Guns in the desert
Aziz P
Michael Totten has another essay up - plus one scary as hell video.
It's a bit frustrating that voices like Michael's aren't getting more widespread exposure. I think part of this is the way in which the political blogsphere is so divided. MJT doesn't blog on any lefty blogs or post announcements of his essays at DailyKos, so its really only the right-sided audience that gets exposed. Here at DW is about as far left as his work gets exposed to.
I do not blame the media, though. Since I actually subscribe to feeds from major media sources I see plenty of evidence that the changing realities in Iraq are being faithfully reported. Indie journalists like Totten have their roots in the blogsphere, but its they who need to reach towards the mass media, not the other way around. Part of that is to cross-pollinate their work to areas where it might not be intuitively obvious, such as leftwing communities.
I speak form experience - my dailykos diary gets troll rated half the time, too. And yet there are voices there, members of that community, who are receptive. Do we prefer the status quo or is Iraq important enough that we should seek to persuade? MJT and Michael Yon both are compelling, articulate and courageous men whose work is not easily dismissed.
Ideally what I would like to see would be MJT at Phil Carter's Intel Dump as a guest blogger. The cross pollination that would result form that would truly be beneficial to the debate, and linking to that from left sites would increase the idea-penetration and persuasiveness of the point of view that Michael argues for so vividly with his journalism.
I would agree that left-wing bloggers need to be spending a lot more time looking at the work of people like Totten and Yon. I'm amazed they don't, since both men have been part of the blogging world since its earliest days. It's made me take a dim view of that part of the blog world, it really has.
As far as left wng bloggers go, the onus is on the Michaels to - ahem - pimp their work. A diary at DKos with a routine announcement of a new post (and the intro above the fold, like he does here sometimes) is a minimum.
The problem is, of course, that they're using him, an "independent," to prove a point. Michael himself may be somewhere in between a conservative and a liberal, but to people who don't know his work, he seems like he has an agenda. I know this is unfair, but since he only manages to sell his stories to right-leaning publications, it appears that way.
The best idea for him, in my opinion, would be to continue with a tactic he's used on occasion. He runs a poll asking his readers what kind of story he should cover. I think that has a lot of commercial potential, probably more than just asking for donations. Less personal independence, of course, but he'd be real close to his readership that way.
I don't think that MJT would receive a good reception in the Left Blogosphere not only due to policy difference but because I think that the overwhelming majority of the American Left Blogosphere is interested in foreign policy only as it interacts with domestic policy and politics.
There are exceptions to that, of course, for example Newhoggers and Blake Hounshell, the blogger formerly known as praktike. Interestly, cernig, the head honcho at Newhoggers is a Scot.
MJT interviews real soldiers. They talk about their work and daily routines in a kind of Studs Terkel style. He reports what they say. These men and women are sane and often heroic. Apparently that's not the story that the majority of editors, at least at outlets like the Times, want to hear.
Telling these journalists that they need to approach the left is like telling a Jew to approach the Nazi's. They're not interested in this reporting because it undermines their ideology.
I appreciate your support Aziz. You're a good guy.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.