Thread by @HawaiiDelilah

It is very clear that many in the warmonger reporting caucus are openly mourning the end of neocon forever wars. This is not accidental. There is the obvious psychological effect of reporting from forever war zones for 20 yrs. One of those effects is becoming part of the story.

But that's only part of the explanation. We've talked a lot here on Twitter about the toxic effect of the Habermanian-style of access journalism. But there is also military-embed journalism that we have been witness to for 20 years that is also toxic.

From the Afghan & Iraq wars onward, we had military-embed journalists becoming part of the story. But even the anchors in studios were cheerleading the ill-advised debacle in Iraq. I'm sorry to say i am old enough to remember the horror of warmonger journalism in the early 2000s.

Fast-forward to today, and nothing has changed. Now you have producers of news desks giving the neocon foreign policy flunkies of the early 2000s airtime to bloviate about another Saigon as if Beirut didn't happen.

Fast-forward to today, and Kissinger and Paul Bremer get print time in newspapers of record, as if the former were not an enabler of Pinochet & the latter were not responsible for de-Baathification in Iraq. It would be hilarious if it were not so tragic.

Let me be fully clear: It is time to expand the critique of the ecosystem that produces this paradigm. It is not just about the military industrial complex benefiting from forever wars. it is also about military MEDIA complex who is benefiting. They both love war & feed on it.

I am not a pacifist. So let's get that out of the way. I am informed by the Obama Doctrine of "no more stupid wars," but I embrace today's Biden Doctrine of no more forever wars when there are other ways of engaging with the world & fighting terrorism.

So let me end by emphasizing this point: It is time to expand the critique of the ecosystem that produces forever wars, & that includes expanding the critique of the military embed journalists -- & their producers & publishers -- who benefit from the military media complex. /end

Aloha @threadreaderapp, unroll for me, you sexy beast.