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| Dispatches From the Arena | |
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by Benjamin Kerstein, August 4, 2007
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My friend Michael Totten, who is a much braver man than I, has been posting from the heart of the whirlwind that is Iraq today. Its all a must read. Go check it out.
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Bostonian by birth, Israeli by choice, soon to be graduate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, writer, blogger, aspiring novelist, student of Jewish and Israeli history and Assistant Editor of Azure. More... |
richards1052
Michael Totten is a toned down version of Christopher Hitchens
Not a virulent ideologue, but totally misguided and misinformed in almost every way about U.S. policy in the Mideast. A total apologist for that policy. I've written about him in Larry of Arabia, as have others.
Richard Silverstein
Tikun Olam (blog)
Benjamin Kerstein
I'm afraid you simply don't
I'm afraid you simply don't know what you're talking about. Michael has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon, and has traveled throughout the Arab world. Moreover, and unlike most mainstream reporters, who proclaim what "the Arab street" thinks from an Olympian distance, Michael actually talks to people like Kurdish taxi drivers and Hizbullah supporters. You may not like his opinions, but he is infinitely better informed than most mainstream journalists who sit in coffee houses waiting for their stringers to feed them information, blissfully ignorant of the language, culture and politics of the country on which they claim to be reporting.