New at Reason

March 1, 2007

Michael Young has a few words for Seymour Hersh.

Comments

|3.1.07 @ 3:48PM|#

Michael Young isn't fit to carry Sy Hersh's dirty jock strap.

|3.1.07 @ 3:56PM|#

I got a headache just reading that. Any foreign power that gets involved in the muck that is Lebanon is doomed to disappointment, I'd say.

As for the theory that keeping the various factions over there fighting each other prevents them from fighting us, well I'd say that is at least a plausible theory. Though one does have to be careful to keep tabs on the thugs that one arms.

|3.1.07 @ 3:57PM|#

Seymour Hersch sounds like a good name for an Ayn Rand villain.

Other than that, I got nothing.

|3.1.07 @ 3:59PM|#

"the problem with Hersh is that he offers little hard evidence for many of his controversial assertions"

Mr. Young, are you aware that Reason has archives of your writing over the past five years?

|3.1.07 @ 4:05PM|#

Mr. Young, could you please write a colum titled "No Way Joe is Going to Win the MegaMillions on Friday?"

Please?

Pretty please?

|3.1.07 @ 4:13PM|#

Seymour Hersh with some frequency writes pure fabrications, and calls it journalism.

|3.1.07 @ 4:14PM|#

I want Michael Young to write an article about my manuscript being rejected by the research journal.

Then I'll know that it's going to be accepted.

|3.1.07 @ 4:31PM|#

Mr. Young, could you please write a colum titled "No Way Joe is Going to Win the MegaMillions on Friday?"

I believe Joe has won the thread.

|3.1.07 @ 4:41PM|#

"Like Ronald Reagan in Eastern Europe, Bush has shown in the Middle East that simple, indeed simplistic, ideas can go a long way when expressing the frustration and anger of populations afflicted with tyrannies refusing to accord them even minimal respect."

|3.1.07 @ 5:44PM|#

Seymour Hersh with some frequency writes pure fabrications, and calls it journalism.

Do you mean he fabricates or that he quotes fabricators? Could you provide some examples of either or both, please?

|3.1.07 @ 5:48PM|#

I'll grant that Michael Young is better placed to chart the dizzying kaleidoscope of Lebanese politics. But the broad picture is more revealing: the US and UK are trying to prop up a government the US allowed its key ally to fatally undermine last summer.

How to do this? Hezbollah is trying to take over Lebanon so...you reach out to Hezbollah's enemies and try to unite them in an anti-Hezbollah coalition. Politics 101. But who are Hezbollah's enemies? Certainly some middle-class intellectuals and democracy-lovers, but also Sunni hate groups linked to Saudi radical clerics. Kind of like the Saudi radicals that made their views known in Lower Manhattan some years ago.

This is a pretty desperate gambit. The further Siniora dips into the poisonous backwaters of Lebanon's fractured politics, the closer he gets to people who hate Hezbollah, Israel, the US, and him in equal measure, and aren't shy about taking on their enemies one at a time if such a course is available to them. Such alliances are generally temporary and include the strong possibility of blowback, as we all should have learned by now.

The US may have no other choice in the matter, but I would be a lot more forgiving if I thought they had learned something from the experience. Letting Israel humiliate the Lebanese government last summer has led to a far worse situation than the one we started with. Unfortunately Washington and, it seems, Mr Young, are eager to make the same mistake with Syria. And Iran.

Thomas Paine\'s Goiter|3.1.07 @ 6:49PM|#

Sy is becoming our Herbert L. Matthews.

|3.1.07 @ 6:51PM|#

O.K., Les, howza' 'bout this for a fabrication by Hersh (sorry for the lack of clarity):

"In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation," he said. "It isn't happening now, but I will tell you - there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

This is either a bald-face lie, or the words of a moron. Take your pick.

|3.1.07 @ 8:05PM|#

Mr. Young lost me at the word "trope". Let's give the trope trope a rest, eh?

|3.1.07 @ 8:08PM|#

Joe resort to ad hominems when he can't present a coherent argument against a piece he didn't like? This is a new development in the H&R comments section!

|3.1.07 @ 8:32PM|#

If one has followed Joe's comments on many of Young's "articles" (more like "fevered imagination stream of conscioussness jottings" or "please sent the check for this bit of bald faced propoganda pieces") then Joe's "ad hominens" are perfectly placed. Young's articles are terrible when trying to ascertain public opinion in the Middle East and even worse when he tries to predict such things. Sy broke Mai and Abu Grahib while Young keeps spinning success for Neoconservative fantasies that never seem to pan out as his spin predicts.

|3.1.07 @ 10:25PM|#

Young's articles are terrible when trying to ascertain public opinion in the Middle East and even worse when he tries to predict such things.

There's a simple rule of thumb that can be applied to Middle East analysis: if it makes sense, it's definitely wrong. (If it doesn't make sense, it might be right, but there's no way to tell).

People like Fouad Ajami, Bernard Lewis, and Michael Young generally make sense. And they are always, always wrong.

|3.2.07 @ 2:31AM|#

Will,

That's...a pretty damn good example. Not that I doubt you, but could you give me a link?

|3.2.07 @ 8:27AM|#

Did anyone read the article?

Gray Ghost|3.2.07 @ 10:34AM|#

Les, it's not a transcript but here's the link.

I haven't heard of any charges from the soccer game massacre Hersh describes in the linked talk. I would think there would be charges, if it went down as he said. That there haven't been any so far, dims his credibility to me.

Max's rule of thumb makes as much sense as any when evaluating analysis about the MidEast.

|3.2.07 @ 11:14AM|#

Well, that's pretty disappointing. I've read of controversy regarding his work (while finding no evidence of fabrication), but that single quote is certainly out of step with history and reality.

|3.2.07 @ 12:12PM|#

IRH: I read it. His complaint is that Hersh tripped over the names and associations of Lebanese splinter groups, which is almost certainly true. Like I said above, it's a topic for experts to comment on. He concedes Hersh's wider point that the US is financing the Siniora government's move to bring the various factions into an anti-Hezbollah coalition (while Hezbollah itself is using Iranian money to finance reconstruction; guess which move will resonate more with the masses). He acknowledges that some of this aid might end up in the hands of, well, terrorists, "though this is imprecise language." Indeed it is, but it's language Young would probably accept if it were a Western government talking about an Islamic charity.

Young argues that the US is stuck with backing anti-Israel fanatics in Saudi Arabia because these are the only kinds of Saudi Arabians there are. Probably true, but a far cry from his pro-Bush enthusiasm for "draining the swamps" not very long ago. In the end, he comes around to the conclusion that Hersh is right in the generalities but mixes up all the specifics. A good reason to write a critical commentary on the Hersh piece, but hardly enough to dismiss him as a writer.

In fairness, Mr Young probably did not write the headline, which is harsher than the piece beneath it. For a very different take on the same subject, I can recommend a piece from Mr Young's own employer, the Daily Star:

http://tinyurl.com/yuw7dl

|3.3.07 @ 11:13AM|#

Thanks, James.