had to be a better way with no follow-on as to what the better way is or was.

Like hyenas and chimpanzees, reporters hunt in packs. There’s a reason they call them “feeding frenzies.” They’re also obsessed with images. But none of that is unique to the current situation. There’s something more at work here.

Some claim that there is a great appetite in the press to beat up on Joe Biden to demonstrate that all the criticism of Donald Trump wasn’t bias, just solid reporting. That’s a significant factor but I don’t think the most important. Will Bunch points out a real and very human factor: many reporters at national news outlets know at least the kinds of people endangered by the Taliban rout and in many cases particular people. Your news organization worked with interpreters and handlers. You embedded with military formations and met military interpreters or members of the Afghan Army. This is human and real, even righteous. But again, I think this is only a part and not the biggest part of what we’ve seen play out over recent days.

*snip*