Don Surber illustrates just how petty a man William Arkin is:

I don’t want to write about this again, but here is where military/homeland security blogger Bill Arkin of the Washington Post went wrong: He picked on a kid.

Ernie Pyle never did. The American reporter takes on the brass, never the troops.

Arkin’s woes began when Spec. Tyler Johnson, 21, was asked by NBC News what he thought of the war protesters.

Now it all makes sense: the one thing the elite media hates is when anyone poaches on their territory. Opining is our job. Leave it to the pros--we'll determine what you should think!

To slightly paraphrase something I wrote in 2005, newspapers hold themselves out as representing "the little guy"--until the little guy decides to go into the same business of offering news and/or opinion to the public. (And here's a boatload of examples therein.)

This paragraph by Arkin in his pseudo-apology today stuck out to Don much as it did to myself when I first read it:

After writing off all his critics as “arrogant and intolerant” on Thursday, Arkin still didn’t get it today:

In the 30 years that we’ve had an all-volunteer force, this is the first war we’ve had where the justness of the cause is questionable and where we are losing and still could “lose.”

Really? Grenada was not questioned? Panama was not questioned? The Gulf War wasn’t questioned even though the vote in the Senate was 52-47?

Not to mention President Clinton's numerous military excursions in the 1990s, which Rush Limbaugh would routinely dismiss as mere "Meals On Wheels" missions.

Regarding the latter half of Arkin's sentence (nice use of postmodernist quotes around the word "lose", by the way), as Libertas asks on their blog of anyone in Hollywood using similar defeatist rhetoric:

1. What will happen in Iraq if we lose?

2. Are you okay with that?

Finally, Don writes that if Arkin "wanted to call someone a mercenary, he should take it up with Gen. Pace or CSM Mellinger, guys who could fight back: Men who are in charge of the operation".

Well, back in 2003, Arkin did smear Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin as a man "who believes in Christian 'jihad'".

So to be fair, Arkin is willing to fire at will, regardless of rank.

Even as he risks absorbing amounts of rhetorical flak and blowback sufficient to destroy the credibility of lesser journalists in the process!