One of the primary responsibilities of journalists is to ask questions to get information to inform the public on a particular subject. This applies whether you’re asking the local school president about the school budget or elected officials about government policy including national security. The American military evacuation of Afghanistan has raised many obvious questions about the planning and consequences of the Biden administration’s decision to end the twenty year war. While most people agree with the decision to get out, the execution of the withdrawal has been badly bungled for all the world to see. There are many questions about the plan, the intelligence, the warnings, the preparedness of the Afghan military and the government itself. When things aren’t going well, people try to avoid answering hard questions.
On CBS’s Face the Nation today, Major Garrett was questioning Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin about getting American citizens safely to the airport in Kabul and on a flight out of the country. We’ve seen the pictures of the chaos and violence around the airport. When Blinkin was asked how Americans trapped in the country should get to the airport, he said they should stay away until they were contacted by the American authorities and they would be told how to get to the airport. Garrett, one of the better correspondents and questioners on network television, tried to pin Blinkin down. The military has said it will not be sending helicopters to pick people up. The obvious unasked question was how are you going to guide these people through the streets crawling with Taliban fighters and check points and through the thousand of people crowded around the airport entrance? Are they going to use GPS?
Of course, there was plenty of political criticism from both Republicans and even Democrats about how badly the war was ending. Conservative Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney was interviewed for her reaction to the debacle of the withdrawal. She predictably ripped the Biden administration for the mess. Cheney has a unique family connection to the war. Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was one of the architects and driving forces behind the invasion of Afghanistan and later the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Why not ask her if she’s spoken with her father about his reaction to the end of the war. How did he see it ending? The Bush administration had eight years to end the war. It left office with no end in sight.
Over two thousand Americans were killed fighting in Afghanistan, twenty thousand wounded. General David Petraeus served as commander there from July, 2010 to July 2011. He was later Director of the CIA. In an interview, he was upset and disappointed about how the war was ending. He said there were many other options for ending the war. But he was never asked, what specifically were those other options? Continuing an unending military presence that hadn’t succeeded after twenty years? Is there some other ideas you suggested while you were in charge of forces there?
We live in a fast moving digital world where both good and bad information can be around the world in a click. American journalists have greater freedom than anywhere else in the world. With that comes the responsibility to hold those in power responsible by getting answers.
correct. it’s not necessarily the question that’s important, it’s the follow-up question that’s important. most interviewers never get there, and usually by design.