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Lara Logan’s War Cry
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Lara Logan’s War Cry
Oct 9, 2012 4:45 AM EDT The CBS News and ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent stunned a Chicago audience with her interventionist critique of America’s response to the attacks in Libya. James Warren reports.
When Lara Logan of CBS News stepped before a packed Chicago ballroom last week, she quickly corrected the newspaper editor who introduced her by noting she’d warned him not to “screw up” the introduction.
No, she told the annual lunch of the Better Government Association, she asked him not to “**** it up.”
That jest set the tone for a provocative address before 1,100 in which the foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes star skewered American policy in Afghanistan and Libya, called for a ramped-up military campaign against terrorists, and criticized the Obama administration and others for both underestimating the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan and for tolerating Pakistan’s obvious coddling of terrorists killing American soldiers.
The Taliban and al Qaeda, she made clear, “want to destroy the West and us,” and we must fight fire with fire, She appeared to leave the assembled alternatively riveted and just a bit troubled by a critique with interventionist implications clearly drawn from her reporting.
As one nonprofit executive, a former magazine editor, put it the next day when asked to describe her speech: “Shoot ’em, bomb ’em, **** ’em. They will kill your children.”
There is a rich history of foreign correspondents being outspoken and passionate in offering political commentary, especially those who have been caught in harm’s way. Logan herself was a victim of brutality; in 2011 the South Africa native was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while she covered the demonstrations prompted by President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. Such a harrowing experience would surely impact even the most politically cautious of journalists. Still, the sharp advocacy from such a prominent network reporter caught some in the Chicago crowd by surprise.
Lara Logan, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, last week at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards in New York. (Marc Bryan-Brown / Getty Images)
Logan’s address was linked to a significant dispatch for 60 Minutes two days earlier in which she chronicled growing terrorist attacks on American soldiers in Afghanistan. She showed a portion to the audience.
It included the top U.S. commander, Gen. John Allen, voicing frustration over attacks by Afghan troops whom we’ve trained and President Hamid Karzai declaring that terrorist attacks are only increasing as America winds down its presence. Allen was also publicly candid, in ways predecessors arguably have not been, about his obvious chagrin over his battlefield enemies having what Logan called “complete freedom of movement inside Pakistan and with the blessing of the Pakistanis.”
In front of the Chicago audience, Logan contended that the terrorist presence in Afghanistan is continually understated. She scoffed at the numbers routinely used by many in the government and think-tank communities to describe the Taliban’s presence in country.
Lara Logan’s War Cry
Oct 9, 2012 4:45 AM EDT The CBS News and ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent stunned a Chicago audience with her interventionist critique of America’s response to the attacks in Libya. James Warren reports.
When Lara Logan of CBS News stepped before a packed Chicago ballroom last week, she quickly corrected the newspaper editor who introduced her by noting she’d warned him not to “screw up” the introduction.
No, she told the annual lunch of the Better Government Association, she asked him not to “**** it up.”
That jest set the tone for a provocative address before 1,100 in which the foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes star skewered American policy in Afghanistan and Libya, called for a ramped-up military campaign against terrorists, and criticized the Obama administration and others for both underestimating the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan and for tolerating Pakistan’s obvious coddling of terrorists killing American soldiers.
The Taliban and al Qaeda, she made clear, “want to destroy the West and us,” and we must fight fire with fire, She appeared to leave the assembled alternatively riveted and just a bit troubled by a critique with interventionist implications clearly drawn from her reporting.
As one nonprofit executive, a former magazine editor, put it the next day when asked to describe her speech: “Shoot ’em, bomb ’em, **** ’em. They will kill your children.”
There is a rich history of foreign correspondents being outspoken and passionate in offering political commentary, especially those who have been caught in harm’s way. Logan herself was a victim of brutality; in 2011 the South Africa native was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while she covered the demonstrations prompted by President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. Such a harrowing experience would surely impact even the most politically cautious of journalists. Still, the sharp advocacy from such a prominent network reporter caught some in the Chicago crowd by surprise.
Lara Logan, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, last week at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards in New York. (Marc Bryan-Brown / Getty Images)
Logan’s address was linked to a significant dispatch for 60 Minutes two days earlier in which she chronicled growing terrorist attacks on American soldiers in Afghanistan. She showed a portion to the audience.
It included the top U.S. commander, Gen. John Allen, voicing frustration over attacks by Afghan troops whom we’ve trained and President Hamid Karzai declaring that terrorist attacks are only increasing as America winds down its presence. Allen was also publicly candid, in ways predecessors arguably have not been, about his obvious chagrin over his battlefield enemies having what Logan called “complete freedom of movement inside Pakistan and with the blessing of the Pakistanis.”
In front of the Chicago audience, Logan contended that the terrorist presence in Afghanistan is continually understated. She scoffed at the numbers routinely used by many in the government and think-tank communities to describe the Taliban’s presence in country.
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