Counterinsurgency – “COIN” – is the military term for nation-building.  The media throw it around like loose political change.  But it’s useful not only in describing President Obama’s wavering policy in Afghanistan.  As General McChrystal’s experience with Rolling Stone proves, the politically-activist media are an insurgent force that has to be dealt with in order to enable American voters to understand what is going on in the war.

Let us belabor a metaphor.  If the liberal media are the Taliban, how shall the counterinsurgency be conducted?

The Pentagon’s strategy has to gel around the classic anti-guerilla tactic taught at the JFK Special Forces School at Fort Bragg.

General Stanley McChrystal and his “Team America” staff apparently forgot the lessons many of them were taught there.  They apparently believed, to predictable result, that if you’re the coolest spec ops guys, everyone will automatically treat you as such no matter what you say or do.

A few years ago, I observed a part of the Green Beret school’s graduation exercise.  For reasons long forgotten, it’s called “Robin Sage.” The principal objective, for “A-teams” of would-be grads, is to be inserted into the “Peoples Republic of Pineland,” find a designated guerrilla group (comprised of former SEALs, Green Beanies and such), earn their confidence and begin to “train” them.  The “guerrillas” don’t make it easy on them. (more…)

The mythical figure of the war correspondent has a special place in the history of American journalism. The images are indelibly etched in memory: Edward R. Murrow broadcasting live while Nazi planes showered London with bombs; Ernie Pyle telling the personal stories of life in the trenches and ultimately paying for those stories with his life; and in today’s war with the jihadists, Michael Yon’s amazing reports from Afghanistan. This kind of fearless reporting made for journalist-heroes: courageous men and women that all Americans could admire.

Contrast Murrow, Pyle, et al with the cowards populating today’s mainstream media outlets. Everyone in the media today – whether new or old – is a war correspondent, in fact if not in name. The war is here, around the globe and most of all within our borders, courtesy of bullies and thugs who have spent the better part of thirteen centuries killing non-believers and trying to force a backward, hateful ideology cloaked in the robes of religion upon the world. Yet, though this war includes not only body counts, but ultimately threatens the existence of the free press itself, the mainstream media meekly cowers as the foundations of free speech and a free society are worn away by Islamic gangsters. (more…)