Stars and Stripes was a remarkable American arrangement: It was a newspaper funded by the Pentagon but empowered to report on the military, rather than speak for it. Its independence has never been entirely to the liking of the institution it covers. Now, Pete Hegseth is determined to stamp it out.
Bob Reid is the former editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes. He’s also longtime Associated Press correspondent, one of the journalists who ran the AP’s coverage of the Iraq War, and Dan’s predecessor at the AP as its Middle East editor-in-chief. He joined us yesterday to explain what’s happening to the paper. (We recorded later in the day than usual, which is why I’m posting it a day late.
He tells us that the Pentagon learned from its unsuccessful attempt to shut down Stars and Stripes outright during Trump’s first administration. This time, it’s using a subtler strategy: keep the name, withdraw the regulations that protected its editorial independence, and turn the thing into an organ of public affairs.
From there, we talk about what happens to a military when public affairs becomes a profession devoted to preventing the release of public information and whether the all-volunteer force has become a hereditary military caste, sealed off from the society it is supposed to defend. Also: How are Americans supposed to assess the success of military operations in Iran when nearly everything they know about them comes from institutions with a vested interest in declaring success?
We also talked about John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow, whether Putin might use a tactical nuclear weapon, and how tempting it must look to Russia that the United States is so divided, depleted, and strategically incontinent. Finally, Dan asks where Bob stands in our ongoing debate: Can the damage Trump’s done ever be reversed?
I’d never spoken to Bob before. I liked him a lot. Accents like his are disappearing, which is a loss. He reminded me of James Carville—perhaps only because of the accent—though he’s less manic and more elegiac. But his voice suggests a leisurely afternoon on the veranda listening to him gut everyone’s pretensions with a pocketknife.
You’ll enjoy hearing him too, I suspect.
