David Kronke: Firestorm: Eric Haney on Iraq

Nothing I’ve ever written in more than 20 years has received more impassioned response than my interview with Eric Haney, a founding member of the elite special-ops anti-terrorist team Delta Force, who had critical remarks about the Bush Administration’s war with Iraq. And, really, I hardly wrote a thing – I merely plopped a cursory introduction atop a segment of our talk while I was visiting the set of the CBS series “The Unit.�

When I asked Haney about Iraq, I actually expected to hear a defense of the war, which I was interested in absorbing from a military, rather than political, or pundit’s, point of view. That someone who had risked his life so many times and under so many extreme conditions in defense of our country was so vehemently opposed to the war, however, was surprising to me, and, hence, newsworthy.

The story picked up some traction when it was linked at the Huffington Post (and elsewhere). There have been more than 180 comments on the story at the Huffington Post. Likewise, I’ve been inundated with emails, both complimentary and condemning. Some of the negative ones sort of tried to swift-boat Haney; others said that I, as a TV writer, have no business writing about politics. (On the other hand, I was the guy who did the interview, so who else was going to hang their byline on it? And as it was a strict Q&A, my own opinions did not appear in the piece.)

A couple asked a very valid question: Had Haney been pro-war, would I have written the piece? If he had had some insights into Iraq that I hadn't heard and that were positive, then yes, I probably would have done a story, trying to explain the war from a different perspective than the one with which we're all familiar. If he had said the war was justified for the same reasons we've all heard, then, no, I wouldn't have done a story because an ex-military guy being in favor of the war isn't exactly a newsflash.

On the other hand, if his negative comments had been of a more mild or generic nature, I wouldn't have done the story, either. What made this erupt as a much-debated story was the ardent nature of his comments. When someone who has spent so much of his unique and courageous life defending our country questions military policy in such strong terms, I think it's worthy of joining the national debate.

And, honestly, I wish our country could return to genuine debate rather than the divisive rote attacks on ideology, the liberals-aren’t-patriots/conservatives-don’t-think-for-themselves (or vice-versa) cant that gets us nowhere. I get emails from a conservative reader who takes issue with me from time to time, and does so in a thoughtful, genial fashion (he rarely calls me an idiot, and then only if I’ve actually been an idiot), and it’d be nice if the national dialogue could cool itself down to the tenor of his and my exchanges.

In case you haven’t seen the piece:

Eric Haney on Iraq