To military bloggers and conservative hawks, Michael Yon was a super hero — a fearless Green-Beret-turned-citizen-journalist who spent years on the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan when most big media outlets kept their reporters at home. But now, those same military bloggers are turning their sights on Yon, after he began savaging America’s top general in Afghanistan and warning that the American war effort is all but doomed.
There was a time when Yon lauded U.S. commanders, and military bloggers celebrated Yon. Now Yon, reporting solo from Afghanistan, tells Danger Room that he’s the victim of a “smear campaign” orchestrated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s closest advisers. And milbloggers are reluctantly telling their former star to knock it off. “He has called his own competence into question,” writes Jim Hanson at the popular Blackfive.net blog.
Online writers have been sniping at one another since the Internet’s Cretaceous era. But this “is not just another dumb blogosphere flap,” writes blogger and Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden. It “apparently involves some serious issues potentially compromising a vital asset for anyone trying to understand these wars of ours.”
The troubled started earlier this month, when the military ended Yon’s embed with the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province after three months. That’s weeks — months — longer than most reporters are permitted (or want, or are able) to hole up with a single unit.
But to Yon, it was still a betrayal. The 5-2’s commander agreed to let Yon stay until the brigade went home. The shorter embed was to him a sign that “McChrystal himself thinks we are losing the war.”
“Today, I do not trust McChrystal any more than some people trust the New York Times, Obama or Bush,” Yon added. “McChrystal is a great killer, but this war is above his head. He must be watched.”
Continue Reading “‘Smears’ Turn Milbloggers on Their Frontline Hero” »