Kagan wonders aloud (HT Hugh Hewitt) in his Sunday Washington Post column, with this introduction:
A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy.
Kagan's main point goes to credibility, but it's really a business question too. It applies a bit more to papers and media outlets other than the Post, which has shown occasional sanity (starting at the link's third paragraph) while others have totally lost their bearings. If the Surge succeeds (and it's barely started, so who knows?), aren't readers, listeners, and viewers going to wonder who's been feeding them a load of rubbish about "the hopeless situation" for 3-plus years? Would you not expect even more of them to cancel their subscriptions and turn away in even higher numbers from Formerly Mainstream Media outlets?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
