Appropriate Responses

William Arkin has garnered quite a bit of heat for some of his comments in a blog entry posted earlier this week that labeled those who wear the uniform of the American military "mercenaries," and stated, "Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform..."

It was, in a word, disgusting.

Yesterday, Arkin offered up a response to the immense blowback his previous post generated, and Arkin, much to his dishonor, chose to single out the most angry responses to his initial post, while utterly refusing to engage the most thoughtful ones. In some ways, his response was more outrageous than his initial post, apparently labeling those serving in our nations military as fascists:

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

A very interesting point about his response was that it was not posted on his blog's main page; it was only available through a direct hyperlink. Was Arkin or WPNI (Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, the company running Washingtonpost.com) attempting to hide the post?

By early this morning, another oddity occurred: The second post was back on Early Warning, but as a sharp-eyed reader of Stephen Spruill's Media Blog noted:

Hmm, this is interesting. Now there's a third post sandwiched *between* the other two, offering a somewhat more sincere (but halfhearted, frankly) apology for the use of the term "mercenary".

That post simply wasn't there before, even when the "Arrogant and Intolerant" post was added to the table of contents.

By my account, the apology *followed* his second tirade. But now it's showing up before it. Is Mr. Arkin trying to reorder the timeline here, to make it look like his detractors are blowing right past it?

Sure enough, that is exactly what I found when I checked Arkin's blog around 9:00 AM, but minutes later, the posts had flip-flopped with his third screed now posted in a correct chronology.

I don't know if Arkin was playing as fast and loose with the posting order and the transparency of these articles as he played with the pejorative statements he aimed at our military in not one, but two separate posts, but it does bear asking.

On another front in this discussion, some bloggers are calling for a boycott of the Washington Post's advertisers over Arkin's inflammatory (and to my mind, unnecessarily vicious and indefensible) attacks, and still others are calling upon the Washington Post to flatly fire Arkin for expressing these opinions.

I don't agree with either approach.

Arkin is entitled to his apparent contempt for the military, and has the right to share his opinion, no matter how offensive we find it to be. If Arkin was misrepresenting facts, that would be another case entirely, but his posts were clearly opinion pieces.

That said, Arkin's rants—and I feel that his specific, intentional and acknowleged choice of wording justifies the term "rant"—along with the rather questionable re-ordering and obfuscation of his posts should be reviewed by both pundits and the Washington Post itself as two separate, but related issues.

The purpose of Arkin's blog Early Warning is stated to be this:

Starting Sept. 14, Early Warning will report daily on the comings and goings of the national security community -- military, special ops, intelligence, homeland security -- part blog, part investigative journalism (a jog!). Here I can post documents, go into great detail, stick with a story when others have moved on, and introduce one that has escaped the mainstream media.

There's no question that The Washington Post is mainstream media, but in this space of theirs, I'll have more freedom. Still, I won't fudge facts or feed an even more confused and conspiratorial picture of the secret agencies.

My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride (memo to self: Don't say anything bad about the troops), and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today.

Earlier this year, I wrote a book -- Code Names -- that not only lays out my views on secrecy, but also provides the goods (and thanks friends for keeping code names coming). As you'll find out, I'm an obsessive compulsive kind of collector - acronyms, code names, nomenclatures, events, dates, documents. For 30 years I've been putting together little pieces of information to try to produce the BIG PICTURE.

Early Warning is an opportunity to put my stockpiles to good use. As I dig into the hundreds of documents already in my possession, I'll be looking for your comment and dissent (and for those of you with your own stockpiles, for your contributions). I know I'm writing mostly for a hyper-informed world of national security geeks, but my larger objective is a more informed public and to demolish false authority, in government, in the special interests, and in the media. My target list, frankly, is too vast to even summarize. I also hope to have some fun in writing without the straitjacket of traditional journalistic conventions.

Calling those in our military "mercenaries," stating that we have "indulged" them through "every rape and murder," only to later imply they are fascists in a follow-up post, shows that Arkin has clearly failed in his memo to himself: "Don't say anything bad about the troops."

This is a failure on Arkin's part, but we all fail or contradict ourselves at some point if we write long enough; human beings are, unfortunately, often hypocritical beasts. If any blogger feels that they have not been hypocritical or contradictory at some point they are simply deluding themselves. This alone is not a firing offense. All he is sharing is an opinion, though an unpopular one.

What perhaps the Washington Post should perhaps consider in the future is whether or not Arkin is the best person to continue writing this particular blog. It seems quite possible that this series of rants has created an adversarial relationship with the very national security community he was apparently hired to cover. It might be that because of his opinions, he has poisoned the proverbial well, and that the editors of the Washington Post may find that his stated opinions have made him unsuited to continue this particular assignment. That decision, I hasten to add, is completely and wholly a decision to be made by the editors of the Washington Post. He either retains his ability to do his job effectively, or he doesn't, and that can only be determined by his future performance. If the editors determine in the future that his ability to continue in this position has been diminished, perhaps they will opt to find another person of equal or greater ability to continue writing on this subject, but in no way should Arkin's employment by the Washington Post be determined purely for the opinions stated in these two posts.

The separate but related issue of the rather questionable re-ordering and obfuscation of his posts is another matter entirely.

If it can be reasonably determined that this was merely a technical issue or an honest mistake by either Arkin or someone at WPNI, then this is quite understandably something that can be forgiven. If however, it is determined that Arkin or someone else purposefully kept his second post from appearing on the front page of Early Warning, or if someone purposefully re-ordered the post order to intersperse his second response in order to make his critics appear harsh, or unforgiving, then we are discussing an ethical matter which may require a more immediate and permanent response.