Yesterday the Washington Post reported–and the Drudge Report heavily promoted–the idea that Richard Holbrooke’s final words were, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Well, maybe not–at least according to Obama officials who have challenged that account. The Washington Post serves up a follow-up today,under the headline “Holbrooke’s War Remark Called Banter, Not Entreaty,” which apparently offers “a fuller account of the tone and contents of his remarks.”
The upshot of the piece is that this was a joke–one that some readers apparently took seriously:
Holbrooke’s statement was seized upon quickly by critics of the Afghan war debate, some of whom interpreted it as a clarion call to end the conflict. Others viewed his comment as a last-breath disavowal of the Obama administration’s war policy, which has involved a troop surge–which Holbrooke publicly supported–to combat the Taliban.
Yes, they “seized upon” something that was reported in the Post. I guess they should be more careful next time around.
The bigger point: We’ve now seen an allegedly bogus call for ending the Afghan War get much more press attention than actual calls for ending the Afghan War.
While I can’t say that I know what Richard Holbrooke’s final words were or what he meant by them, I am skeptical that the Washington Post’s second version–sourced to an anonymous “aide”–brings us closer to the truth. For those tasks with selling the unpopular war to the American people, reports that the war’s chief diplomat called for an end to it are obviously a disaster, and they have every incentive to explain it away.
That goes double for the New York Times’ account (12/15/10), sourced to State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley, who gives Holbrooke’s last words as: â┚¬Ã…“Yeah, see if you can take care of that, including ending the war.â┚¬Ã‚ That sounds to me a lot less like a dying man’s last words than like an institutional flak’s damage-controlling rewrite.
And Crowley’s the sort of spokesperson who makes you believe things less once they come out of his mouth. He recently declared on Twitter, “Conspiracy theorists are at it again. The U.S. is not pulling strings in the Assange case. This is between the UK and Sweden.” Just as if the cables Assange is America’s public enemy No. 1 hadn’t revealed the United States interfering in the justice systems of Germany and Spain.
Before that, Crowley called on Cuba to release an American arrested on spying charges, tweeting, “One year in prison and not charged with a crime…. ‘Tis the season.” The irony of lecturing Cuba, the involuntary host of the Guantanamo prison, about holding prisoners without charging them with crimes was apparently lost on him.
http://twitter.com/#!/PJCrowley/status/12593971700174848
http://twitter.com/#!/PJCrowley/status/10854929954504704
Truth is, I really don’t see how the spin really changes anything: It may have been said a bit light-heartedly (since he was addressing someone who obviously did not have the power to stop the war), but it still says his last spoken thought was about *ending* the war – *not* about “bringing it to a successful conclusion.”
I won’t judge his heart and maybe he believed that what he was doing was the best way to end the war the quickest or maybe he believed it was the surest road to “a successful conclusion.” I don’t know. But the fact is, there remains a clear difference between “end” and “succeed” and it was the former word he chose.