“Isikoff has singlehandedly…”

…US triumph in the country to a total disaster.”

That’s not me saying it, it is one JRK, a reader over at Austin Bay, picked up here by Glenn Reynolds, here:

I’m on my way back to Kabul, as I typically do every summer, but my family is completely opposed to my travel and work this year in Afghanistan even though I’ve safely transited there, in and out of State and UN/NGO service for nearly 20 years. The word I receive from Kabuli friends is that Isikoff has singlehandedly turned US triumph in the country to a total disaster. It was thought an anomaly last summer that some wonderful–and tragically forgotten–American DynCorps workers (mostly ex-military and my good friends) were killed in an environment that was pro-American to the core. That could be seen as a terrible tragedy, an unreasonable sad event impinging on an overall positive atmosphere–a last ditch effort by desperate Al Qa’eda remnants from outside Afghanistan to vent anger at the overwhelming success of the Americans. Now thanks to one Bush-hating reporter (google Isikoff if you doubt his intentions,) the recidivist Taliban-Pathans of southeast Afghanistan once again have an issue to de-legitimize the Karzai-US alliance.

Isikoff does have editors. Once again, if only someone had asked for something more than, “can you prove this allegation is not true” perhaps we would not be in a situation where a stabalizing situation in a country that was coming along, making progress on a hard road to freedom is now deeply distrusting of us, and the work and lives of our troops may end up having been in vain.

This is not the “singlehanded” fault of Michael Isikoff or Newsweek. The hyper-sensitive rioters are to blame for the deaths, and for this mayhem. But…it has to be said…Newsweek was the catalyst – it was sloppy and their sloppiness is going to reverberate for a long time. And yes, if our work in Afghanistan goes backward because of their sloppiness, if because of Newsweek some of our troops deaths will soon be in vain…then Newsweek and Isikoff must take some of THAT blame. God help them, it is not blame I would wish to carry.

I’m so disgusted. And I ache for our troops, and for the families who lost them. And I ache for my country, and yes, for my president. This is so very disheartening.

Meanwhile, La Shawn Barber has a nice collections of links from left and right on this story.