This has to be some kind of joke. The Air Force commissions a study on the Israeli-Hizballah war, and who do they pick to do it?

Hard-left anti-military writer William Arkin, who wrote in the Washington Post that US troops are a bunch of mercenary rapists and murderers who are lucky they aren’t being spat upon.

Is anyone awake at the Air Force? Book Faults Israeli Air War in Lebanon.

JERUSALEM, Oct. 13 — A study of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war commissioned by the United States Air Force and to be published this month concludes that Israel’s use of air power was of diminishing value as the fight dragged on because it was used without enough discrimination.

Although the war was widely criticized in Israel and abroad for relying too heavily on the air force, the study argues that air power remains the most flexible tool in fighting groups like Hezbollah, because ground forces alone could not have achieved Israel’s aims. Israel’s error, the study concludes, was insufficient discernment in its airstrikes.

By bombing too many targets of questionable importance for its aims, and not explaining why it bombed what it did, Israel lost the war for public opinion, according to the author of the study, William M. Arkin, an expert in assessing bomb damage. “Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”

In this new kind of warfare against terrorism, fighting a nonstate force like Hezbollah that occupies a large part of a fragile state, Lebanon, the battle for public opinion is as important as any military victory, Mr. Arkin argues.

This kind of war, using air power and special operations, will dominate the future, which is why the Air Force commissioned this study to learn from “the first sustained precision air campaign mounted by a country other than the United States,” he said in a telephone interview this week.

Mr. Arkin’s book, “Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War,” will be published this month by the Air University Press, based at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. It is expected to influence Air Force strategy and teaching.

For much more information on this creep and his many connections with Soros-funded far-left groups: LGF search: William Arkin.

Here comes Deborah Howell of the Washington Post to stick up for anti-military “analyst” William Arkin: A Blog’s Blast Damage.

It’s exactly what you probably expect; she minimizes Arkin’s statements, narrowly focusing on the “mercenary” part, and glosses over his radical leftist past and history of working for Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch; instead she mentions unnamed “human rights and environmental groups.”

To Howell, this is just another example of the superiority of mainstream media to blogs. Arkin didn’t have an editor, because this was only a blog, and the Washington Post doesn’t really care what goes on in blogs. And of course, the blog audience is composed of thick-headed literalists, unable to grasp the fine nuance of people like William Arkin.

Readers usually take things literally. And an editor should have told him to take out the word. That’s what editors are for: They keep opinion writers from making fools of themselves.

See, if Arkin’s hate screed had been edited, no one would have known that the Post’s “military analyst” was a hard left anti-military moonbat. The editor would have come in and sanitized it, and no one would have been the wiser.

Howell has actually made a case against having an editor.

For the sake of completeness, I’ll link to William Arkin’s latest whiny post about how victimized and demonized he is, but it’s exactly what you might expect: Demonization and Responsibility.

Leftist diversionary tactics 101; claim victimhood and suppression of rights, because people are criticizing what you said. Take no responsibility for the hatefulness of your own comments; instead simply reiterate them in slightly more weaselly words.

Notice how, in this piece, Arkin just glides right past the issue of his work with radical hard left groups.

Bill O’Reilly was in high dudgeon tonight (and justifiably so) over William Arkin’s anti-military screeds in several MSM outlets. Hot Air has the second section, with the comment babes: Michelle tells O’Reilly, “Let a thousand Arkins bloom”.

UPDATE at 2/5/07 7:45:24 pm:

Here’s the first segment, sans comment babes, in which O’Reilly’s producer gets the high hat from Arkin, and O’Reilly has some rather harsh words for NBC News.

(If the video doesn’t show up, it’s because it’s still percolating through YouTube’s caches and load balancers. Have patience, grasshopper.)

Iowahawk launches his “Equal Time” feature with a formal debate on the blogosphere’s current hot topic: Should Washington Post Military Analyst William Arkin Be Beaten Like the Repulsive Sack of Sh-t He Is?

