It’s Not Just The American Media…

…that mangles facts and context.

A few weeks back Michael Yon wrote a piece about US and NATO special forces working and fighting in Afghanistan.

Here’s what he wrote:

U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Zabul Province give high marks to the Lithuanian Special Forces, who like to ride these captured Taliban motorbikes to sneak up on, and chase Taliban fighters. The “LithSof” are on their way to becoming living legends: Both Afghans and Americans report that the Taliban are afraid of the Lithuanians. Stories about them are filled with dangerous escapades and humor.

Americans say that the Lithuanians are sort of a weaponized version of Borat, who think nothing of sauntering around a base in nothing but flip-flops and underwear. “They look like mountain men. They never shave, sometimes don’t bathe, and often roll out the gate wearing nothing but body armor and weapons. Not even a t-shirt,” an American soldier told me. The Lithuanians may be a little bit nuts, but the Americans love to have them around because Lithuanians love to fight, and when you need backup, you can count on them.

The typical American reader might not know that there are Lithuanian Special Forces.  Given the state of American education, many Americans migh think Lithuania is the church formed by “Martin Lithuan” after he posted his 95 theses.

I might have been the former (certainly not the latter), but for having read brief passagein Robert Kaplan’s “Imperial Grunts” about Lithuanian Special Forces in 2003 earning nods from our “Green Berets” for bringing a pregnant cat with them to Afghanistan (soher kittens could kill the mice that plague the military camps).

Still, Yon is pretty clear:

That contrasts starkly with many of the NATO “partners.” Maybe when your country spends almost a half-century with the Soviet boot on its neck, its first generation of free soldiers know what freedom is worth — and that you sometimes have to fight for it.

Not clear enough for some in the Lithuanian media, who seized on the “Borat” stuff and ignored the obvious respect Yon showed their countrymen.

Yon Lpretty explicitly clarified things, of coursre:

To: Aitvaras [Lithuanian Special Forces] Commander
From: Michael Yon

Sir,

The words I wrote about Lithuanian Special Forces were meant as the highest praise. Yet I understand that those words have been widely misinterpreted in Lithuania. One Lithuanian journalist contacted me saying that normally a gigantic story in Lithuania spawns around a 100 comments on their website, but that this one about my commentary on Lithuanian Special Forces has gotten well over 400 comments.

A number of U.S. military personal have reached out to me privately in defense of Lithuanian soldiers. My long time readers realize that my reference to LithSOF being a “weaponized version of Borat” was tongue-in-cheek. I did not realize that there are so many Lithuanian readers of my work, or how some might take offense to those four words, when the rest of the story was clearly very complimentary of LithSOF.

Read the whole thing, and rejoice; myopic media aren’t just an American phenomenon!

Er, wait.  Not “rejoice”. “Cancel your subscription,wherever you are”.

That’s what I meant.

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