THE DAILY BLADE: WikiLeaks And The Law Of Unintended Consequences
The reaction to the massive WikiLeaks document dump of more than 91,000 pages of classified Afghanistan war battlefield reports and other documents, which were quoted and analyzed by The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, falls into two camps: meh (“It’s no Pentagon Papers, I’ll tell ya that!) and OMG! (“I consider it treason.”)
While the documents themselves have been described by the Obama administration as “low level” and “old information” they do, as The Washington Post puts it, “reveal in often excruciating detail the struggles U.S. troops have faced in battling an increasingly potent Taliban force and in working with Pakistani allies who also appear to be helping the Afghan insurgency.” And it’s not a story about which the current administration and its predecessor have been straight with the American people – who have sacrificed so much (The Times characterizes the archive of messages from January 2004 to December 2009 as presenting “an unvarnished, ground-level picture … more grim than the official portrayal”).
And that’s what makes this “old news” news, as far as The Atlantic's James Fallows is concerned:
"Whether from George W. Bush or Barack Obama, presidential speeches about Afghanistan have not emphasized the mixed loyalties of the Pakistani security services, the frustrations of dealing with tribal leaders and corrupt officials, the extent of civilian casualties, and other items that, according to insiders, 'everyone' already knows. At this stage it's impossible to say whether a vast, somewhat hard-to-digest compilation of raw reports, released in the middle of summer, will mean that 'everyone' in a broader sense comes to share this insider perspective. … And that's the possible similarity to the Pentagon Papers."
Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute in London, tells The Washington Times:
There is no doubt that the leaks are politically pretty damaging. The papers give an impression of a lack of military discrimination in how operations were conducted.
They are also appearing at the worst possible time, particularly in the United States, because people are looking for an exit strategy. This is old bad news at a new bad time.
WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange is a committed anti-war activist and his purpose may well be to undermine our resolve in Afghanistan. But you never know how people will react, and instead of stoking anti-war sentiment, Americans – especially those whose sons and daughters are in harm’s way - may start asking out loud (if they’re not already thinking it) why we’re nation-building instead of leveling Afghanistan, so as to leave no safe havens to the insurgents and to leave the Pakistanis no insurgents to aid and abet.
For her part, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is struck by that the people on whose behalf we are expending our blood and treasure are both ungrateful and disdainful:
We invaded two countries, and allied with a third - all renowned as masters at double-dealing. And, now lured into their mazes, we still don’t have the foggiest idea, shrouded in the fog of wars, how these cultures work. Before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, both places were famous for warrior cultures. And, indeed, their insurgents are world class.
But whenever America tries to train security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so that we can leave behind a somewhat stable country, it’s positively Sisyphean. It takes eons longer than our officials predict. The forces we train turn against us or go over to the other side or cut and run. If we give them a maximum security prison, as we recently did in Iraq, making a big show of handing over the key, the imprisoned Al Qaeda militants are suddenly allowed to escape.
The British Empire prided itself on discovering warrior races in places it conquered - Gurkhas, Sikhs, Pathans, as the Brits called Pashtuns. But why are they warrior cultures only until we need them to be warriors on our side? Then they’re untrainably lame, even when we spend $25 billion on building up the Afghan military and the National Police Force, dubbed “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” by Newsweek.
Maybe we just can’t train them to fight against each other. But why can’t countries that produce fierce insurgencies produce good standing armies in a reasonable amount of time?
And then she has an epiphany, but is so terrified of its ramifications she states it in the form of a question: “Is it just that insurgencies can be more indiscriminate?”
The insurgents kill with abandon. They blow up schools, they blow up mosques, they behead people just for the fun of it. The rules of engagement put into place by erstwhile commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal require our soldiers to sacrifice their lives lest a single “innocent” Afghan is harmed accidentally – they are conniving collaborators and it’s folly to assume otherwise – while the insurgents live to kill another day. You’d think the Afghans would be at least as pissed off when an insurgent kills a nine-year old goatherd on purpose as they are when the kid is accidentally killed in a drone strike. But, no.
Testifying before Congress, Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Pakistan drew the obvious conclusion that Dowd shies from, stating plainly that , “You don't get cracks and fissures in a rock until you bring a hammer down on it." The Washington Times reports:
The U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan first must escalate its counterinsurgency operations and only then begin reconciliation efforts with leaders of the militancy, veterans of the Iraq campaign told members of Congress on Tuesday. …
David Kilcullen, who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus when the general headed the coalition force in Iraq, emphasized the need for a "big tactical hit" on the Taliban. (Gen. Petraeus is currently the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.)
"We need to do some very significant damage to the Quetta Shura, Haqqani Network … We need to kill a lot of Taliban … You have to do that kind of damage to a terrorist organization before it becomes ready to talk," Mr. Kilcullen said.
He ruled out negotiating with the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network, saying the terrorist group, which has inflicted a large number of casualties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, is not acting on its own initiative.
"If you negotiate with the organ grinder's monkey, you may as well negotiate with the organ grinder himself," Mr. Kilcullen said.
Pressed by Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to explain, he said there was "considerable collusion" between the Haqqani Network and "elements within some parts of the national security establishment in Pakistan."
Sure, now Kilcullen admits the collusion in public. Rather than become demoralized and demand a hasty retreat, The Stiletto hopes that knowing what we’re dealing with spurs the American people to plainly and forcefully insist that our commander-in-chief and namby-pamby politically correct generals start fighting the war as fiercely as the insurgents are. The aim is to kill, not to coddle; to make the double-dealing Afghans fear crossing us more than they fear the insurgents. Where is Patton when you need him?
In Memoriam
John Callahan, February 5, 1951 to July 24, 2010
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