In this debate, Mr. Hawk will argue against the beating of Mr. Arkin.

The Iowahawk View

Washington Post Military Affairs correspondent William Arkin recently stirred controversy with a blog post that termed active duty soldiers “mercenaries” who are “indulged” and given “obscene amenities” who should be “explained… why it isn’t up to them to disapprove” of anti-war opinions. After the initial dustup, Arkin responded to critics by calling them “arrogant and intolerant,” and after time for reflection, termed soldiers “worse” than mercenaries, and secretly harboring desires for a military coup.

Some policy analysts have proposed that in response, Arkin should be beaten for being the repulsive sack of sh-t he is. We at Iowahawk strongly disagree, and for a number of compelling reasons. First, unlike his critics, Mr. Arkin is a civilian and professional journalist, and as such is uniquely entitled to freedom of speech under the First Amendment. Secondly, Arkin’s subsequent hospitalization would impose an economic hardship on the already financially-strapped Washington Post, as well as his other employers at Greenpeace, the Institute for Policy Studies, Human Rights Watch, NRDC, Vanguard of the Proletariat Ski Shop, and Jaamat al-Islaam. Third, the only benefit his beaters would receive is a temporary cathartic sense of satisfaction, which must be weighed against the potential risk of skinned knuckles and boot stains.

In short, beating William Arkin like the repulsive sack of sh-t he is would not only be illegal, anti-business and messy, it would potentially bolster his point about intolerance.

Read the rebuttal, the rejoinder, and the final word…

Washington Post “national security” blogger William Arkin (a hard left anti-military writer who has inexplicably been employed as a “military analyst” by NBC and the LA Times) must have been read the riot act by his superiors at the Post, because there’s no other way he would have issued even this much of a weak non-apology: A Note to My Readers on Supporting the Troops.

Hard left Washington Post “military analyst” William Arkin freaks out on John Gibson’s radio show: ‘We’re Losing!’

William Arkin, writer of one of the most hateful and ugly pieces ever to soil the web site of the Washington Post, says that everyone who criticized his article is Arrogant and Intolerant. Apparently he expected universal praise for his brilliant analysis.

Here he “apologizes” for describing US troops as “mercenaries”—because they’re actually worse than that.

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

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.

This is who the mainstream media picks to comment on military affairs: a radical left anti-military moonbat.

Allahpundit has audio of Arkin saying that by insulting the troops, he’s actually supporting them: William Arkin supports the troops in his own funny little way.

Today’s ugly leftist anti-military rant is published by the Washington Post. And “anti-military” is no exaggeration in this case; as William Arkin spells out quite clearly, he believes that the raping, murdering, torturing US troops are lucky they aren’t being spat upon: The Troops Also Need to Support the American People. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

This is in the Post’s “blog” section, which must be why the writing is so sloppy. Arkin skipped all those layers of journalistic oversight.

These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President’s handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.

Sure it is the junior enlisted men who go to jail, but even at anti-war protests, the focus is firmly on the White House and the policy. We just don’t see very man “baby killer” epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don’t get it, that they don’t understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoover’s and Nixon’s will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If I weren’t the United States, I’d say the story end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States and instead this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

No, it isn’t Markos “Screw Them” Moulitsas under a pseudonym.

William Arkin, the former “military affairs columnist” for the Los Angeles Times, has a first-class hard left pedigree, having also worked for the Institute for Policy Studies (an affiliate of the Workers World Party and International ANSWER), Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Human Rights Watch—none of which, oddly enough, is mentioned in his biography page.

So this latest blast of hatred shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Previously at LGF:
Who Is William Arkin?
Connections

UPDATE at 1/31/07 5:33:37 pm:

Others blogging about this disgraceful article:
Hot Air: WaPo blogger to U.S. troops: Be thankful we don’t spit on you, mercenaries
Media Blog: WaPo’s Arkin Slams U.S. Troops
BLACKFIVE: A hearty F*** You to William Arkin
OPFOR: Fallen